50 Fun Facts About Hispanic American History

Which Florida city, founded by Spain in 1565, is the oldest lasting European settlement in the contiguous US?

St. Augustine was founded by the Spanish admiral Menéndez de Avilés, 42 years before the English landed at Jamestown. It has been lived in ever since.

Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice, grew up in public housing in which New York City borough?

The Bronx was home to Sotomayor's family, who moved into the Bronxdale Houses project in 1957. In 2010, a year after she joined the court, the buildings were renamed in her honor.

Cinco de Mayo, a major celebration for Mexican Americans, marks an 1862 battlefield victory over which country's army?

France sent a well-equipped army of about 6,000 that lost to a smaller, poorly armed Mexican force at Puebla. The day is often mistaken for Mexico's Independence Day, which falls on September 16.

Which Pittsburgh Pirates star died in a 1972 plane crash while flying earthquake relief supplies to Nicaragua?

Roberto Clemente had chartered the cargo plane himself for a New Year's Eve flight from Puerto Rico. The Baseball Hall of Fame changed its rules so he could be inducted the following year.

Which Boston Red Sox legend, who batted .406 in 1941, was the son of a Mexican American mother from El Paso?

Ted Williams was raised in San Diego by May Venzor, a lifelong Salvation Army evangelist. He entered the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1966, in his first year of eligibility.

Which California city was founded in 1781 by 44 settlers from New Spain, most of African or Indigenous descent?

Los Angeles began as a farming pueblo of eleven families: 11 men, 11 women and 22 children. Only two of the adult founders were recorded as Spaniards.

Which Mexican American teenager from Pacoima turned the folk song La Bamba into a 1958 rock and roll hit?

Ritchie Valens was only 17 when he died in the 1959 Iowa plane crash that also killed Buddy Holly. His breakthrough had come just eight months earlier.

Which baggy outfit gave its name to the 1943 riots in which US servicemen attacked Mexican American youths?

Zoot suits used so much cloth that, with fabric rationed for the war, critics called them unpatriotic. For several days that June, mobs beat the wearers and stripped them in the street.

Which actress won an Oscar for playing Anita in the 1961 film West Side Story, a first for a Hispanic woman?

Rita Moreno took the role that Chita Rivera had played on Broadway. She later added an Emmy, a Grammy and a Tony to complete the rare EGOT.

Soldiers sent by Francisco Vázquez de Coronado in 1540 became the first Europeans to see which Arizona landmark?

The Grand Canyon was reached by Captain García López de Cárdenas and his Hopi guides, who were hunting for the fabled Seven Cities of Cíbola. No Europeans came back for more than two hundred years.

Which 1848 treaty ended the war between Mexico and the US and transferred California and Utah to American rule?

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo cost Mexico 55 percent of its territory, for which the United States paid $15 million. Mexicans living in the ceded lands suddenly found themselves on US soil.

What did the Jones–Shafroth Act of 1917 grant to people born on the island of Puerto Rico?

U.S. citizenship came with a bill of rights and an elected Senate for the island. Woodrow Wilson signed the law about a month before the United States entered World War I.

Which engineer became the first Hispanic woman in space aboard the shuttle Discovery in 1993?

Ellen Ochoa, a classical flutist with three patents in optics, flew four shuttle missions. She went on to become the first Hispanic director of NASA's Johnson Space Center.

Which Spanish explorer, the first governor of Puerto Rico, named Florida during an Easter-season voyage in 1513?

Juan Ponce de León took the name from Pascua Florida, the Spanish term for the Easter season. Most modern historians dismiss the tale that he was hunting a Fountain of Youth as a myth.

Which city, founded by Spanish colonists in 1610, is the oldest state capital in the United States?

Santa Fe became the capital of the Spanish province of Nuevo México in 1610, ten years before the Mayflower reached Plymouth. It has held the role almost without a break ever since.

Which Florida city's Little Havana took shape in the 1960s as Cuban refugees settled along Calle Ocho?

Miami's Little Havana had been home to a thriving Jewish community in the 1930s. It is named for Cuba's capital, and its Calle Ocho street festival is televised around the world.

Which Cuban-born bandleader, whose family fled the 1933 revolution, played Ricky Ricardo on I Love Lucy?

Desi Arnaz popularized the conga line in the United States before television made him a star. He and Lucille Ball also ran Desilu Productions, the studio behind The Untouchables.

Which Texas singer, known as the Queen of Tejano Music, won a 1994 Grammy the year before her death at 23?

Selena was shot in 1995 by the former manager of her boutiques. Soon afterward George W. Bush, then governor of Texas, declared her birthday, April 16, Selena Day in the state.

Which co-founder of the National Farm Workers Association received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012?

Dolores Huerta later lobbied for California's 1975 farm labor law, the first in the state to recognize farmworkers' right to collective bargaining. Her union grew into the United Farm Workers.

Which wartime scheme, launched in 1942 to ease labor shortages, brought Mexican workers to US farms and railroads?

The Bracero Program took its name from a Spanish word for a manual laborer. It outlasted the war by nearly two decades, offering 4.6 million contracts before it ended in 1964.

The Chicano Moratorium, whose largest march drew some 30,000 people, united Mexican American groups against which war?

The Vietnam War was killing and wounding Chicanos in disproportionate numbers, organizers argued. Spanish-surnamed soldiers were 19 percent of the Southwest's casualties but under 12 percent of its people.

Which subject did Jaime Escalante teach at Garfield High School, a story told in the 1988 film Stand and Deliver?

Calculus was Escalante's answer to low expectations: instead of gearing classes to struggling students, he offered the AP course. He had already taught for 12 years in his native Bolivia.

During which crisis were hundreds of thousands of Mexicans and Mexican Americans deported or pressured to leave the US?

The Great Depression made Mexican workers a scapegoat for lost jobs. An estimated 40 to 60 percent of those who left were US citizens, overwhelmingly American-born children who went with their families.

Hernando de Soto, who led an expedition through the Southeast, was the first European documented crossing which river?

The Mississippi was reached by De Soto's troops in May 1541, and he died on its banks the following year. His men were anxious to hide the death from local peoples he had told he was a god.

Which Franciscan friar from Mallorca founded the first of California's 21 Spanish missions at San Diego in 1769?

Junípero Serra went on to plant missions up the coast as far as San Francisco. Pope Francis made him a saint in 2015, over the objections of Native American tribes who condemned the mission system.

Tejano captain Juan Seguín survived which 1836 siege because he had been sent through enemy lines with a message?

The Alamo fell before Seguín could get back with reinforcements. A year later he was ordered to arrange the burial of the defenders' remains.

Which folk singer, daughter of a Mexican-born physicist, sang at the 1963 March on Washington and at Woodstock?

Joan Baez's father, Albert, was born in Puebla and was later credited as a co-inventor of the X-ray microscope. As a child she faced slurs and discrimination because of her Mexican heritage.

Which Havana-born singer, who left Cuba in 1960, became known around the world as the Queen of Salsa?

Celia Cruz left after the revolution nationalized the music industry and became a symbol of the Cuban community in exile. She recorded 37 studio albums and often performed with the Fania All-Stars.

Which Mexican-born guitarist's band stunned the Woodstock crowd in 1969 before its debut album had even been released?

Carlos Santana learned his trade in Tijuana, where his family had moved from the town of Autlán. Promoter Bill Graham, a fan from the start, arranged the festival slot.

From which Cuban port did about 125,000 people set sail for Florida during a mass boatlift in 1980?

Mariel, about 25 miles west of Havana, was opened by Fidel Castro to anyone who had someone to collect them. The exodus began after 10,000 Cubans sought asylum at the Peruvian embassy.

Which 1947 federal court case ruled against separate schools for Mexican American children in Orange County, California?

Mendez v. Westminster was brought by five Mexican American fathers on behalf of some 5,000 children. Thurgood Marshall, who later argued Brown v. Board of Education, joined the appeal for the NAACP.

In Hernandez v. Texas, the 1954 Supreme Court ruled that Mexican Americans could not be shut out of what?

Juries in at least seventy Texas counties shut out people of Mexican origin, the lawyers argued. They were the first Mexican American attorneys to appear before the court, and the ruling was unanimous.

Which Civil War naval hero, the son of a sea captain from Menorca, became the first full admiral in the US Navy?

David Farragut's father, born Jordi Farragut Mesquida, was a Spanish merchant captain who settled in Tennessee. The son served in the War of 1812 at age 11 and captured New Orleans in 1862.

Where was Private Felix Longoria buried in 1949 after his Texas hometown's only funeral home refused him a wake?

Arlington National Cemetery was offered by Lyndon B. Johnson, then a freshman senator, after the new American GI Forum took up the family's cause. Longoria had been killed in the Philippines in 1945.

Which exodus brought more than 14,000 unaccompanied Cuban children to the United States between 1960 and 1962?

Operation Peter Pan, known in Spanish as Operación Pedro Pan, was run covertly with the Catholic Welfare Bureau. Parents feared the Castro government planned to end their legal custody and send children to indoctrination centers.

Which Puerto Rican-born pediatrician became the first woman and first Hispanic US Surgeon General in 1990?

Antonia Novello, born in Fajardo, ran a pediatric practice in Virginia before joining the Public Health Service. She held the rank of vice admiral while in office.

Which Nobel-winning physicist, grandson of a Spanish doctor, proposed that an asteroid impact wiped out the dinosaurs?

Luis Alvarez developed the idea with his geologist son, Walter. Earlier he had watched the Hiroshima bombing from an observer plane and used cosmic rays to scan an Egyptian pyramid for hidden chambers.

Which nickname did Puerto Rico's 65th Infantry Regiment earn during the Korean War?

The Borinqueneers were named for Borinquen, the Taíno word for their home island. In 2014 the regiment was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal.

Which Mexican American author wrote The House on Mango Street, the 1984 novel about a Chicago girl named Esperanza?

Sandra Cisneros drew on her own childhood for the book, which is told in short vignettes. It has sold more than 6 million copies and is assigned reading in many American classrooms.

Which soft-drink giant was led by Cuban-born Roberto Goizueta, who joined its Havana bottler through a newspaper ad?

Coca-Cola moved Goizueta to its Atlanta headquarters in 1964, after he had left Cuba for the United States. He ran the company as chairman and chief executive until his death in 1997.

Which Spanish governor of Louisiana helped the American Revolution by thwarting British operations along the Gulf Coast?

Bernardo de Gálvez kept supply lines open for the colonists and their French allies. Galveston, Texas, is named for him, and Pensacola still celebrates Gálvez Day.

Which Puerto Rican-born actor became the first Hispanic Oscar winner for the 1950 film Cyrano de Bergerac?

José Ferrer had already won the first Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for the same role, which he played on Broadway in 1946.

Which product turned Tampa's Ybor City into a boomtown, drawing thousands of workers from Cuba, Spain and Italy?

Cigars rolled in Ybor City's factories numbered hundreds of millions a year. The district was founded in the 1880s by the manufacturer Vicente Martinez Ybor, and the trade lifted Tampa from village to city.

Which Puerto Rican activist group grew out of a Chicago street gang and staged garbage-dumping protests in New York?

The Young Lords called their 1969 campaign in East Harlem the Garbage Offensive. The Chicago branch, led by José "Cha Cha" Jiménez, occupied a church and a seminary.

Which civil rights group was founded in Corpus Christi, Texas, in 1929, largely by Hispanic veterans of World War I?

LULAC, the League of United Latin American Citizens, was formed by merging smaller groups such as the Order of the Sons of America. Its aim was to end ethnic discrimination against Latinos.

Which president signed the law that stretched Hispanic Heritage Week into a month running from September 15?

Ronald Reagan signed the expansion in 1988, twenty years after the original week was created. The start date is the independence anniversary of five Central American countries.

Which 1853 deal bought land south of the Gila River from Mexico to give a southern railroad a flatter route?

The Gadsden Purchase brought $10 million to a Mexican government in financial distress, led by Santa Anna. The railroad it was meant for was not completed until the 1880s.

Which legendary Aztec homeland became a symbol of the Chicano movement after a poet invoked it in Denver in 1969?

Aztlán was introduced to the movement by the poet Alurista at a Chicano youth conference. For some activists the name stands for the lands Mexico lost to the United States in 1848.

Which Mexican American Raiders coach became the first minority head coach in NFL history to win a Super Bowl?

Tom Flores won four Super Bowl rings in all: one as a player with the Kansas City Chiefs, one as a Raiders assistant and two as head coach. He entered the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2021.

Which novelist was the first Hispanic winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, for The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love?

Oscar Hijuelos was born in Manhattan to parents from Holguín, Cuba, and wrote advertising copy before his novels took off. The winning book was later filmed as The Mambo Kings.