Category Archives: History

When the Canadian Government Used “Gay Detectors” to Try to Get Rid of Homosexual Government Employees

We are all familiar with the colloquialism “gaydar” which refers to a person’s intuitive, and often wildly inaccurate, ability to assess the sexual orientation of another person. In the 1960s, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) attempted to use a slightly more scientific, though equally flawed, approach- a machine to detect if a person was gay or not.  This was […]

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The Great Chicago Fire Wasn’t Started by a Cow

Myth: The Great Chicago Fire was started by a cow. The Great Chicago Fire destroyed 3.3 square miles of Chicago, Illinois, burning for two days in 1871—between October 8th and October 10th. It killed hundreds of people, left more than 100,000 homeless (nearly one third of Chicago’s residents at the time), destroyed roughly 17,000 buildings, and caused a couple hundred […]

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The First African American Invited to Dinner at the White House

In the autumn of 1901, Booker T. Washington, the great educator, author, and orator, was on a speaking tour.  In Mississippi, he received a telegram from President Theodore Roosevelt.  (President William McKinley had been assassinated less than two months before, an event which led to Roosevelt being sworn in as President.) The telegram asked Washington to come to the capitol […]

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How Voltaire Made a Fortune Rigging the Lottery

While history knows him as a great Enlightenment thinker and writer, Voltaire was once Francois-Marie Arouet, the charismatic and rebellious youngest son of an upper middle-class French family. (His father was a minor treasury official and his mother from a low-ranking noble family.) After going against his father’s wishes and abandoning a promising career in law in favor of writing, […]

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People in Columbus’ Time Did Not Think the World Was Flat

In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue… with a whole lot of maps and information about the very round Earth. Contrary to popular belief, not only did Columbus realize the world was round, so did his contemporaries. In fact, it was so well accepted that daring seafarers had been exploring the Atlantic for hundreds of years before Columbus’ time. Without […]

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The Siberian Family Who Didn’t See Another Human for Over 40 Years

To this day, the Siberian wilderness is still one of the most isolated places in the world. Known as the Siberian taiga (meaning “forest” in Russian), its harsh, cold climate greatly discourages human habitation. Its steep hills and difficult terrain makes it nearly impossible to travel through it, much less live there. It’s filled with pine and birch trees, nearly […]

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