One of the greatest fighter pilots in American History was born on Oct. 8, 1890. He was born Eddie Rickenbacher to Swedish immigrants. He later changed the spelling to Rickenbacker to be less German-looking. He added the middle name Vernon because he thought it sounded classy. He was a wild Read more…
In 1807, after signing the Treaties of Tilsit which ended a war between France and Russia, Napoleon proposed a celebratory rabbit hunt. He put his chief of staff Alexandre Berthier in charge. Berthier found a rabbit farmer in the area who sold him hundreds of rabbits. The rabbit cages Read more…
In 1882, Edison attempted to parlay his invention of the light bulb by creating the Edison Electric Light Company to provide direct current to homes and businesses. The problem was direct current lost voltage over distance so the power plants had to be located near the customers. Edison had Read more…
Tecumseh was born in what is today Ohio in 1768. He was the son of a chief in the Shawnee tribe. His name meant “shooting star” or “blazing comet”. During his childhood, villages he lived in were attacked several times by whites, forcing his family to move. Despite seeing the Read more…
A hero emerged on this day in October 4, 1918. Cher Ami became one of the most famous animals associated with the Great War. The AEF used carrier pigeons to send messages. 600 pigeons were donated by British pigeon fanciers. When the famous “Lost Battalion” got surrounded by German forces, Read more…
In 2016, Forbes magazine did an article on the richest athletes. It estimated that the richest athlete was Michael Jordan with accumulated earnings of $1.7 billion. Tiger Woods was second with $1.67 and Arnold Palmer was third with $1.35. However, a University of Pennsylvania historian named Peter Struck argued Read more…
On Oct. 2, 1836 the HMS Beagle returned to Great Britain after a five-year voyage around the world. The ten-gun brig’s most famous passenger was a young naturalist named Charles Darwin. Darwin had turned to naturalism after dropping out of medical school (much to the displeasure of his doctor Read more…
On this day in 1946, the Nuremberg Trials sentenced 12 Nazi leaders to death. This was the culmination of the International Military Tribunal that began on October 18, 1945. The judges were from the U.S., Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and France. They held 216 sessions. The charges Read more…
Somewhere between 108-180 A.D., one of the most famous Roman legions disappeared from history. The Legio IX Hispania was recruited by Pompey the Great in Spain around 50 B.C. It fought under Julius Caesar in the Gallic Wars. It served with Octavian in his civil war with Marc Antony. In Read more…
Artemisia was a Greek queen who sided with Emperor Xerxes when he invaded Greece in the Persian Wars. She provided a few ships for his navy and captained one of them herself. Before the Battle of Salamis, she was the only one of Xerxes’ captains to argue against Read more…