Iowa Time Machine ⏰: On July 8, 1906, Orren “Putt” Mossman was born on a farm in Hardin County. He would grow into one of the most celebrated stunt motorcyclists of the twentieth century. Before motorcycles made him famous, Mossman gained attention as a horseshoe pitcher and later won state and world championships. After taking up motorcycles in his twenties, he became an international performer whose act drew crowds in the United States and abroad. By the end of his career,

Iowa Time Machine ⏰: On July 8, 1936, the Iowa Butter Gang stole 3,443 pounds of butter from the creamery in Palmer. Part of a wider spree spanning the spring and summer of 1936, the gang stole over 20 tons of butter and cheese from 17 different creameries across the state. While desperation reigned during the Great Depression, crime thrived. While bootleggers brewed in Templeton and the Dillinger gang knocked over the First National Bank of Mason City, a different group of e

Iowa Time Machine ⏰: On July 8, 1846, John McGowan Morgan, as well as twelve other men, were commissioned into the United States military at Fort Atkinson, Iowa Territory. Morgan joined in response to the escalating conflict known today as the Mexican-American War. “Morgan’s Mounted Volunteers” never arrived in Mexico, but ended up providing surprising service to the United States during the earliest years of Iowa’s American history. The United States Congress authorized the

Iowa Time Machine ⏰: On July 8, 1891, Buena Vista College was founded in Storm Lake by the Presbyterian Church. The new school reshaped the educational landscape of northwest Iowa, laying the foundation for an institution of higher learning that continues to flourish today. In the late 19th century, small towns across the Midwest were hungry for opportunity and advancement. The founders of Buena Vista College sought to provide quality liberal arts education rooted in faith an

Iowa Time Machine ⏰: On July 7, 1880, Otto Frederick Rohwedder, inventor of sliced bread, was born in Davenport, Iowa. Born to a German immigrant family, Rohwedder grew up in eastern Iowa while attending Davenport’s public schools. Upon graduating from high school, he began an apprenticeship as a jeweler. Success soon found him, and he opened three jewelry stores. However, tinkering with watches led Rohwedder to experiment with inventing. When the idea for an automatic bread-

Iowa Time Machine ⏰: On July 7, 1948, at roughly 3:45 p.m., Edna Griffin entered the Katz Drug Store in downtown Des Moines. The manager of the popular lunch counter said, “It is the policy of our store that we don’t serve colored people.” In response, sit-ins and pickets popped up at several local lunch counters with discriminatory policies, and the state ultimately upheld the manager's conviction for violating a statute prohibiting discrimination in public accommodations. B

Iowa Time Machine ⏰: On July 7, 1968, Cyclone baseball and football standout Mike Busch was born in Davenport. The Donahue, Iowa, native earned All-American honors on the gridiron while also shining for the Cyclones on the baseball diamond before a MLB career. Busch quickly proved a four-sport star at North Scott High School. An All-State selection in football and an honorable mention All-State selection in baseball, Busch also played basketball and qualified for the state tr

Iowa Time Machine ⏰: On July 7, 1974, Iowa Hawkeye basketball legend Jess Settles was born. Iowa’s Mr. Basketball in 1993 while starring at Winfield-Mt. Union, Settles went on to be named Big Ten Freshman of the Year (1994), All-Big Ten First Team (1996), and Honorable Mention All-American (1996). Settles collected more than 2,000 points during a decorated career at Winfield-Mount Union. A three-time all-state selection, the future sports broadcaster also found time to pen a

Iowa Time Machine ⏰: On July 6, 1872, Charles Walter Hart was born in Charles City. Co-founder of the Hart-Parr Gasoline Engine Company, Charles Walter Hart played a pivotal role in establishing the tractor industry. Growing up in Floyd County, Hart worked for his father’s lumber and farming operations before heading to Elliott Business College in Burlington. After a brief stint at Iowa Agricultural College, Hart headed off to the University of Wisconsin, where he met his fut

Iowa Time Machine ⏰: On July 6, 1875, important Iowa Civil Rights activist Samuel Joe Brown was born. Brown and his wife, Sue M. Brown, built a powerful and sustained movement in Iowa, and together they became two of the most influential African American activists in the state during the early twentieth century. Joe Brown’s rise from an orphaned teenager in Ottumwa to the first African American graduate of Ottumwa High School, and later a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the State

Iowa Time Machine ⏰: On July 6, 1893, a tornado tore through Pomeroy, Iowa, and left a catastrophe that still stands among the most devastating in the state’s history. In a matter of minutes, 71 people were killed, and much of the community was reduced to wreckage. Pomeroy was a farm town founded in 1870. By the 1890s, it sat within a region where railroads, agriculture, and local commerce tied communities together, but storm forecasting remained primitive, and warnings were

Iowa Time Machine ⏰: On July 6, 1881, as thunderstorms washed out a railway trestle on Honey Creek in Central Iowa, seventeen-year-old Kate Shelley braved the storm while crawling across a bridge spanning the Des Moines River to alert the depot at Moingona to stop the oncoming Omaha passenger train. An incredible moment of courage in the history of Iowa, Shelley’s memory soars on two bridges spanning the Des Moines River near Boone today. Born in Ireland, Kate Shelley immigra

Iowa Time Machine ⏰: On July 5, 1899, African-American civil rights leader, writer, and politician Anna Arnold Hedgeman was born in Marshalltown. Serving under President Harry Truman as Executive Director for the National Council for a Permanent Fair Employment Practices Commission, as the first African-American woman appointed to a New York City mayoral cabinet post, and as a significant organizer of the 1963 March on Washington. Born to William James Arnold II and Mary Elle

Iowa Time Machine ⏰: On July 15, 2019, the Iowa basketball community lost a true legend: Lewis Lloyd, the electrifying Drake University star. Lloyd averaged an astonishing 30.2 points and 15 rebounds per game as a junior, 26.3 points as a senior, and was a two-time Missouri Valley Conference Player of the Year. Known as “Black Magic” from his days at Overbrook High School in Philadelphia, Lloyd’s journey to Des Moines was nothing short of remarkable. He brought a unique blend

Iowa Time Machine ⏰: On July 5, 1951, literary legend James Norman Hall of Colfax passed away. Hall's journey from small-town Iowa to international acclaim is remarkable. Hall graduated from Grinnell College in 1910 and served in World War I, fighting in the British Army and later becoming a pilot in the French Air Service. His experiences during the war inspired some of his earliest writings, including Kitchener's Mob and High Adventure. Hall's most enduring legacy is his c

Iowa Time Machine ⏰: On July 5, 1905, Nancy Drew author Mildred Augustine was born in Ladora, Iowa. A popular children’s author, she wrote some of the earliest Nancy Drew mysteries and largely developed the popular character’s personality. After a childhood in the small town of Ladora, just to the west of Iowa City in Iowa County, Mildred Augustine enrolled at the University of Iowa. Earning a degree in English in 1925 and working for the Daily Iowan, she became the first stu

Iowa Time Machine ⏰: On July 4, 1876, while the rest of America celebrated its centennial, the tiny village of Rockdale, Iowa, faced a wall of water estimated at 20 feet tall and hundreds of feet wide. Following the collapse of a mill dam, the small eastern Iowa town was almost entirely wiped away by the unrelenting flood. As fireworks faded and families settled in for the night, a gentle drizzle quickly transformed into a relentless downpour. By 10 p.m., Catfish Creek had sw

Iowa Time Machine ⏰: On July 4, 1918, Esther Pauline Friedman Lederer and Pauline Esther Friedman were born seventeen minutes apart in Sioux City. The sisters gained national fame as the popular advice columnists Abigail Van Buren and Ann Landers, authors of the well-known columns ‘Dear Abby’ and ‘Dear Ann Landers.’ After growing up in Sioux City, Esther won a contest to replace the original author of the ‘Ask Ann Landers’ column in the Chicago Sun-Times in 1955. The sisters

Iowa Time Machine ⏰: On July 4, 1992, the second “Saturday in the Park” took place in Sioux City. The outdoor festival quickly became one of Iowa’s signature summer traditions. Grandview Park had hosted Sioux City’s municipal band and community gatherings for decades, reflecting the broader midwestern tradition of summertime concerts that mixed classical pieces, popular tunes, and speeches beneath open skies. In the early 1990s, organizers in Sioux City sought to create a lar

Iowa Time Machine ⏰: On July 4, two significant moments for the state government in Iowa occurred. In 1838, the federal government organized Iowa Territory from lands that had formerly been part of the Wisconsin Territory. On July 4, 1886, construction workers completed the Iowa State Capitol Building in downtown Des Moines. The original Iowa Territory, organized in 1838, encompassed 194,000 square miles, including the current state and parts of Minnesota, North Dakota, and S

Iowa Time Machine ⏰: On July 3, 1898, the Battleship Iowa (BB-4) played an essential role in the Battle of Santiago Bay as the Spanish-American War raged. The first battleship named for Iowa, the ship served a distinguished career in the late-1800s American Navy. Starting in the 1880s, the US Navy began a modernization program. Focused on creating ‘steam and steel’ vessels. Congress christened the fourth battleship in the series the USS Iowa.’ At 362’ 6” long and featuring 14

Iowa Time Machine ⏰: On July 3, 1858, Sioux City shook as an earthquake rumbled west to east following an initial shock. Sioux City experienced earthquakes at least three times during the late 1800s, though no casualties or significant damage occurred. Many people don’t associate earthquakes with Iowa, and the United States Geological Survey suggests that “Iowa has experienced only minor earthquake activity since the United States obtained control of the state under the Louis

Iowa Time Machine ⏰: On July 3, 1871, reformer Ida B. Wise (Smith) was born. Her journey from a sea captain’s daughter to president of the National Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) illustrates how one determined Iowan leveraged faith, education, and organizing skills to influence debates over alcohol, citizenship, and children’s rights across the United States. Smith’s formative years took shape in a state where reform and religion often intertwined. After her father

Iowa Time Machine ⏰: On July 3, 1863, as smoke drifted over the Pennsylvania countryside and the last assaults fell away from Cemetery Ridge, Iowans who had marched east to fight for the Union watched the Battle of Gettysburg end in a victory that many later called the turning point of the Civil War. Although Iowa regiments did not fight at Gettysburg, individual soldiers with Iowa connections and many Iowans in service followed the battle closely and later settled in the sta

Iowa Time Machine ⏰: On July 2, 1820, an American military expedition of Dragoons embarked from Council Bluffs (Fort Nebraska) across what would become Iowa to the mouth of the Minnesota River (Fort Snelling). Captain Stephen Watts Kearny and Lieutenant Andrew Talcott left journals detailing significant information about the lands that now comprise the Hawkeye State. Embarking from Council Bluff, roughly 30 miles beyond the mouth of the Platte in Nebraska, the group of five o

Iowa Time Machine ⏰: On July 2, 1832, Franc Bangs Wilkie was born. Over his sixty years, Wilkie worked as a farmer, blacksmith, editor, war correspondent, and prolific author, leaving behind fifteen books and countless columns that helped shape how readers in Iowa, Chicago, and beyond understood the Civil War and the growing cities of the Midwest. Wilkie came of age in a period when both the republic and its media landscape were in motion. Born in upstate New York, he ran awa

Iowa Time Machine ⏰: On July 2, 1836, an act of Congress approved a plan for the City of Dubuque in eastern Iowa. Today’s city, with a population of nearly 60,000, located on the Mississippi River, traces a rich history that stretches back to the arrival of Julien Dubuque in the 1700s. The Quebecois entrepreneur, Julien Dubuque, arrived in 1785. With permission from the Spanish government and his marriage to the Indigenous woman Potosa, Dubuque started mining rich lead mines

Iowa Time Machine ⏰: On July 2, 1919, Iowa ratified the 19th Amendment. By ratifying the 19th Amendment, Iowa became one of the first ten states to endorse a simple yet transformative principle: the right to vote could not be denied based on sex. The 1919 vote came after more than seventy years of organizing, argument, and sacrifice by women and their allies across the United States. In July 1848, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott helped convene the Seneca Falls Conven

Iowa Time Machine ⏰: On July 1, 1913, Carl Graham Fisher and a group of associates came together to form the Lincoln Highway Association in order “to procure the establishment of a continuous improved highway from the Atlantic to the Pacific, open to lawful traffic of all description without tolls or charges.” Running from Clinton to Council Bluffs, the Lincoln Highway continues to serve motorists today. Carl G. Fisher, a principal investor in the Indianapolis Motor Speedway

Iowa Time Machine ⏰: On July 1, 1876, playwright Susan Keating Glaspell was born in Davenport. Over more than four decades, she worked as a reporter, novelist, short‑story writer, playwright, actress, and theatrical organizer, building a body of work that made the concerns of midwestern farms and small towns central to national conversations about drama and literature. Glaspell’s career began in journalism, a training ground that honed both her eye for detail and her sense o