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The Locked Room

March 31, 2016 - Rare cases of demonic possession had happened in the United States, but they were not widely known until William Peter B...

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Edison's Attempted Electricide

March 30, 2016 - The prolonged death of the first man to die in an electric chair in 1890 was shocking: a gruesome spectacle of a man at...

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The New Jersey Exception

March 29, 2016 - Beginning in 1776, women could vote in New Jersey. That is, if they were single and worth at least 50 pounds. It was not...

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Beyond the Blue and Gray

March 28, 2016 - A volunteer marching off to the Civil War might don the blue uniform of the Union, or the grey of the Rebs, or he just m...

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Booze, Bands, and Balls

March 27, 2016 - William Henry Harrison won the 1840 campaign for president using some new tactics, but giving out booze wasn't one of th...

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The Genius of the Other Einstein

March 26, 2016 - Isidor "Izzy" Einstein was the brains behind Izzy and Moe, prohibition agents who racked up almost 5,000 arrests in New...

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The Fashioning of a Fashion

March 25, 2016 - Levi Strauss gets the credit for "inventing" blue jeans, but it was Jacob Davis who brought Strauss the idea to make a b...

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The National Elixir

March 24, 2016 - After the Civil War, Georgia pharmacist John S. Pemberton experimented with medicinal mixtures he hoped would provide an...

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The Monkey Men

March 24, 2016 - Until its repeal in 1967, a Tennessee law banned teaching evolution in school. In 1925, the "Scopes Monkey Trial" had de...

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No Man But the Undertaker

March 22, 2016 - Clyde Barrow boasted that no man but the undertaker would ever get him. "Never go crooked. It's but for the love of a ma...

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The Last Slave Ship

March 21, 2016 - As of 1808 it was illegal to import slaves into the United States. Fifty years later, a group of men decided to defy the...

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The Revolution of 1909

March 20, 2016 - One of the most important inventions of the 20th century became something so commonplace, so utterly taken for granted,...

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The Forgotten Holiday

March 19, 2016 - For the seven years of the Revolutionary War, New York City was in British hands. But when the war ended, in September o...

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Death with a Minute Left

March 18, 2016 - At 5 am on the 11th of November, 1918, Germany signed an agreement with the Allies to stop fighting the Great War, now k...

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R.I.P. Parcella Post

March 17, 2016 - In 1913, the Post Office began a new service called Parcel Post. For the first time anything, even live chickens, could...

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Grape Soda and Glory in the Air

March 16, 2016 - Orville and Wilbur Wright were dubious when Cal Rogers decided to fly from one end of the continent to the other. In 191...

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A Johnson's Johnson

March 15, 2016 - The scepter as a symbol of power can be traced to classical antiquity. President Lyndon B. Johnson's scepter-like person...

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A Bonaparte and the Beauty of Baltimore

March 15, 2016 - They were young and in love. He was Jerome Bonaparte, the impetuous youngest brother of Napoleon I, about to become Empe...

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Assasination of a Newspaperman

March 13, 2016 - In July 1926, Donald Mellett's short reign as the editor of the Canton Daily News ended abruptly in his garage with a gu...

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Marie Antoinette's Escape to Maine

March 12, 2016 - In 1793, Marie Antoinette, the Queen of France, was in prison. She had become the symbol of a hated aristocracy, and rev...

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A Lynching at the Curve

March 11, 2016 - A dispute that started with boys playing marbles escalated into a famous lynching that sparked a trailblazing effort by...

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Laudanum for Ladies

March 10, 2016 - Laudanum, the "mother's little helper " of the 19th century, was a mixture of alcohol and opium. Since at least 1821, wh...

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To the Tube and Beyond

March 09, 2016 - Few who tune into the WTTG television station in Washington, DC know that the letters refer to a real person. Thomas T....

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Civil Rights and the Singer

March 08, 2016 - In the fight for black Americans to receive their full rights as citizens, Frank Sinatra isn't the first name that comes...

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Absolut Perfection

March 07, 2016 - When you start with Absolute Perfection, where do you go from there? On to the longest running advertising campaign in h...

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Bombs and Bombshells

March 06, 2016 - It was a spectacle, what Las Vegas was beginning to be famous for in 1951. Mushroom clouds offered a unique view in an o...

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The Molasses Massacre

March 05, 2016 - Molasses turned murderous one January day in 1919 on the Boston waterfront. A tank of viscous brown liquid suddenly burs...

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The First Brokered Election

March 04, 2016 - On November 7th, 1876, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes went to bed believing he had lost the presidential election. Almos...

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The Final Dedication

March 03, 2016 - Although Mount Rushmore was completed in 1941, it was dedicated fifty years later, by President George H. W. Bush on Jul...

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Khrushchev's Iowa Adventure

March 02, 2016 - Soviet Premier Nikita Krushchev accepted President Eisenhower's invitation to visit the United States in 1959, he wanted...

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Who Invented the Frisbee?

March 01, 2016 - Of the claims to the title "inventor of the Frisbee," the clear winner is Walter Morrison, if one considers only who bro...

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