Creative History

  After eating dinner on the evening of September 7, 1934 Captain Robert Willmott of the luxury cruise liner S.S. Morro Castle dies suddenly of a heart attack.  After the unexpected tragedy Chief Officer William Warms is named acting ship’s Captain. Almost immediately, as soon as Officer Warms assumes command of the ocean liner, the weather takes a turn for the worse. The skies off the New Jersey coastline grow cloudy and a strong northeasterly wind begins to blow.  Within hours of Warms’ assuming command a full on nor'easter is buffeting the hull of the Morro Castle with pounding waves and gusting hurricane force winds. Since 1930, for a roundtrip price of $65 (or $1200 in today’s money when adjusted for inflation) the S.S. Morro Castle with its ornate staterooms and countless amenities has shuttled passengers back and forth between New York City and Havana, Cuba in the lap of luxury.  Those with the money to spend have been able to escape the bleak reality o...

The next day the Hartford Daily Courant reported that, “He thought nothing strange until his dog approached the box and acted in a strange manner.” On the morning of August 8, 1886 local resident Edward Terrill and his dog were on a walk down a dirt logging road through wooded farmland on the outskirts of the town of Wallingford, Connecticut. Terril noticed a wooden box about thirty inches long and twelve inches wide resting under some bushes on the side of the road.  It seemed like the wooden box had fallen off a cart on its way into town. Black lettering on the outside of the wooden box indicated that it had originally been meant to contain a, “dozen pairs of finely stitched men’s shoes.” As Terril approached closer to get a better look his dog started whining, howling and frantically sniffing at the air.  Terrill walked right up to the box and the frenzied excitement of his dog increased with each step that he took. When he bent down to examine the box he was taken ...

  It is the year 1474 in Basel, Switzerland. Basel is a city that lies along the banks of the Rhine River near the Swiss border with both France and Germany.  It is a picturesque and cosmopolitan city that today is famous for its many art museums.  For centuries Basel has been considered one of the cultural capitals of Europe. However, on this day in August of 1474, the city of Basel is about to be the site of an execution witnessed by a large, blood thirsty and fearful crowd of rural peasants and urban townspeople alike.   They have come to see an accused witch burned alive at the stake. The execution is conducted with, “great solemnity as would have been observed in the consigning of a heretic to the flames.”  (Evans 1906)   Only days before, at the trial of the condemned, the prosecutor in Basel had asserted that, “it was not a case of (the defendant) making a compact with the devil, but that Satan had actually entered into them.” The pub...

     “Scientists now declare that the many lines and spots on Mars represent...a most wonderful canal system which the inhabitants have constructed for the purposes of irrigation.” - Quote from the Los Angeles Times 1907 It is 1877 and forty-two year old Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli is preparing to observe the planet Mars through a powerful new refractor telescope that has just been installed at the Brera Observatory in the city of Milan. In a sense, Schiaparelli has been training for this moment for months.  To effectively operate the refractor telescope and to accurately observe the Red Planet Schiaparelli needs steady hands and he has abstained for weeks from, “everything that could affect the nervous system, from narcotics to alcohol, but especially from the abuse of coffee,” he later writes, all in an effort to improve his observations. Through the telescope Schiaparelli sees deep trenches, in the form of straight lines, criss-crossing the su...