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Explosion of the Peacemaker aboard the USS Princeton February 28, 1844: How America was Horrified and the President Barely Escaped Alive

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Everyone who was anyone among the social and political elite of Washington D.C. was there on that fateful day in February of 1844.  On that day nearly five-hundred ladies and gentlemen attired in gowns and tuxedos with top hats and white gloves to match pulled up to the Washington Naval Yard on the shores of the Potomac River in their luxurious horse drawn carriages.  Each of them eagerly awaited the spectacle that had been promised them. All of these well dressed ladies and gentlemen were at the Washington Naval Yard on this overcast, cold and dreary February day at the personal invitation of one man.  That man was a prominent American Naval officer and member of one of New Jersey’s most affluent and influential historical families, Captain Robert F. Stockton.  Captain Stockton’s reputation was so solid and his family so well known that no one in the nation’s capital could possibly refuse his invitation. The assembled guests attired in their finery walked up the...
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Pale and Bloody Faces are Everywhere Upturned: The Story of War Correspondent George Smalley and the Technology that Changed News Reporting Forever

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Over seventy thousand men at arms begin to slaughter one another amidst the tranquil Maryland countryside in the late summer heat.  The date is September 17, 1862--the single bloodiest day in all of American history.  The Battle of Antietam has begun. Dressed in Federal blue and stationed just behind the front lines, behind the cannons and among the rows upon rows of supply wagons, most of which will soon be converted into impromptu ambulances for evacuating the wounded, stands a twenty-nine year old young reporter named George W. Smalley.   As the smoke of battle rises into the humid summer air and the sound of gunfire reaches a deafening crescendo, George Smalley feels as if he’s about to jump out of his own skin. George Smalley, despite his relatively young age, is the Chief War Correspondent for America’s then most widely read and circulated daily newspaper, the New York Tribune.  In modern terms we would say that George Smalley has been embedded with th...
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The Marvel of the Star: How the Appearance of Halley's Comet in the Year 1066 Impacted the Medieval Mind and Changed the Course of History Forever

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  If you lived in England during the 11th century then the world around you was full of mysterious omens and ominous portents.  God was not some far distant and hands-off deity, but rather, He interacted with you and with everyone you knew in a very hands-on sort of way that directly impacted your daily life and the entire world in your midst. In the year 989 at the dawn of the second millenium--when the world around you was already in the midst of a messianic apocalyptic fervor--a young boy of no more than six, or seven years of age, sighted a strange shooting star in the skies over London.  It was so bright; so large and so startling that the boy, and probably everyone else in England who saw what would become known centuries later as Halley’s Comet, at that time, remembered what they saw for the rest of their lives. That young boy’s name was Elmer.  In his adult life he would go on to become a Benedictine monk and would be known to history in medieval annals a...
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Before the Glorious Cause Faded from Memory: The Story of the Last Living Veterans of the American Revolution

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  This grainy black and white photo with stacked rifles off to the side showing a man dressed in militaristic homespun garb not unlike a Confederate soldier from the American Civil War was taken in early 1862.  That year was one of the peak years of the War Between the States--a year that saw some of that war’s deadliest and most bloody battles; when the fate of the United States of America itself as a nation hung in the balance with every passing day.  And this photo does depict an American soldier--albeit a one-hundred year old American soldier--but what makes this Victorian Era photograph so remarkable is that it isn’t a photograph of a soldier serving in the Union or Confederate armies, but rather, it depicts a man who served under George Washington during America’s War for Independence. That man’s name was Nicholas Gerrit Veeder and just below you can see a colorized version that shows that Mr. Veeder proudly posed in his old blue Continental Army uniform.  Ni...
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The 1678 "Mowing Devil" of Hertfordshire England: History's First Viral News Story and the Birth of the Crop Circle Mystery

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 In pubs and in farmer’s fields throughout the south of England in the late Summer and throughout the Fall of 1678 parchment broadsides, hastily folded paper pamphlets, were passed furtively from hand to hand.  These pamphlets were read in secret by everyone who could read at all during hastily snatched moments of respite from back-breaking labor, or they were read aloud from town squares for all to hear and for the benefit of the multitudes, many of whom were all but illiterate. During this unique moment in the late 17th century--at the birth of what would become the forerunner to print media--the story of the so-called “Mowing Devil” was going viral across all of England. The pamphlet which caused such a stir was entitled The Mowing Devil: Or,  Strange News Out of Hart-fordshire.  It was only five pages long in total and, even today, no one is certain whether any part of The Mowing Devil was true, or even intended to be true at all, but this small pamphlet certai...
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Four Feet Tall and Fearless: The Tale of History's Forgotten and Eccentric Revolutionary American Abolitionist Benjamin Lay

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On September 19, 1738 a four foot tall man strode into the Burlington, New Jersey Quaker meeting house with a purpose.  The Quaker meeting house in Burlington was the largest building between there and Philadelphia, and on this day when the little man with the big ambition walked in, the meeting house was packed with hundreds of the most influential men and women--a veritable who’s who of Quaker religious and secular leadership, in the colonies of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The diminutive man was a well known local eccentric named Benjamin Lay.  Some people, those of a more religious bent among the Quaker faithful, claimed that Benjamin Lay was a prophet like a modern day eighteenth century John the Baptist.  Others among the Quaker faithful, probably the majority, thought Benjamin Lay was nothing more than a local crackpot who was best to be avoided.  For his part, Benjamin Lay didn’t care what anyone thought--he was on a mission to abolish slavery on this Septe...
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