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Tent Show
Tent shows have been an important part of American history since the mid-to-late nineteenth century. In 1927, Don Carle Gillette gave "statistical evidence that the tented drama constituted 'a more extensive business than Broadway and all the rest of the legitimate theatre industry put together.'" The shows first began "in regions which couldn’t support full-time playhouses." Men such as Fayette Lodowick, one of the earliest tent show entrepreneurs, would travel around river towns all over the United States making money on traveling tent shows. These shows "were utilized for a variety of amusements including medicine shows, moving picture shows, vaudeville shows, circuses, musicals, concert companies, and any number of one-night stand dramatic troupes." Tent theatre played a critical role in the American entertainment industry. It first grew out of opera houses, which were in almost every major city until the end of the nineteenth century. The opera houses were very poorly ventil ...
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Medicine Show
Medicine shows were touring acts (traveling by truck, horse, or wagon teams) that peddled "miracle cure" patent medicines and other products between various entertainments. They developed from European Charlatan, mountebank shows and were common in the United States in the nineteenth century, especially in the American Old West, Old West (though some continued until World War II). Medicine shows usually promoted "miracle elixirs", sometimes referred to as "snake oil liniment", which made various claims such as being able to cure disease, smooth wrinkles, remove stains, prolong life or cure any number of common ailments. Most shows had their own "patent medicine" (products which were for the most part unpatented, but which took the name to sound official). Entertainments often included a freak show, a flea circus, musical ensemble, musical acts, magic (illusion), magic tricks, jokes, or storytelling. Each show was run by a man posing as a doctor who drew the crowd with a monologue ...
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Wild West
The American frontier, also known as the Old West, and popularly known as the Wild West, encompasses the geography, history, folklore, and culture associated with the forward wave of American expansion in mainland North America that began with European colonial settlements in the early 17th century and ended with the admission of the last few contiguous western territories as states in 1912. This era of massive migration and settlement was particularly encouraged by President Thomas Jefferson following the Louisiana Purchase, giving rise to the expansionist attitude known as "manifest destiny" and historians' " Frontier Thesis". The legends, historical events and folklore of the American frontier, known as the frontier myth, have embedded themselves into United States culture so much so that the Old West, and the Western genre of media specifically, has become one of the defining features of American national identity. Periodization Historians have debated at length as ...
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Missouri River
The Missouri River is a river in the Central United States, Central and Mountain states, Mountain West regions of the United States. The nation's longest, it rises in the eastern Centennial Mountains of the Bitterroot Range of the Rocky Mountains of southwestern Montana, then flows east and south for before entering the Mississippi River north of St. Louis, Missouri. The river drains Semi-arid climate, semi-arid Drainage basin, watershed of more than 500,000 square miles (1,300,000 km2), which includes parts of ten U.S. states and two Canadian provinces. Although a tributary of the Mississippi, the Missouri River is slightly longer and carries a comparable volume of water, though a fellow tributary (Ohio River) carries more water. When combined with the lower Mississippi River, it forms the List of rivers by length, world's fourth-longest river system. For over 12,000 years, people have depended on the Missouri River and its Tributary, tributaries as a source of sustena ...
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Civil Engineering
Civil engineering is a regulation and licensure in engineering, professional engineering discipline that deals with the design, construction, and maintenance of the physical and naturally built environment, including public works such as roads, bridges, canals, dams, airports, sewage systems, pipelines, structural element, structural components of buildings, and railways. Civil engineering is traditionally broken into a number of sub-disciplines. It is considered the second-oldest engineering discipline after military engineering, and it is defined to distinguish non-military engineering from military engineering. Civil engineering can take place in the public sector from municipal public works departments through to federal government agencies, and in the private sector from locally based firms to Fortune Global 500, ''Fortune'' Global 500 companies. History Civil engineering as a discipline Civil engineering is the application of physical and scientific principles for solv ...
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Pacific Railroad Act
The Pacific Railroad Acts of 1862 were a series of acts of Congress that promoted the construction of a "transcontinental railroad" (the Pacific Railroad) in the United States through authorizing the issuance of government bonds and the grants of land to railroad companies. In 1853, the War Department under then Secretary of War Jefferson Davis was authorized by the Congress to conduct surveys of five different potential transcontinental routes from the Mississippi ranging from north to south. It submitted a massive twelve volume report to Congress with the results in early 1855. However, no route or bill could be agreed upon and passed authorizing the Government's financial support and land grants until the secession of the southern states in 1861 removed their opposition to a central route. The Pacific Railroad Act of 1862 () was the original act. Some of its provisions were subsequently modified, expanded, or repealed by four additional amending Acts: The Pacific Railroad ...
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Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was the 16th president of the United States, serving from 1861 until Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, his assassination in 1865. He led the United States through the American Civil War, defeating the Confederate States of America and playing a major role in the End of slavery in the United States, abolition of slavery. Lincoln was born into poverty in Kentucky and raised on the American frontier, frontier. He was self-educated and became a lawyer, Illinois state Illinois House of Representatives, legislator, and U.S. representative. Angered by the Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854, which opened the territories to slavery, he became a leader of the new History of the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party. He reached a national audience in the Lincoln–Douglas debates, 1858 Senate campaign debates against Stephen A. Douglas. Lincoln won the 1860 United States presidential election, 1860 presidential election, wh ...
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Sarah Bernhardt
Sarah Bernhardt (; born Henriette-Rosine Bernard; 22 October 1844 – 26 March 1923) was a French stage actress who starred in some of the most popular French plays of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including by Alexandre Dumas fils, Alexandre Dumas ''fils'', ''Ruy Blas'' by Victor Hugo, ''Fédora'' and ''La Tosca'' by Victorien Sardou, and ''L'Aiglon'' by Edmond Rostand. She played female and male roles, including Shakespeare's Prince Hamlet, Hamlet. Rostand called her "the queen of the pose and the princess of the gesture", and Hugo praised her "golden voice". She made several theatrical tours worldwide and was one of the early prominent actresses to make sound recordings and act in motion pictures. She is also linked with the success of artist Alphonse Mucha, whose work she helped to publicize. Mucha became one of the more sought-after artists of this period for his Art Nouveau style. Biography Early life Henriette-Rosine Bernard was born at 5 rue de L'École-de- ...
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Jack Langrishe
John Sewell Folds (September 24, 1825 – December 12, 1895), known professionally as Jack Langrishe, and nicknamed the Comedian of the Frontier, was an Irish-American actor and impresario who travelled extensively throughout the American West and later in life became one of the first State Senators of Idaho. Early life John Sewell Folds was born in Dublin, Ireland on September 24, 1825. His father, also named John Sewell Folds, ran a print shop and Folds learned how to set type at a young age. A fire at his father's printing plant forced the family into bankruptcy and they immigrated to the United States. Landing in Boston on September 19, 1845, Folds sought to make his living in America as an actor.Lauterbach (2016) pp. 9–11 He made his way to New York City and worked for Horace Greeley as a reporter and typesetter for the ''New York Tribune''. Because of Greeley's dislike of the theater, Folds adopted the Langrishe stage name, taking the surname from that of a judge and pol ...
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Eddie Foy
Edwin Fitzgerald (March 9, 1856 – February 16, 1928Cullen, Frank; Hackman, Florence; and McNeilly, Donald. ''Vaudeville, Old and New: An Encyclopedia of Variety Performers in America''. Routledge Press, September 2006, . pp. 406–410), known professionally as Eddie Foy and Eddie Foy Sr., was an American actor, comedian, dancer and vaudeville, vaudevillian. Early years Foy's parents, Richard and Mary Fitzgerald, emigrated to the United States from Ireland in 1855 and lived first in New York City's Bowery neighborhood and then in Greenwich Village, where Eddie was born. After Richard died in an insane asylum in 1862 from syphilis-induced dementia, Mary took their four children (Eddie was second oldest) to Chicago, where at one time she reportedly tended the mentally ill Mary Todd Lincoln, widow of Abraham Lincoln. Six-year-old Eddie began performing in the streets and local saloons to support his family. At 15 he began to use the stage name Foy, and with a partner began ...
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Jenny Lind
Johanna Maria Lind (Madame Goldschmidt) (6 October 18202 November 1887) was a Swedish opera singer, often called the "Swedish Nightingale". One of the most highly regarded singers of the 19th century, she performed in soprano roles in opera in Sweden and across Europe, and undertook an extraordinarily popular Jenny Lind tour of America, 1850–52, concert tour of the United States beginning in 1850. She was a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music from 1840. Lind became famous after her performance in ''Der Freischütz'' in Sweden in 1838. Within a few years, she had suffered vocal damage, but the singing teacher Manuel García (baritone), Manuel García saved her voice. She was in great demand in opera roles throughout Sweden and northern Europe during the 1840s, and was closely associated with Felix Mendelssohn. After two acclaimed seasons in London, she announced her retirement from opera at the age of 29. In 1850, Lind went to the United States at the invitation of t ...
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Edwin Forrest
Edwin Forrest (March 9, 1806December 12, 1872) was a nineteenth-century American Shakespearean actor. His feud with the British actor William Macready was the cause of the deadly Astor Place Riot of 1849. Early life Forrest was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Rebecca (''née'' Lauman) and William Forrest. His father, a Scottish merchandise peddler, moved from Dumfriesshire to Trenton, New Jersey in 1791. His mother was a member of an affluent German-American family. A business setback led William to relocate to Philadelphia, where he married Rebecca and was able to secure a position with a local branch of the United States Bank. As boys, Forrest and his brother William joined a local juvenile thespian club and participated in theatrical performances staged in a sparsely decorated woodshed. At the age of 11, Forrest made his first appearance on the legitimate stage at Philadelphia's South Street Theatre, playing the female role Rosalia de Borgia in the John D. ...
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Corset
A corset /ˈkɔːrsɪt/ is a support garment worn to constrict the torso into the desired shape and Posture correction, posture. They are traditionally constructed out of fabric with boning made of Baleen, whalebone or steel, a stiff panel in the front called a Busk (corsetry), busk which holds the torso rigidly upright, and some form of lacing which allows the garment to be tightened. Corsets, also known as stays, were an essential undergarment in European women's fashion from the 17th century to the early 20th century. In the 17th and 18th centuries they had a conical, straight-sided shape. This eventually evolved into the more curvaceous 19th century form. By the beginning of the 20th century, shifting gender roles and the onsets of World War I and World War II, II (and the associated material shortages) led the corset to be largely discarded by mainstream fashion. Since the corset fell out of use, the fashion industry has extended the term "corset" to refer to garments which ...
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