Creative History

  In September and October of 1903 the small rural Iowa farming community of Van Meter was terrorized for five nights by an unknown winged creature that many described as being both half-bat and half human and, that some say, emitted beams of light from its forehead not unlike those of a coal miner's headlamp.  The creature was said to bounce from rooftop to rooftop, cackling and screaming like a banshee while emitting a foul smelling odor like sulphur or rotten eggs--an odor so awful that many witnesses became faint and passed out from terror and the overpowering stench.   Each and every night for an entire week during October of 1903 the odiferous humanoid cackling creature, or creatures, appeared to terrorize the residents of Van Meter, Iowa who dubbed their cryptid the “Van Meter Visitor”.  And then, after a posse of local men armed with shotguns and revolvers chased the creature into the shaft of an abandoned coal mine on the outskirts of town, the Van Me...

  The media called it the “Fight for America” and like almost every single major prize fight ever since with high stakes involved, and even higher public interest, the bout was dubbed “The Fight of the Century”--the Fight of the 19th Century that is!   Ten thousand dollars and some would say the future of what it even meant to be called an “American” were on the line that day when on February 7, 1849 at a farm in Maryland, located forty miles from Baltimore on a desolate snow covered island, what the press called “The Fight for America” and what the public referred to as “The Fight of the Century” took place in front of less than 200 spectators, mostly gamblers and former fighters themselves, because at that time boxing despite its underground popularity, and its popularity as a legitimate sport in the United Kingdom, was illegal almost everywhere in the United States of America. It was definitely not an auspicious place or time of year to hold an outdoor boxing match...