Category Archives: History

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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The Origin of Humpty Dumpty

Nevin asks: Why is “Humpty Dumpty” always depicted as an egg? As you seem to have noticed, in the “Humpty Dumpty” nursery rhyme, nowhere does it say that Humpty is an egg, yet he is often presented as such in pictures and stories. The version of the rhyme that most children learn today goes like this: Humpty Dumpty sat on […]

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Who was the Real Mother Goose?

Rachel asks: Was “Mother Goose” a real person? A nursery necessity and childhood favourite, Mother Goose is a household name and the writer of dozens of well-known nursery rhymes like Baa Baa Black Sheep, Jack and Jill Went Up the Hill, Pat-a-Cake, and Three Blind Mice. In answer to your question, you may be disappointed to learn that according to […]

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The Last Veteran of the Civil War

The Civil War ended 148 years ago this past month (April 9th, 1865) with the surrender of the Confederate forces at the Appomattox Court House in Northern Virginia.  54 years ago, in December 1959, the last reported surviving veteran of the Civil War, Walter Washington Williams, passed away in Houston, Texas at the reported age of 117.  President Dwight Eisenhower […]

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