Blogs

Bob David, a World War I veteran and businessman, got fed up with crime and corruption within law enforcement during Prohibition in Casper so he formed a secret group that called themselves "The Vigilantes." They took on an "epidemic" of bank robberies in the area. A concerned resident in Casper during Prohibition got fed up with crime and corruption within law enforcement, along with the vulnerability of the local money supply created by underground graft. So Bob David, a World War I vete...

Culper Spy Ring Provides Washington with crucial information about British troops in NYC Caleb Brewster relied on a woman’s underwear and his own seamanship to bring vital intelligence to George Washington during the American Revolution. He belonged to the Culper Spy Ring, which operated from 1778 to 1783. ...

Sixty-three years ago, on March 5, 1963, a Piper Comanche crashed into a wooded hillside near Camden, Tennessee. The crash killed Patsy Cline, Cowboy Copas, Hawkshaw Hawkins, and pilot Randy Hughes. Randy Hughes also managed Cline and was Copas’s son-in-law. They were returning from a benefit concert in Kansas City for the family of disc jockey Cactus Jack Call. ...

During the American Revolution, 13 British colonies in North America fought for independence from English rule in what became one of the most defining conflicts in history. Certain moments from the Revolutionary War — which spanned from 1775 to 1783 — have certainly been etched into popular memory. But it was a long, complex conflict, and for every renowned tale such as the Boston Tea Party or Washington crossing the Delaware, there are lesser-known events that don’t always make it into textbook...

Well, you may recall the final scene of the movie "Braveheart" where he yells “FREEDOM” while being executed. I want to assure you this never happened because in real life, his execution was so brutal, I am sure he merely whimpered and passed out. So William was captured and then tried for treason. At this time, the concept of the nation hadn’t taken hold, so treason merely meant going against your own king. Wallace argued it was not treason because Edward was not his King however, Edward dis...

Environmental reconstructions reveal that mammoths persisted long after they disappeared from the fossil record. Scientists have discovered that woolly mammoths coexisted with humans in North America for thousands of years longer than previously believed. (Image credit: Daniel Eskridge via Getty Images) Woolly mammoths may have survived in North America thousands of years longer than scientists previously thought, according to vials of Alaskan permafrost reveal. ...

The Battle of Derna took place during the First Barbary War. William Eaton and First Lieutenant Presley O'Bannon captured Derna on April 27, 1805, and successfully defended it on May 13. In 1804, during the fourth year of the First Barbary War, the former American consul to Tunis, William Eaton returned to the Mediterranean. Titled "Naval Agent to the Barbary States," Eaton had received support from the US government for a plan to overthrow the pasha of Tripoli, Yusuf Karamanli. After me...

The John Coffee Hays Collection at UT Austin’s Briscoe Center for American History contains a printed oral history by early Texas historian Andrew Jackson Sowell. The oral histories recount the involvement of settler Thomas Galbreath in three frontier skirmishes between the Texas Rangers and Comanche warriors during the 1840s. Sowell’s article serves as an example of the way Texas’s early events were passed orally by participants and thus became part of the inexact and possibly fictional landsca...

The Sadie Hawkins dance is a familiar tradition to most Americans, best known for the custom of girls asking boys to the dance instead of the other way around. In a world where women run businesses, lead governments, and head nearly half of U.S. households, setting aside one special night for girls to take the lead can feel unnecessary and outdated. Still, the story behind Sadie Hawkins herself offers a fascinating window into Depression-era America and the surprising ways popular culture can sh...

Destitute and convinced she was dying, Calamity Jane boarded a train in Billings, Montana, without a ticket. When she was about to be kicked off in Sheridan, Wyoming, sympathetic fans paid her way so she could get home to Deadwood. Dick Nelson was a railroad man who knew many of the characters who made the Wild West famous. He had arrived in Northern Wyoming in 1888 and became a freight brakeman with his headquarters in Sheridan. As a representative of the railroads, Nelson was assigned to...

Whether relayed by way of a novel, poem, movie, or word of mouth, stories have served as a means of connecting people through shared experiences and emotions since we first learned to communicate with one another. Some of the most famous stories have endured for hundreds or thousands of years. William Shakespeare penned his celebrated plays in the 16th and 17th centuries. Beowulf was written several hundred years before that, while the Iliad and Odyssey epics push back even further into the f...