Nearly 100 years after his death, Andrew Carnegie still provokes a spectrum of emotions, everything from admiration to disdain. Perhaps that is because he himself was a man of stark contrasts. His story is a fascinating one of rags to unfathomable riches, labor champion to union enemy, autocrat to delegator, ruthless competitor to the most magnanimous philanthropist in history. Andrew Carnegie was born on November
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Shakespeare wrote: “All the world’s a stage.” That may be so, but some make their entrance at precisely the right moment in history’s drama. Such is the case with legendary golfer Arnold Palmer. Counted among the greatest golfers of all time, Palmer made his debut during the rise of the television age, making him a household name, setting off a boom in golf, and establishing
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Pittsburgh may be most associated with black and gold, but when it comes to the Irish in the area, they’d paint the city green. Almost from its founding there have been Irish in Pittsburgh. The first arrivals were the Scots-Irish in the 1700s, and then later in the 1800s the Irish Catholics began to arrive. Near the middle of the 1800s, The Great Potato Famine
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Ah, St. Patrick’s Day. Shamrocks. Green beer. Parades. Rubber boots. For Floyd Hughes, my late grandfather, St. Patrick’s Day always reminded him of rubber boots. In March 1936, Pup-Pup, as his grandchild and great-grandchildren called him, was a 21-year-old shipping clerk for Eastman Kodak in Pittsburgh. A husband and father with a 9-month-old daughter, he lived on Spring Hill and took a streetcar to work
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In the movie Back to the Future, teenager Marty McFly goes back in time by way of a souped-up DeLorean and the help of an eccentric scientist. But you don’t need an old sports car or the assistance of Doc Brown to go back in time. All you need is a visit to Pittsburgh’s Duquesne Incline. The Duquesne Incline, located at 1197 West Carson Street
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Great cities have great urban parks. Before 1955, downtown Pittsburgh lacked a great park, but that’s understandable. When your city is shrouded in smog, you have bigger problems than lack of a green space. But when Pittsburgh native Richard King Mellon returned to Pittsburgh after serving in World War II to take over the helm of Mellon Bank, he was appalled at how dilapidated Pittsburgh
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Did you know the boyhood home of Art Rooney Sr. once stood on the same spot where Three Rivers Stadium would be built many years later, and where Mr. Rooney himself would be hailed as “The Chief”? Art Rooney was born in Coultersville, a town east of Pittsburgh, into a family that made their living as coal miners and steel workers. His parents moved their
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If Los Angeles is known as the “City of Angels,” then Pittsburgh could be known as the “City of the Angel”. Johnny Angel, to be exact. Johnny Angel and his bandmates, the Halos, have been ruling the Pittsburgh music realm since 1972. “I think we are the longest surviving group in the area,” said Jack Hunt, who is more prominently known by his stage name,
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Like St. Nicholas, whose life morphed into the legendary figure of Santa Claus, or Phoebe Moses, who became Annie Oakley, John Chapman’s real life was so unusual that it inspired a legend: Johnny Appleseed. While legends are often dressed up in the fairy tale garb of whimsy, fantasy, and out-sized virtue, the real stories of the people behind the legends are often more interesting and
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Humanity is truly fortunate that Jonas Salk choose medicine over his original goal of becoming an attorney. Or perhaps we should thank his mother, who never thought he would be a good lawyer! Whatever the motivation—love of medicine or a mother’s desire—Jonas Salk started down a path that would save many people from the devastating disease of Polio. Early Life and Education Jonas Salk’s story
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