Hometown History

In 1981, the Naval Investigative Service launched a massive hunt for a mysterious figure known only as "Dorothy." Agents went undercover in clubs and interrogation rooms across the country, convinced they were tracking a powerful operative who controlled a vast network of infiltrators deep within the U.S. military. The more they searched, the more her name appeared. Every door opened at th...

Richmond, Virginia. The year is 1861, and America is on the grips of a bloody civil war that will change it forever. In Richmond, the capital of the new Confederate states, Southern bells and ladies are sewing uniforms, throwing fundraising gallows, and nursing injured soldiers, all with the support of young female slaves. They can't go into the battlefield, but they're doing the best they...

Hammond, Indiana is known for a number of things, like being the home of the former NFL team, the Hammond Pros, who were led by the first black coach in NFL history, the legendary Fritz Pollard, in 1925. It would be another 60 years before there was a second black NFL coach, when the Oakland Raiders hired Art Schell in 1989, so Fritz was living well ahead of his time. While Pollard is an icon, and...

In 1647, laborers toiling away at the Tower of London uncovered two small skeletons while clearing away rubble from a staircase. Had the discovery been made today, scientists would have used a whole host of forensic tools, including genetic samples and family trees, to determine the identities of the remains. None of these existed back in 17th century England, however. People still knew who the sk...

Marion, Indiana. When Hall of Fame NBA coach Phil Jackson was asked which player he would choose first overall for his own personal dream team, he paused for a moment to think it over. When the players he's coached, his need to step back and reflect is easy to understand. We're talking Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O'Neal, Scottie Pippen, Karl Malone, and the list goes on. The...

New York City, New York. how you're not supposed to wear white after Labor Day? Imagine a similar rule for baseball hats, making it a crime of fashion to wear any hat with a soft cap and a stiff bill after a certain date, say September 15th, right near the end of baseball season. And imagine that the penalty for breaking this rule isn't a bit of a side-eye at the country club, but having a...

Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. There are just times when you need a great speech. These times are rare, but they exist. In most cases, the last thing you need is more words. You usually need someone to get up and do something, build something, pay for something. But sometimes words are all you have. Sometimes nobody knows what to do, what to build, or who to pay. You look at the other people in the roo...

Cambridge, Massachusetts. On a cold morning, October 21, 1861, an officer in the Union Army named Major Henry Livermore Abbott led the 20th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment through another hopeless assault against a superior enemy force up an isolated hill at the tip of northern Virginia at what would become known as the Battle of Balls Bluff. Like so many battles at the beginning of the war, the U...

Hamburg, Germany. Sometimes, the bad guys win. Sometimes, the people with the worst intentions get what they want in life, and their victims lose everything. Like when one unemployed German lathe operator attempted to murder the best tennis player in the world with a 9-inch boning knife in 1993 on live TV. This summer, the Serbian tennis player Novak Djokovic won his 19th and 20th major tournament...

Alexandria, Virginia. One of the most important hometowns in American history is Alexandria, Virginia. Along with being the wealthiest city in Virginia, Alexandria is home to the Institute for Defense Analysis, the United States Patent and Trademark Office, and the National Science Foundation. This city of 150,000 boasts a long list of famous residents, including Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl, Doors...

Alexandria, Virginia. The first battle of the Civil War was the Battle of Fort Sumter off the coast of South Carolina in early April 1861. A week later, something like a battle erupted in the streets of Baltimore during the Pratt Street riots, when Union soldiers faced off with a gang of Southern sympathizers during their march through the city. Four Union soldiers and twelve citizens were killed...

Calumet, Michigan. The sobering thought of this tragedy brought my mind into a similar event I'd learned of in a remote northern Michigan town while visiting a few years ago. I was leaving a local bar which just happens to boast the largest Tiffany stained glass bar canopy east of the Rocky Mountains. All the dark trim and woodwork in this bar dates to the 1890s and the legendary copper boom u...

In 18th-century Prussia, King Friedrich Wilhelm I built an entire military regiment based on a single qualification: height. The Potsdam Giants were Europe's most bizarre military unit, a collection of extraordinarily tall men kidnapped from across the continent to serve as the Soldier King's personal obsession. When persuasion failed, Wilhelm's agents resorted to hostage-taking and br...

Indianapolis, Indiana. In time, her local business brought in enough of a salary that she was able to quit working as a laundress. Her level of success was already admirable, and Sarah had no intention of keeping it at a local level. She knew there was a growing national market that needed to be tapped into, but she lacked the business knowledge to pursue it. Opportunity came knocking on her door....

Indianapolis, Indiana. How do you measure success? For some of us, it's about money or material possessions that reflect our social status. For others, it's more about looking back on where you started and how far you've come. You may have not heard the name Sarah Breedlove, but odds are you've heard of Madam C.J. Walker. Sarah Breedlove was her given name for the purposes of this...

Beaufort, South Carolina. How have I never heard of Robert Smalls? I'm betting you haven't either. Smalls was an antebellum slave and real-life action hero who fought without permission in the Civil War and pulled off one of the most daring heists in American military history. Smalls' courage and intelligence single-handedly changed the way Abraham Lincoln viewed the enlistment of blac...

Hollywood, California. Does blonde hair make you dumb? Yes, actually, blonde hair does make you dumb, but not in the way that you think. As , the basic idea behind the dumb blonde stereotype is just that women with blonde hair tend to be less intelligent and more air-headed than non-blondes. They are uneducated eye candy, useless for anything more sophisticated than turning the heads of the men wh...

Rowan, Indiana. Standing alone in a small, remote Central Indiana Cemetery is a weird feeling. You're alone, but you're not alone. These empty cornfields would feel insignificant if it weren't for these hundreds of forgotten stones. As remote as it is, you're standing in the final resting place for hundreds of lives, and all of them matter, even Almeda's. But as I stand here, t...

Chicago, Illinois. It's every parent's worst nightmare. Your daughter meets a guy in a distant city and suddenly winds up dead. He's nice at first and more understanding than you. He listens and he's funny and she's happy, even giddy, with this new love in her life. And then something changes. Her mood darkens. She talks about him less. And you don't know why. She's les...

Atlanta, Georgia. Has it ever been okay to wear blackface? It's obviously a terrible thing, but are there exceptions? I ask because I think I may have found one while reading the other night, and I can't stop thinking about it. For those of you who need a little background, blackface is a form of theatrical makeup that white performers have used throughout history to portray and demean bla...

Atlantic City, New Jersey. Most people see the game of Monopoly as a harmless bit of fun. Others view it as a crash course in the dark side of the American dream. You start the game with the same amount of money as everyone else, but your goals overlap, and you begin taking things from one another, exploiting one another in your times of need, and one by one you fall into bankruptcy at the hands o...

Rome, Italy. Picture this, a Pope on trial. He sits at the front of the courtroom in a tall-backed golden throne, encrusted with jewels and towering over his accusers in a silent display of power. While the prosecutor rants and paces, he sits motionless, staring straight ahead, unconcerned by the proceedings and unimpressed by the charges laid against him. One after the other. His papal crown is o...

Springfield, Illinois. Whenever I'm not living under the restrictions of an apocalyptic pandemic quarantine, a week rarely goes by that I don't visit a historical museum of one kind or another. I've spent the last few years traveling the country coast to coast and off the coasts, visiting many of the best of them, at least until last February when COVID changed everything. Since that t...

London, England. On April 1st each year, people from all over the world keep their eyes peeled for anything unusual or amiss. Everything is suddenly treated with suspicion, from social media posts published by a popular fast food chain to that questionable-looking Facebook announcement from the local police department. Why? Well, because it's April Fool's Day, a worldwide celebration where...

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The English writer G.K. Chesterton once said that America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed. That creed is set forth in the Declaration of Independence. Perhaps the only piece of practical politics that is also theoretical politics and also great literature. It enunciates that all men are equal in their claim to justice. That governments exist t...