Recent Posts
Mourners Were Singing at His Funeral When the “Dead” Boy Sat Up
In 1897, mourners gathered around a coffin in Newport, Delaware, believing they were saying their final prayers over the body of 14-year-old Frank Dougherty. The…
Twenty Men Killed When 1,000 Pounds of Dynamite Exploded Too Soon
In the spring of 1909, a stone quarry near South Bethlehem, New York, was being prepared for a blast so powerful it was expected to…
Firsthand Accounts of the Horror of Poison Gas in World War I
The First World War had already introduced the world to horrors on a scale few could have imagined, but in 1915, a new terror drifted…
Coal Flies as Indiana Man Tries to Steal Engine
On a summer afternoon in Aurora, Indiana, while the engineer and fireman stepped away from their switch engine to eat dinner, 23-year-old Louis R. Henry…
Kentucky Girl With Shotgun Puts Night Riders to Flight
In the early 1900s, reports of “night riders” carried an immediate sense of terror. These masked groups moved under cover of darkness, often arriving in…
Twelve Men Killed in Johnstown Mine Blast
In the coal regions of western Pennsylvania, danger was never far beneath the surface. Men went underground each day into narrow passages where darkness, gas,…
Arizona Woman Killed in Ostrich Stampede
In the early 1900s, ostrich farming was a booming and unusual industry in parts of the American Southwest. The birds were valuable for their feathers,…
The Rat Lady Who Helped Win the War
At a small white cottage in Granby, Massachusetts, Miss Abbite Lathrop tended to one of the strangest wartime households in America: a family of roughly…
Joyride Ends in Death on Ohio Rails
In the early 1900s, railroad tracks were among the most dangerous places a person could be. Trains moved with tremendous force, often at speeds that…
The Night Black Tom Island Blew Up
At 2:15 on a July morning in 1916, New York Harbor erupted. A series of explosions tore through munitions cars, barges, and warehouses near the…
