Education

On the night of March 22, 1715, Jeremiah Meacham was troubled, as usual. He had secluded himself on the second story of his home in Newport, R.I., fearful that someone planned to harm him. He often expressed that fear to his neighbors. Meacham would quiz them, did they knew who was scheming to get him? They always answered “no one.” Jeremiah’s wife, Patience, and her sister Content Garsey crept up the stairs and approached Jeremiah. He had assembled a complete arsenal for his defense – an ax ...

History is dotted with instances of mass hysteria, a perplexing phenomenon in which large groups of people are struck by the same physical or mental affliction without any apparent explanation, from uncontrollable movement to widespread paranoia. Given the uncertainty as to what causes these curious events, contemporary doctors have remained baffled as to how to prevent or cure them. Though there are some theories, plenty of questions remain, in some cases hundreds of years after the incident to...

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. ...

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 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...

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...