Stagecoach travel has been glamorized by Hollywood: a handsome hero in an immaculate white shirt and string necktie, and a neatly coiffured heroine swaying gently as the stage races across the prairie. Romantic? Yes. Truthful? No. Stagecoaches didn’t race—good drivers averaged 5 mph. And passengers arrived covered with dust and aching from the bone-rattling journey. […]

As polls for the presidential election are reported daily, many pundits try to predict how those votes will translate to the Electoral College. But just like the polls, you never know what’s going to happen until the votes are in. Each state has a certain number of votes in the Electoral College, which is its […]

Their honor was besmirched, and they demanded satisfaction! Here are the stories of some famous folks who participated in duels (for better and for worse). Ben Jonson A contemporary of Shakespeare and the first playwright to preserve his works for the ages by publishing them, Jonson is most famous for the plays Volpone and Every […]

If you think the 2016 presidential election has been a weird and combative one…well, time will tell if it’s as strange as these past ones. John Adams vs. Thomas Jefferson In 1800, President John Adams ran for a second term against fellow Founding Father Thomas Jefferson…who was also the vice president serving under Adams at […]

American politics is—for better or for worse—entrenched in a two-party system. But the Founding Fathers never even intended for there to be political parties. Here’s the first part of the story of how we got the Dems and the Repubs. This article was first published in Uncle John’s Political Briefs.  Party Poopers For all the diversity […]

After the birth of North America’s first political party: the Federalists, led by Alexander Hamilton, the road was paved to create the two parties that we are most familiar with today: The Republican and Democratic parties. Here is how those to parties came to be. This article was first published in Uncle John’s Political Briefs. (Click here […]

The U.K. recently voted to separate from the European Union, which prompted talks of Scotland and Wales leaving the U.K. to rejoin the E.U., and Northern Ireland also leaving to reform with Ireland. It’s just talk at this point, but it got us interested in the history of states in the U.S. that expressed interest […]

With candidates in the two major political parties clinching their nominations, the political talk now turns to who will be selected as their running mates. But not everybody who’s asked to be a candidate will accept the offer. Here are some notable names who said no to the VP slot. Nelson Rockefeller Richard Nixon asked […]

In 1755, famed critic and writer Samuel Johnson released A Dictionary of the English Language. Compiled over a period of nine years, it became the standard English dictionary until Noah Webster released his in 1828. But it’s anything but “standard”—Johnson’s definitions are often witty, personal, subjective, and quirky. Politician: 1. One versed in the arts […]

 Today is Bastille Day, a holiday that commemorates an important event in the French Revolution. On that note, here are some inventions you may not have known originally came from France. The Pencil Sharpener A French mathematician named Bernard Lassimonne went through so many pencils that they got dull too fast, and he hated having […]

Earlier this week, the FBI announced that it was finally closing its file on the mysterious 1971 plane hijacking case in which a man identified only as “D.B. Cooper” demanded $200,000 in cash (and some parachutes), jumped out of the plane over the Pacific Northwest, and disappeared without a trace. This means Cooper’s identity may […]

Hillary Clinton has secured enough delegates to be the presumptive Democratic nominee for president. She’s the first woman to be a major party’s nominee, but she’s certainly not the first woman to make a run for the Oval Office. Belva Ann Lockwood A suffragist and one of the first licensed female lawyers in the U.S. […]