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America in Mourning After MLK's Shocking Assassination: Photos
Emmett Till. Medgar Evers. Harry and Harriette Moore. The Civil Rights Movement had lost more than its fair share of heroes by 1968. But when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was gunned down on the balcony of a Memphis hotel on April 4 of that year, it seemed like the death knell for ...read more
How Playing a Pilot in WWII Docs Helped Reagan Launch His Political Career
Ronald Reagan always thought World War II had cost him his chance at reaching the top of the marquee of Hollywood stars. His best performance came in a film, Kings Row, that premiered just as the movie business was following other industries in converting to wartime production. ...read more
See All The Crafty Ways Americans Hid Alcohol During Prohibition
Prohibition went into effect on January 17, 1920, officially banning the “manufacture, sale or transportation of intoxicating liquors” for beverage purposes in America. No law, however, could suddenly transform the United States into a country of teetotalers. Prohibition only ...read more
How Prohibition Fueled the Rise of the Ku Klux Klan
If you only read F. Scott Fitzgerald, you might get the impression that everyone during the 1920s flouted Prohibition and got away with it. But while it’s true that a small portion of white, middle- and upper-class urbanites lived that way, the Roaring Twenties was also the ...read more
LBJ's Luckiest Bathroom Break
If not for Naval Reserve officer Lyndon Johnson’s sudden need to relieve himself before a bomber flight during World War II, he might never have taken over the Oval Office after John F. Kennedy’s death, and there might never have been a Great Society program, Medicare or an ...read more
How an Assassination Attempt Affirmed MLK’s Faith in Nonviolence
A small crowd gathered around Martin Luther King, Jr. in the shoe section of a Harlem department store on September 20, 1958. They had come to meet the 29-year-old preacher who sat in a roped-off section of Blumstein’s Department Store autographing copies of Stride Toward ...read more
Why the Great Molasses Flood Was So Deadly
It was like a perfect—if bizarre, terrifying and very sticky—storm. Around lunchtime on the afternoon of January 15, 1919, a giant tank of molasses burst open in Boston’s North End. More than two million gallons of thick liquid poured out like a tsunami wave, reaching speeds of ...read more
How Prohibition Put the ‘Organized’ in Organized Crime
The term “organized crime” didn’t really exist in the United States before Prohibition. Criminal gangs had run amok in American cities since the late 19th-century, but they were mostly bands of street thugs running small-time extortion and loansharking rackets in predominantly ...read more
Why America Targeted Italian-Americans During World War II
Louis Berizzi was in his pajamas when FBI agents burst into his Manhattan apartment and arrested him. As his daughter, Lucetta, and the rest of the family watched, wiping the sleep from their eyes, he hurried into clothing and was taken away. Soon after, FBI agents questioned ...read more
Mysterious Decapitated Skeletons Found in Roman Grave
At a fourth century Roman grave site in England, archaeologists have discovered that a third of the skeletons are decapitated—an unusually high percentage, even for the Roman Empire. “Low proportions of decapitated burials are a common component of Roman cemeteries,” said Andy ...read more
World War I—in Color
World War I was unlike any conflict the world had ever seen. From 1914 to 1918, the Central Powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire were locked in a grueling battle against the Allied Powers—Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Romania, Japan and the ...read more
How a Murderer from Italy Remade Himself as an American Renaissance Man
In retrospect, it seems odd that Henry Woodhouse got away with as much as he did for more than half a century. After all, it wasn’t every day that a paroled murderer with no discernible education became a darling of America’s burgeoning aviation elite—heralded as a renowned ...read more
Why Priceless Lapis Lazuli Was Found in a Medieval Nun's Mouth
Scientists just made a major discovery about the role of female artists and scribes in the Middle Ages—all based on some 1,000-year-old dental plaque. The plaque in question belonged to a middle-aged woman buried in a small women’s monastery in Dalheim, Germany around A.D. 1100. ...read more
Why Ronald Reagan Had a Record Eight Shutdowns
Most government shutdowns happen over hot button issues where the Democratic and Republican parties strongly disagree—abortion in the 1970s, Medicaid and Medicare in the ‘90s; and Obamacare, DACA and a “border wall” in the 21s century. Similarly, the record eight shutdowns that ...read more
The Spies Who Launched America’s Industrial Revolution
Long before the United States began accusing other countries of stealing ideas, the U.S. government encouraged intellectual piracy to catch up with England’s technological advances. According to historian Doron Ben-Atar, in his book, Trade Secrets, “the United States emerged as ...read more