US History - History Defined

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 Matawan Man-eater: The real-life inspiration for Jaws

The summer of 1916 was a time when Americans were concerned with politics and war. The Great War was raging in Europe. Pancho Villa led the Mexican revolution in New Mexico, and U.S. Marines invaded the Dominican Republic. So, as July 1916 began, people were looking forward to a relaxing summer that would give them

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The Tragedy of the USS Indianapolis: The Worst Shark Attack in History

In 1945, World War II was still raging in the Pacific. Though Germany surrendered to the Allies on May 8 and the Italians on April 29, Japan still fought in the Pacific Theater. It was a brutal effort that tested the mettle of ordinary soldiers. The Americans wanted a quick end to the war, and

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The Shocking Story of the Bloody Benders

When travelers started disappearing near Osage Township, close to the southeastern corner of Kansas, no one took much notice at first. It was the 1870s, and the frontier could still be a wild, hostile place. Near the border with the Indian Territory (which became the state of Oklahoma in 1907), criminals roamed beyond the reach

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Who Was Virginia Clemm, the Wife of Edgar Allan Poe?

As famous as Edgar Allan Poe is, the mysterious circumstances surrounding his passing have never been solved. As for Poe’s young wife, Virginia, there is no doubt about how she passed. What’s less well known is what her tragically short life was really like. Virginia married Edgar Allan Poe, her first cousin when she was

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The Horrifying History of Civil War Medicine

Often when we think of the American Civil War, images of enormous battlefields and waves of soldiers immediately come to mind. However, there’s another, more gruesome side to the war that tends to go overlooked. Casualties and deaths were many, but of course, not all took place on the battlefield. Wounded soldiers who survived the

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History and Culture of the Blackfeet Nation

The Blackfeet Nation is the name given to a confederacy or group of tribes currently residing in northern Montana and Canada. Other names for the Blackfeet Nation include the Blackfoot Confederacy and Siksikaitsitapi. The Blackfeet people themselves go by the name of Niitsitapi (the real people) or Siksikaitsitapi (Blackfoot-speaking real people. If you have yet to pick

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10 Strange Foods of the Great Depression

The Great Depression, which lasted in the United States from 1929 to 1939, was a time of intense scarcity. Jobs, money, and food were in short supply, so people had to reinvent their menus to survive the prolonged economic downturn. Food that people wouldn’t have earlier considered eating was silently gobbled down as they made

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A Backyard Project That Went Radioactive: David Hahn’s Nuclear Reactor

In June 1995, the neighborhood of Golf Manor, Michigan, was suddenly confused as several men converged on a small house in Commerce Township. Three men wore ventilated moon suits and swarmed the house’s backyard. They then started breaking down the door of a shed with electric saws. The house belonged to Michael Polasek and Patty

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From trapper to legend: The iconic life of Hugh Glass

The renowned American frontiersman and fur trapper, Hugh Glass, is widely recognized as an emblematic figure of the American frontier era and a beloved folk hero. He gained widespread fame after enduring a brutal bear attack that left him abandoned by his fellow trappers and presumed dead. Despite the near-fatal injuries, Glass summoned the courage

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