Hometown History

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...

Benjamin Franklin hated America's national bird. While Congress put the bald eagle on the Great Seal in 1782, Franklin saw it as a symbol of everything wrong with imperial power, a lazy bully that steals from smaller birds rather than working for its own food. His alternative? The humble, hardworking wild turkey. Franklin's criticism wasn't just about birds. It was about what kind of c...

Washington, DC. There's an old saying that everyone learns by experience. It's just a lot easier when it's someone else's. In one sense, that's all that history is, being proactive about learning from other people's mistakes, rather than waiting to make those mistakes yourself. Those of you who have listened to my podcasts over the past few years will know how I feel about...

Wilmington, Delaware. This new year, why not let Audible expand your life by listening? Explore over 1 million audiobooks, podcasts, and exclusive Audible originals that'll inspire and motivate you. Tap into your well-being with advice and insight from leading professionals and experts on better health, relationships, career, finance, investing, and more. Maybe you want to kick a bad habit or...

New York City, New York. Long before there was ever a Wolf of Wall Street, there was a Witch of Wall Street, though that title was hardly earned. Her name was Hedy Green, and she did her business on Wall Street in the second half of the 19th century, in the very first part of the 20th, until she died in 1916. As far as finance goes, she was a heavyweight among heavyweights, to the point where she...

Athens, Greece. George Dibborn, who we profiled in our last episode, was a really nice guy, and he was easy to like, but I think you're going to love Diogenes. Okay, maybe you won't love him, love him, or even like him very much, but you're going to like him, at least a little, because he's like a funnier, smarter version of your most antisocial impulses run wild. TIMELINE 1776: No...

Hamburg, Germany. Have you ever gotten so fed up with society that you wanted to put all of your stuff in a sailboat and leave the world behind? Have you ever become so frustrated with the policies of your government that you wanted to declare yourself a sovereign nation of one? You could name your country anything you'd like, you could make up your own flag and your own passport, and you coul...

Strasbourg, France. Honestly, I'm not even sure what to do with this one. We're talking about Tarare, the 18th century French showman and show-eater, and one of the least lovely and most helpless people in all of human history. He was born in 1772 and died in 1798. Tarare died young because his addictions consumed him, and just about everything else he could get his hands on. TIMELINE 1798...

San Francisco, California. As well as U.S. history, you probably don't know that the U.S. Congress was officially abolished in 1859. After decades of corruption, its powers were stripped and its members were effectively banned from governing the people of the United States. All former members of Congress were told to evacuate the Capitol, effective immediately. All who did not comply with this...

Detroit, Michigan. For some time now, Belle Isle has been the most surreal part of America's most surreal city. It's the little island getaway for the 20th century American apocalypse, also known as the city of Detroit. In the middle of the Detroit River, between the ugly concrete shores of Windsor, Ontario, and the mythical but still ugly shores of urban Detroit, sits a little piece of no...

A Nazi cargo ship sits rusting in plain sight off South Manitou Island, Michigan, visible from shore, frozen in time since a 1960 snowstorm drove it into the shallows. This is the Francisco Morazan, a 235-foot former German naval vessel that survived Operation Sea Lion only to meet its end in Lake Michigan's treacherous Manitou Passage. But the Morazan is just one ghost among many. These islan...