As Francis Scott Key sat aboard a ship, now officially a prisoner of war, he could only watch as the British bombarded American forces at Fort McHenry. He had been sent to the British ship HMS Tonnant, along with John Stuart Skinner, by President James Madison himself to negotiate the release of prisoners of war. After dining with British officers, […]
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The final resting place of presidents, bandleaders, war heroes, astronauts, inventors, civil rights leaders, Pulitzer Prize winners, boxers, Supreme Court justices and sports stars, Arlington National Cemetery stands as a memorial to the melting pot of the United States. With connections to some of our nation’s most influential people and pivotal events, its history is as interesting as its denizens. […]
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Today I found out about the Battle of Matewan, also known as the Matewan Massacre. Matewan is a small town in West Virginia located on the Tug River which serves as the dividing line between West Virginia and Kentucky. At the time, the area was dominated by the mining and coal industries, which were leading players in the West Virginian […]
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Today I found out about Project Pigeon and Project X-Ray, WWII plans to use pigeons to guide missiles and (literal) bat bombers. The man behind Project Pigeon was famed American behaviorist and Harvard professor B.F. Skinner, who teamed with the U.S. Army to develop such a system. Pigeons were trained using operant conditioning, a type of learning pioneered by Skinner […]
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On July 8, 1945, two months to the day after the Allies declared victory in Europe, 29 German POWs were shot while peacefully residing in a prison camp in Salina, Utah. The Shooter Private Clarence V. Bertucci was 23 years old at the time of the shooting. Stationed at the Salina camp, Bertucci had been born and raised in New […]
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Today I found out about the use of exploding anti-tank dogs during World War II. These dogs, usually Alsatians, were also called “Hundminen” or “dog mines.” They were trained to carry explosives on their bodies to enemy tanks, where they would then be detonated. No, it did not end very well for the dogs in question. This type of animal […]
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Since long before colonoscopies, mammograms and physicals (turn your head and cough), patients have had a love-hate relationship with doctors. Often uncomfortable (or downright awful), the procedures employed by physicians are frequently met with distrust and revulsion (until those methods achieve desired results). This was no different during the early years of modern medicine when one practice in particular, human […]
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In the early days of the United States, cotton and tobacco crops on the east coast are remembered as big contributors to the ongoing slave trade. Meanwhile, the sugar cane plantations in Louisiana are often forgotten. Because of the back-breaking work of maintaining the sugar cane crops, white settlers started importing African slaves to do the work for them. It […]
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In Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963, the 35th President of the United States, John F. Kennedy, was assassinated. Despite two official investigations concluding that Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed the President, doubts linger. This is due in no small part to the fact that neither Oswald, nor the official account, has ever been put on trial. Without the […]
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Jay asks: When/How did the Cold War start and finish? The Cold War was the geopolitical, ideological, and economic struggle between two world superpowers, the USA and the USSR, that started in 1947 at the end of the Second World War and lasted until the dissolution of the Soviet Union on December 26, 1991. The Cold War was marked by continuous rivalry between […]
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Today I found out that the Colosseum in Rome wasn’t finished until 80 AD; before that, Romans used the Circus Maximus for games. The Colosseum is one of the most iconic landmarks in Rome and incredibly popular with tourists. Movies would have you think that chariot races, gladiator shows, and battle simulations always took place there, but that isn’t true. […]
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Thibodaux, Louisiana had a history of growing sugar cane. Settled sometime in the 18th century, it was incorporated into a town in 1830. Named after a popular plantation owner, it might not come as a surprise that—in addition to sugar cane—the town also raised quite a bit of racial tension back in the day. The town was occupied by Union […]
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In 1860, the clean shaven Abraham Lincoln was running for President of the United States. This clean shaven look was somewhat odd for a man of the age. You see, shortly before Lincoln decided to grow a beard, something of a beard revolution swept the United States and by the mid-19th century the formerly predominately clean-shaven men of America now […]
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Red and white striped, sometimes with a bit of blue, a barber pole twisting next to a small storefront signifies a place where men can get a haircut, a shave and a bit of masculine bonhomie. But this was not always the case. Back in the day, the red and white we associate with good grooming used to represent blood, […]
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The Fourth of July, New Year’s Eve, and numerous other celebrations across the globe wouldn’t be what they are today without fireworks. It turns out that we owe our fascination with the pyrotechnic displays to ancient Chinese pyromaniacs. Sometime between 600 and 900 A.D., a few alchemists, hoping to concoct an elixir that would make them live forever, instead found […]
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Kerry asks: Did an apple really fall on Newton’s head? In grade school you probably learned Newton’s apple story around the time you learned that George Washington chopped down a cherry tree, that people in Columbus’ time thought that the world was flat, or that the Pilgrims celebrated the first Thanksgiving in America and invited the Native Americans to join […]
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Today I found out that Samuel Clemens was born and died during Halley’s comet years. This is a somewhat uncommon occurrence given that Halley’s comet only passes by the Earth approximately every 76 years. What makes it even more remarkable is that Clemens predicted the year of his death. In 1909, Clemens—known by his pen name, Mark Twain—said, I came […]
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Where sound goes to die, acoustic shadows are areas where sounds, from a certain direction and on a given day, will not penetrate; these acoustic phenomena occur either because the sound waves are absorbed, refracted or simply blown in a different direction. Relatively unnoticed in our modern, wired world, the phenomenon played a significant role in some of the most […]
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