Mile Markers

Theodore Roosevelt wasn’t just a president; he was one of America’s great naturalists. He doubled the size of America’s national parks, and spent a lot of time outdoors, too —most famously as a rancher in North Dakota. But Roosevelt’s love of nature actually started in a cramped New York City brownstone, far from the fresh air and open spaces he would come to love and protect.

Theodore Roosevelt is one of America’s most beloved presidents. He’s still an enduring symbol of vigor, energy and strength more than a century after his death. But he didn’t start that way. He was bedridden with asthma as a child in New York’s East Village.

The streets of Providence, Rhode Island were plastered with an unusual sticker in the summer of 1989. It was a grainy black-and-white picture of a bulky, scowling man, with the words: “Andre the Giant has a Posse.” The artist behind that sticker went on to leave a mark on American political history. Seriously.

Tuxedo Park in New York’s Hudson Valley was one of America’s first gated communities, a playground for the super-elite. So it’s no surprise it gave its name to that most ubiquitous of formal attire for men.

Tuxedo Park in New York’s Hudson Valley has been a playground for the rich and famous for over a century. And it’s where a young Emily Post spent her summers. Tuxedo Park helped shape the woman who taught Americans the art of etiquette.

In 1885, a multimillionaire playboy called a bunch of his wealthiest friends, with names like Astor and Vanderbilt. He had a proposition: How'd you like to buy a property in an exclusive retreat in the Ramapo Mountains?

The state of Connecticut made a joint resolution in 2013 to celebrate the nation’s first powered flight, and it wasn’t by the Wright Brothers. Connecticut is the only state that recognizes a German immigrant as the first to fly. And one man built a replica to prove it.

Most of us were taught in middle school that the Wright Brothers flew the first plane in 1903 in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. But some people say someone else deserves the credit: a German immigrant named Gustave Whitehead. He allegedly flew his flying machine in Fairfield, Connecticut two years before the Wright Brothers

MIT debuted the first widely-played video game in 1962. It was a battle between two little spaceships that shot lasers at each other while dodging a vortex. For such a simple premise, the game has had a surprisingly long legacy, with multiple copycats, including the first game from the company that would become Atari.

The first widely-played video game wasn’t Pong, Donkey Kong or Space Invaders. It wasn’t made by Nintendo or Atari. Imagine a bunch of young MIT nerds in the early 60s, given free rein over the latest computer technology. The result was Spacewar!