Shaking America

In 1932 over 43,000 protestors marched on Washington DC, demanding better treatment and pay for veterans of World War I.  President Hoover and the US government responded with violence, tear gassing and shooting the veterans.

When over 120,000 Japanese Americans were unjustly imprisoned in concentration camps during WWII they brought the American sport of baseball with them. Sources America's Concentration Camps by Allan R. Bosworth Through a Diamond: 100 Years of Japanese American Baseball by Kerry Yo Nakagawa Kenichi Zenimura: Japanese American Baseball Pioneer by Bill Staples Jr

In the War of 1812 the United States would attempt to invade the British Canadian colonies, using Fort Detroit as a base of operations.  What started as an invasion ended as a humiliating defeat when American General William Hull surrendered Detroit without a fight. Sources: Ships of Oak, Guns of Iron by Ronald Utt https://www.nps.gov/articles/brock-meets-tecumseh.htm https://www.nps.gov/articles/...

 In the War of 1812 the US Navy would engage the British Royal Navy in the cold waters of Lake Erie.  The battle would decide the future of the Great Lakes. Sources Ships of Oak, Guns of Iron by Ronald Utt The Lake Erie Campaign by Walter Rybka https://www.nps.gov/articles/brock-meets-tecumseh.htm https://www.nps.gov/articles/surrender-of-detroit.htm https://www.nps.gov/articles/a-mere-matter-of-m...

Dan Gable endured a rough upbringing, personal tragedy and athletic defeat at the highest level.  But he never stopped, becoming the greatest American wrestler to ever compete. Sources A Wrestling Life by Dan Gable with Scott Schulte The Champion Dan Gable from The US Olympic Museum website Dan Gable Dominated as Wrestler and Coach by Douglass Looney, ESPN website The Losses of Dan Gable by Wright...

In 1970 the Rochester crime family boss Frank Valenti ordered a series of false flag bombings, hoping to draw the federal authorities’ attention away from his criminal organization and onto anti-war activists. Sources Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires by Selwyn Raab American Mafia: The History of its Rise to Power by Thomas Repetto The N...

Poundmaker was a Chief of the Plains Cree, a peacekeeping warrior who fought and defeated the Canadian government at the Battle of Cut Horse Creek.  He shouldered the impossible task of preventing bloodshed, of calming the young warriors of the tribes and negotiating with an expansionist government that despised him.  His story is one of the great tragedies of Canadian history. Visit the website a...

Honda and Toyota survived trade wars, import quotas and xenophobia in the 1960s through the 1980s to become an economic juggernaut that reshaped the American auto industry.   Sources The Keiretsu Advantage by Jasper Boers from the Yale Economic History Journal The New, Improved Keiretsu by Katsuki Aoki and Thomas Taro Lennerfors Lessons from the US-Japan Trade War of the 1980s from NPR's All...

Outnumbered and surrounded by Nazi forces, Lieutenant John R Fox made a last stand in the hills of northern Italy.  In a desperate final act of bravery, Fox ordered an artillery strike on his own location just as the Nazis overran his position, killing hundreds of the enemy and sacrificing himself.

In the 1870s locust swarms of biblical proportions descended onto the Great Plains, devouring everything in their path.  Billions of locust blocked out the sun and devastated America’s agriculture, creating a national emergency unlike any other. Sources include: The book Locust: The Devastating Rise and Mysterious Disappearance of the Insect that Shaped the American Frontier by Jeffrey Lockwood Th...

The poor Irish farmers of Northern Ireland rose in armed rebellion in 1770 after their British landlords evicted thousands of them from their homes. Sources: A History of Ireland by Jonathan Barden Lord Donegall and the Hearts of Steel by W.A. Maguire from Cambridge's Irish Historical Studies The Battle of Gilford by   D E McElroy from the Craigavon Historical Society

In 1862, during the American Civil War, Confederate rebels Gabriel Rains and his brother George Washington Rains changed warfare forever.   They ordered their men to place specially made explosive torpedoes into the ground as they retreated from the Battle of Yorktown, creating the world’s first land mines.  Their invention would go on to become one of the most destructive and pervasive weapons ev...

In rural Minnesota a farmer named Olaf Ohman found a mysterious runestone.  Engraved into the stone was an epic tale of adventure and bloodshed, apparently written by Norse explorers.  The discovery of the Kensington Runestone sparked a worldwide discussion about what we know about pre-Columbus European exploration. Sources: The Kensington Stone: Anatomy of a Hoax by Harold Edwards from the Minnes...

The White Hand Gang was a coalition of Irish street gangs in Brooklyn known for terrorizing Italian immigrants.  Even among New York criminals they were notorious for liberal use of violence, lynching dozens of Italians along the waterfront.   The White Hand Gang’s reign of terror ended in 1924 after a violent confrontation with a young Al Capone at a waterfront bar. Sources: Capone: The Man and t...

In 1969 it was not uncommon for American rivers to burst into flames.  Filled with sewage, oil, and agricultural waste, several major rivers were so polluted that they caught fire multiple times. Here's the story of how the US almost destroyed its rivers, and how it eventually brought them back from the brink. Sources: Silent Spring by Rachel Carson https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/cuya...

During the Vietnam War the United States military attempted a strange form of psychological warfare.  Hoping to demoralize and terrify the Viet Cong, American forces used helicopter-mounted speakers to project ghostly screams, distorted Buddhist chants and fabricated sounds of dead Vietnamese soldiers begging for a proper burial. 

For hundreds of years an ancient Aztec temple laid buried beneath the busy streets of Mexico City, hidden and forgotten. Sources: The book Broken Spears: the Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico The Book The Conquest of Mexico by Hugh Thomas The article Mexico City’s Secret Underground World from the BBC The article Under Mexico City from the US Archaeology Journal  

How tough was George Washington in a fist fight? Evidence suggests he was tougher than you. Sources: Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow https://nwhof.org/hall_of_fame/bio/131

Max Baer is known in boxing circles as one of the hardest hitting men in combat sports history.  Widely feared in the early 1920s and into the 1930s, Baer is credited with killing two different fighters with the destructive power in his right hand.  As thoughtful and empathetic outside the ring as he was a savage within it, Baer became an icon of the sport through his wild life and reckless fighti...

How the Soviet Union conned the United States out of $600 million worth of grain subsidies. Sources The book The Great American Grain Robbery and Other Stories by Martha Hamilton https://www.nasa.gov/feature/how-satellite-maps-help-prevent-another-great-grain-robbery https://www.usda.gov/sites/default/files/documents/podcast-wasde-transcript.pdf

The Yamato was the heaviest and most powerfully armed battleship ever constructed.   She carried the most formidable array of naval firepower in history, including three turrets with 69.4 foot long gun barrels — the largest guns ever mounted at sea.  The Yamato departed from the dockyards at Hiroshima in 1942 with the objective of defeating the United States in the Pacific.

For over two hundred and fifty years the isolated island nation of Japan was closed to all foreigners.  American Commodore Matthew Perry changed all of that when he arrived in the bay outside of modern day Tokyo and demanded at gunpoint that the Japanese open their ports. Less than fifteen years later the feudal system in Japan had completely collapsed -- and the empire that would emerge from the...

North America has a long and consistent history of trains carrying hazardous chemicals derailing and destroying small towns.   Let's go over a few examples.

The Cherokee written language was created entirely by one man, a silversmith, trader and soldier named Sequoyah.   He remains the only person in history from an illiterate people to devise a system of writing.

After the Civil War around 10,000 Confederates left the country rather than rejoin the United States.  They fled to Brazil, hoping to establish a new society of plantation slavery.