Category: History
The Night Los Angeles Went to War With Nothing
The sirens began just after 2 a.m. Los Angeles went dark ,streetlights blinked out, and neon signs died mid-glow. The windows were covered and cars…
Trampled to Death By Cattle
Farm life has always carried its own brand of danger, and the risks our great-grandparents faced out in the fields weren’t all that different from…
Discovered by Chance: The Cellar Prison of Mary Alexia
Some stories from the early 20th century read like urban legends, but the records show they were all too real. In 1923, a plumber working…
5 Shocking Reasons People Robbed Graves in the 1800s
Imagine this: it’s a foggy night in 1850. The cemetery is quiet, except for the sound of a shovel scraping through the earth. Someone’s digging,…
Exploding Manhole Covers: When the Streets Blew Up in the Early 1900s
In the early days of modern cities, when underground power lines, gas mains, and sewer systems tangled beneath the streets, manholes were both a marvel…
Inside San Quentin’s Gallows: A Chilling Look at How California Prepared for the Hangman’s Noose
Long before the condemned took their final walk, the gallows at San Quentin was already alive with grim precision. Every rope, beam, and bolt was…
Exploding Pants: A Brief History of Fiery Pockets and Foolhardy Explosions
Sometimes, when you go digging through old newspapers, you find stories so ridiculous you can’t help but wonder how humanity survived the early 20th century….
The Tipless Future: How Prohibition Was Expected to Replace Waiters with Machines (1919)
In 1919, as America braced for the arrival of Prohibition, some predicted that banning alcohol would bring more than dry bars and empty saloons. It…
7 Terrifying Reports of People Who Operated on Themselves
From amputations performed with pocketknives to appendectomies done on kitchen tables, the newspaper archives are filled with horrifying stories of people who took surgery into…
The History of March: The Month of Mars
March, once the first month of the year in the Roman calendar, is named for Mars, the powerful Roman god of war. As the season…
