Creative History

  On the night of August 31, 1944 in the town of Mattoon, Illinois, Urban Reef, a sheet metal worker, who has lived most of his adult life in the same small ranch-style house located at 1817 Grant Avenue is awakened by a strange and pungent odor. He rises out of his bed to investigate but instantly becomes nauseous and weak in the knees.  He drops to the floor of his bedroom and starts to retch and vomit.  His wife, fearing that she may have accidentally left the stove on after cooking dinner only a few hours before, attempts to get up out of bed to go to the kitchen, but she finds that she is paralyzed from the neck down and unable to get up out of the bed at all.  While her husband vomits on the floor Mrs. Reef feels as if a heavy weight is pressing down on her chest and she is forced to lay there inert and completely immobile. Only a few hours later in the early morning of September 1, 1944, and only a few blocks away from where Mr. and Mrs Reef suffered their...

  Imagine a world where the day to day calendar--something as simple as what day in the year it actually is--could vary from place to place.  The New Year might begin as late as March 25th, or much earlier, and things like holidays and the start and end of the seasons could fluctuate from year to year based on the phases of the moon or some other quirk of astronomy much like Easter Sunday and Passover week do to this day.   Well, that is exactly the type of world that citizens of Great Britain and her colonies--including our forefathers here in America--lived in until the year 1752.  In that momentous year everything changed.  Our calendar was completely reset, eleven days from the month of September simply vanished into thin air and for a brief moment in time the entire English speaking world nearly descended into chaos--or did it? But not everyone lived that way until as recently as 1752.  In fact, most Catholics (and many other people who weren’...

  The home of the American Philosophical Society, known as Philosophical Hall, is located in Center City Philadelphia mere yards from Independence Hall. It has stood as an integral part of Old City Philadelphia for well over 200 years.   Philosophical Hall is now a part of Independence National Historic Park and in addition to still being home to the offices of the American Philosophical Society it is also visited by thousands of tourists and researchers with an interest in American history each year. Founded in 1743 the American Philosophical Society was, and continues to be, an organization dedicated to promoting learning in the sciences and humanities through research, discussion, community outreach and most importantly reading.  The father and founding member, some would even say the creator of the American Philosophical Society itself, was none other than the inventor of bifocals, and the man whose portrait graces our one-hundred dollar bill, Benjamin Franklin...

  Manchester Square is a small garden landscape in the center of London.  Constructed in the year 1776 within the affluent neighborhood of Marylebone in the West End. The streets around Manchester Square are home to examples of some of London’s most stately 18th century Georgian architecture, and to this very day, the community around Manchester Square is one of affluence and influence. Late in the year 1814, when the Georgian mansions lining Manchester Square were less than a half century old, and the streets of Marylebone were still covered by cobbles, something very bizarre took place in this upper class neighborhood.  Strange stories of the existence of a wealthy woman with a pig’s face began to circulate in the press, and reports of this woman walking the streets around Manchester Square spread across London like wildfire causing a near panic among the residents of the city. Manchester Square The Pig-faced Lady of Manchester Square was said to be the daughter o...