Is it possible a Texas Baptist preacher beat the famous Wright Brothers to achieve powered flight a full year before Kitty Hawk? At the turn of the century, huge cash prizes were offered by newspapers for the first powered, heavier-than-air flight. In Pittsburg, Texas, a Baptist minister and inventor named Burrell Cannon just may haveContinue reading “Was the Ezekiel Airship First in Flight?”
Author Archives: andrewspaulw
Operation Wetback – the 1950’s U.S. Mass Deportation program
The 1950’s “Operation Wetback” was the largest mass deportation of undocumented migrants in U. S. history. As many as 1.5 million people were swept up and deported in the Eisenhower Administration campaign. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) repatriated primarily Mexican immigrants (some of them American citizens) from the U.S. Ironically, millions of Mexicans hadContinue reading “Operation Wetback – the 1950’s U.S. Mass Deportation program”
History’s Greatest Pirate was the Pirate Queen
Who was the greatest pirate in history? Blackbeard? Captain Kidd? Jean Lafitte? None of them come close to the exploits of Ching Shih, aka Zheng Sao, Hsi Kai, or Shi Yang, depending on the historical source. She terrorized the South China Seas in the first half of the 1800’s–a time when Chinese women had fewContinue reading “History’s Greatest Pirate was the Pirate Queen”
The Great White Hurricane – the Terrible Blizzard of 88
Few winter storms are as legendary as the American Blizzard of 88, dumping 55 inches (140 cm) of snow in the northeast U.S. It was the snowiest, coldest and deadliest, winter storm in American history. From March 11-13, 1888, over 400 souls perished, including 200 in New York City alone. Many people were literally buried inContinue reading “The Great White Hurricane – the Terrible Blizzard of 88”
The London Great Stink of 1858
Prior to the 1900’s, London’s River Thames had been used for centuries as the city’s open sewer – a dumping ground for industrial, animal, and human wastes. As the city grew, the amount of raw sewage it produced grew exponentially. During the hot summer of 1858, London was literally brought to its knees by the overwhelmingContinue reading “The London Great Stink of 1858”
The New York Triangle Shirtwaist Fire Killed 146
The Triangle Shirtwaist Company was located on the 8th, 9th, and 10th floors of the Asch Building, situated at the corner of Washington Square in New York City’s Greenwich Village. On 25 March 1911 at 4:40 pm, a fire broke out on the eighth floor, The flames then rapidly consumed both it and the twoContinue reading “The New York Triangle Shirtwaist Fire Killed 146”
Podcast: The Tragic Story of the Radium Girls
Radium clocks and watches were all the rave during the Roaring Twenties. The watch faces glowed all the time and didn’t require charging in sunlight, like florescent paint. Everyone who was anyone had to have one. The Radium Girls were not rich debutants who flashed their wristwatches, but rather the simple factory women who handContinue reading “Podcast: The Tragic Story of the Radium Girls”
France’s Chevalier d’Eon, the First Trans Aristocrat
When the Chevalier d’Eon left France in 1762, he was a diplomat, a spy, a Dragoon captain, and a man. When she returned in 1777, at the age of 49, she was a celebrity, a writer, a fencer, and a woman—by declaration by the government of France. Chevalier d’Eon was born Charles d’Eon de Beaumont, andContinue reading “France’s Chevalier d’Eon, the First Trans Aristocrat”
The World War II Battle of Los Angeles
During the panicked weeks following the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Americans were told that enemy raids on the continental U.S. could be next! On the West Coast, pilots and radar had started mistaking fishing boats and even whales for Japanese destroyers and submarines. Two months after the Pearl Harbor attack, on 25 FebruaryContinue reading “The World War II Battle of Los Angeles”
The Daring Harriet Quimby, Queen of the Air
Most everyone knows the name Emilia Earhart, the famous female pilot lost at sea in 1937. But few remember another ground-breaking female aviator named Harriet Quimby. She was famous a decade before, and was an inspiration to, Emilia Earhart. Today, only aviation buffs know that Quimby was the first American woman to earn a pilot’sContinue reading “The Daring Harriet Quimby, Queen of the Air”