James R. Coffey - History Defined

Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas: A History of Organized Crime

In truth, the Vegas of today resembles little the Vegas of yesteryear, on the surface, anyway. But one needs only stroll through the Mob Museum in downtown Las Vegas to remind them of “Sin City’s” not-too-distant past. There the names Meyer Lansky, “Bugsy” Siegel, Gus Greenbaum, and Moe Sedway aren’t torn from newspaper headlines or the pages of True Crime magazine, they represent …

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H.P. Lovecraft: Tales From the Edge of Darkness

In speculative fiction, H.P. Lovecraft’s name elicits fanaticism second only to Edgar Allan Poe and Bram Stoker. But not for surpassing the bar set by these undisputed giants of the dark and macabre but for the sub-genre he carved out for himself. Credited with creating “cosmic” horror, Lovecraft shifted the genre from stories that reflect …

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The Extraordinary Life and Times of the Corn Flake King: John Harvey Kellogg

For well over a century now, Kellogg’s Toasted Cornflakes, featuring Cornelius “Corny” Rooster on the box, has been a mainstay of households across America. Prototype for the hundreds of other dry breakfast cereals to follow, Toasted Cornflakes effectively put dry cereals on the breakfast menu—and Battle Creek, Michigan, on the map. But few know the story of John Harvey …

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The Strange and Surprising History of Mardi Gras

For those who think Mardi Gras is a weeks-long celebration of debauchery, drunkenness, and nudity–you’re right. But only half right. At the heart of it, Mardi Gras is also a Christian holiday traced to pagan spring and fertility rites dating back thousands of years that has become a popular cultural phenomenon worldwide. And although Mardi …

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Did Pharaoh Akhenaten lay the foundation for Abrahamic Religion?

The notion that Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten was the first to conceive the concept of the monotheistic ideology that underlies Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Baha’i is hardly original. Renowned Father of Psychiatry Sigmund Freud presented this idea in his 1939 book, Moses and Monotheist, promoting the perspective that if the Biblical Exodus is to be taken literally, …

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The Reverend Jim Jones: Profile of a Megalomaniac

When news reached the United States that on November 18, 1978, more than 900 members of a cult called the Peoples Temple died in a mass suicide-murder under the control of cult leader Jim Jones at the Jonestown settlement in Guyana, South America, relatively few knew much about Jones or his followers. But in the …

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Cary Grant’s infamous fascination with LSD

When we think of the distinguished British actor Cary Grant, one of the most poised and debonair film stars in cinematic history, we don’t automatically associate him with a drug like LSD. But maybe we should. Though it’s not uncommon for a movie star to have a troubled or even traumatic past that leads to …

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Inside Eastern State Hospital: America’s first official mental hospital

Eastern State Hospital, founded in 1773 in Williamsburg, Virginia, has the unique distinction of being the first hospital built in America specifically for the confinement and treatment of the mentally ill. Before the construction of this facility, individuals who suffered mental illness were not diagnosed by a physician knowledgeable in such conditions but judged by …

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The Meteoric Rise of Snoopy: An American Pop Icon

On October 2, 1950, a relatively unknown cartoonist named Charles M. Schulz introduced America to the comic strip world of Peanuts, initially inhabited by just three kids: Charlie Brown, Shermy, and Patty. Two days later, however, on October 4, a fourth character, an unnamed dog, joined the little gang. Though remaining unnamed until the November 10 …

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The Milgram Experiment: Testing Blind Obedience to Authority

The 1950s and 1960s were the proverbial heydays for behavioral psychology experiments in the United States. Harry Harlow’s Rhesus Monkey Experiments tested the effects of maternal separation and social isolation. The Solomon Asch Conformity Experiments tested the power of conformity in groups. Finally, the New York Child Development Center’s Child Development Twin Study examined the effects of twins raised apart. These …

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