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The Mystery of the Automaton

February 29, 2016 - The Automaton Chess Player, known as The Mechanical Turk, was exactly that, a chess-playing machine in the guise of a ma...

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The Secret Ingredient

February 28, 2016 - Character actors are those highly skilled actors whose face you might recognize but whose name you don't. When a male ac...

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Winner's Curse

February 27, 2016 - Generally acknowledged as the highest honor in the movie business, the Oscar has not always been followed by the same le...

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The Lucky Little Girl

February 26, 2016 - That Sarah Rector, a poor black girl in rural Oklahoma, should strike it rich at age 11 was the first unlikely bolt of f...

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The Phony Express

February 25, 2016 - Of all the tall tales of the west, tales of the Pony Express may reach the highest. It was impressive at the time, the f...

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Wence the Waterbed

February 24, 2016 - While waterbeds have been known for almost 4,000 years, in the 20th century the water filled bed reached the masses. In...

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A Fighter for Freedom on Two Fronts

February 23, 2016 - Lucretia Mott, hired as a teacher in 1808, was shocked to find out that she was paid three times less than her colleague...

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Parts of Liberty

February 22, 2016 - The torch-bearing arm of the Statue of Liberty stood in Madison Square Park for six years, from 1876 to 1882, after its...

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The Bloody Print

February 21, 2016 - In December 1916, the last ever stage robbery happened near Jarbidge, Nevada. The robber took $4000 in gold double eagle...

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The Three Stone State

February 20, 2016 - Although New Hampshire is known as the Granite State, its next door neighbor Vermont has three official state rocks: gra...

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Five Years of Glory

February 19, 2016 - The Washington Monument, perhaps the most recognized of the monuments in the capital city, was for five years the talles...

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Boom Town Dust

February 18, 2016 - Since 1962, the town of Bodie California has been frozen in time, a case of arrested decay. Bodie State Historic Park wa...

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Little Scotland

February 17, 2016 - Georgetown was laid out in 1752, well before the revolution that created the city of Washington next door. George Washin...

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Three of the Real Deal

February 16, 2016 - Who was "the real McCoy?" Scholars maintain the phrase started out as a Scotch Whiskey advertisement for "the real Macka...

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The Last Lady Stagecoach Bandit

February 15, 2016 - In 1899, stagecoaches were disappearing from the West, but a few still ran between small towns like Globe and Florence i...

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Not Left Alone

February 14, 2016 - In March of 1929, the ship I'm Alone was sitting off the coast of Louisiana in international waters, waiting for a vesse...

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The Railroad Rosa Parks

February 13, 2016 - Ida B. Wells had a first class ticket from Memphis to Nashville, Tennessee on May 4, 1884. She was sitting in the ladies...

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The Hunted Man

February 12, 2016 - Did the long arm of Stalin reach all the way to Washington, DC, and kill a man who had betrayed the Red cause? Stalin ha...

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The Miracle Drug

February 11, 2016 - Of the 620,000 men who died during the Civil War, more than half were neither killed in action nor wounded, but succumbe...

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The First Format War

February 10, 2016 - Edison is closely associated with the electric light bulb, which he improved, but did not invent. But Edison did make th...

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The Murder Ballad Man

February 09, 2016 - Hanged in 1868 for the murder of Laura Foster, Thomas C. Dula inspired the ballad Tom Dooley, first recorded in 1929. Th...

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Wiping History

February 08, 2016 - Mary Anderson patented the windshield wiper in 1903, long before most Americans owned a car: she noticed the need for he...

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The Bridge of Heroes

February 07, 2016 - A major bridge into Washington that had been named for a revolutionary war hero was re-named in 1983 for another kind of...

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Getting the Blue Envelope

February 06, 2016 - B. F. Keith opened up a new world of entertainment for the middle classes before the turn of the 20th century. Called Th...

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Farewell to Storyville

February 05, 2016 - In 1897, prostitution didn't exactly become legal in New Orleans, but it was officially tolerated, if only in one sectio...

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The Captives Return

February 04, 2016 - To settle west of the Appalachian mountains in the late 1700s was to risk a dangerous frontier. The French had enlisted...

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The Case that Won't Close

February 03, 2016 - On April 3, 1936, Bruno Hauptmann was executed for the murder of the baby Lindbergh. Since then the sensational kidnappi...

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At the Center of the Earth

February 02, 2016 - In August of 1818, when John Symmes Jr. published to the world his great discovery, he also attached a certificate attes...

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The Last Trip of the Airship

February 01, 2016 - Passenger travel by dirigible airship ended with the fiery crash of the Hindenburg on May 6, 1937, in Lakehurst, New Jer...

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