This week in Hamilton County’s history …
1867 – Clara Barton delivered a lecture in Terre Haute. According to the reporter for the Evansville Daily Journal, she was the best female lecturer in the United States. She founded the American Red Cross in 1881 and served as the first president.
1920 – Charles I. Taylor of the Indianapolis ABC’s, and other owners of African American baseball teams, gathered in Kansas City to create the Negro National League. They played their first game on May 2, 1920, against the Chicago Giants.
1928 – Norman Bridwell was born in Kokomo. He graduated from Kokomo High School and went on to attend John Herron School of Art. He was an author and cartoonist, famous for creating the Clifford the Big Red Dog series of books.
1945 – Bombs dropped on Dresden, Germany, as Kurt Vonnegut and fellow POWs huddled underground in the meat locker of a slaughterhouse. Vonnegut wrote about it in the best-selling novel, Slaughterhouse-Five.
1962 – President John F. Kennedy signed a bill authorizing the Lincoln National Boyhood Memorial in Spencer County, Ind. This is where the future President lived in a log cabin from ages 7 to 21.
2014 – 19-year-old Nick Goepper of Lawrenceburg, Ind., won a bronze medal in slopestyle competition in the Winter Olympics in Russia. He also won a silver medal at the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea.