February 25, 2026
The King of Filibusters: How a Tennessee Lawyer Conquered Nicaragua
When we hear the word "filibuster" today, we imagine a politician droning on for hours in an empty Senate chamber to delay a vote. But in the mid-19th...
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February 23, 2026
The Daredevil Who Cooked an Omelet Over Niagara: The High-Wire Antics of the Great Blondin
In the summer of 1859, the border between the United States and Canada became the stage for one of the most audacious displays of human courage—and pe...
February 21, 2026
The Man Who Filmed Life and Disappeared: The Solved and Unsolved Mysteries of Louis Le Prince
History is often written by the victors, but in the cutthroat world of 19th-century invention, it was frequently written by the survivors. When we thi...
February 19, 2026
The River That Ran Backward: The Forgotten Fury of the New Madrid Earthquakes
When we imagine the earth splitting open and cities trembling in American history, our minds instinctively jump to the San Francisco earthquake of 190...
February 17, 2026
The Magician Who Stopped a War: How Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin Conquered Algeria with a Box and a Bullet
When we think of the tools of 19th-century imperialism, we typically imagine the Maxim gun, the ironclad warship, or the telegraph. We rarely imagine ...
February 15, 2026
The Thirty-Eight Minute War: When Britain and Zanzibar Broke the Speed Limit for Conflict
History is usually measured in eras, epochs, and years. The Hundred Years' War, despite its name, dragged on for over a century. The Napoleonic Wars c...
February 13, 2026
Cloudy with a Chance of Mutton: The Bizarre Mystery of the Kentucky Meat Shower
On a crisp, cloudless Friday afternoon in March 1876, Mrs. Allen Crouch was outside making soap in the yard of her farm in Olympia Springs, Bath Count...
February 11, 2026
The Butcher, The Baronet, and The Lie: The Absurd Saga of the Tichborne Claimant
If you think modern celebrity scandals and identity theft are uniquely 21st-century problems, the Victorian era has a story that will make you reconsi...