Dan Gable endured a rough upbringing, personal tragedy and athletic defeat at the highest level.  But he never stopped, becoming the greatest American wrestler to ever compete.SourcesA Wrestling Life by Dan Gable w...

In 1970 the Rochester crime family boss Frank Valenti ordered a series of false flag bombings, hoping to draw the federal authorities’ attention away from his criminal organization and onto anti-war activists.SourcesFive Fam...

Poundmaker was a Chief of the Plains Cree, a peacekeeping warrior who fought and defeated the Canadian government at the Battle of Cut Horse Creek.  He shouldered the impossible task of preventing bloodshed, of calming the young warriors o...

Honda and Toyota survived trade wars, import quotas and xenophobia in the 1960s through the 1980s to become an economic juggernaut that reshaped the American auto industry.  SourcesThe Keiretsu Advantage by Jasper Boers fro...

Outnumbered and surrounded by Nazi forces, Lieutenant John R Fox made a last stand in the hills of northern Italy.  In a desperate final act of bravery, Fox ordered an artillery strike on his own location just as the Nazis overran his posi...

In the 1870s locust swarms of biblical proportions descended onto the Great Plains, devouring everything in their path.  Billions of locust blocked out the sun and devastated America’s agriculture, creating a national emergency unlike any ...

The poor Irish farmers of Northern Ireland rose in armed rebellion in 1770 after their British landlords evicted thousands of them from their homes.Sources:A History of Ireland by Jonathan BardenLord Donegall and the...

In 1862, during the American Civil War, Confederate rebels Gabriel Rains and his brother George Washington Rains changed warfare forever.   They ordered their men to place specially made explosive torpedoes into the ground as they retreate...

In rural Minnesota a farmer named Olaf Ohman found a mysterious runestone.  Engraved into the stone was an epic tale of adventure and bloodshed, apparently written by Norse explorers.  The discovery of the Kensington Runestone sparked...

The White Hand Gang was a coalition of Irish street gangs in Brooklyn known for terrorizing Italian immigrants.  Even among New York criminals they were notorious for liberal use of violence, lynching dozens of Italians along the waterfron...

In 1969 it was not uncommon for American rivers to burst into flames.  Filled with sewage, oil, and agricultural waste, several major rivers were so polluted that they caught fire multiple times.Here's the story of how the US almos...

During the Vietnam War the United States military attempted a strange form of psychological warfare.  Hoping to demoralize and terrify the Viet Cong, American forces used helicopter-mounted speakers to project ghostly screams, distorted Bu...

For hundreds of years an ancient Aztec temple laid buried beneath the busy streets of Mexico City, hidden and forgotten.Sources:The book Broken Spears: the Aztec Account of the Conquest of MexicoThe Book The Conquest ...

How tough was George Washington in a fist fight? Evidence suggests he was tougher than you.Sources:Washington: A Life by Ron Chernowhttps://nwhof.org/hall_of_fame/bio/131

Max Baer is known in boxing circles as one of the hardest hitting men in combat sports history.  Widely feared in the early 1920s and into the 1930s, Baer is credited with killing two different fighters with the destructive power in his ri...

How the Soviet Union conned the United States out of $600 million worth of grain subsidies.SourcesThe book The Great American Grain Robbery and Other Stories by Martha Hamiltonhttps://www.nasa.gov/feature/how-sate...

The Yamato was the heaviest and most powerfully armed battleship ever constructed.   She carried the most formidable array of naval firepower in history, including three turrets with 69.4 foot long gun barrels — the largest guns ever mount...

For over two hundred and fifty years the isolated island nation of Japan was closed to all foreigners.  American Commodore Matthew Perry changed all of that when he arrived in the bay outside of modern day Tokyo and demanded at gunpoint th...

North America has a long and consistent history of trains carrying hazardous chemicals derailing and destroying small towns.  Let's go over a few examples.

The Cherokee written language was created entirely by one man, a silversmith, trader and soldier named Sequoyah.  He remains the only person in history from an illiterate people to devise a system of writing.

After the Civil War around 10,000 Confederates left the country rather than rejoin the United States.  They fled to Brazil, hoping to establish a new society of plantation slavery.

New York gangster Vincent Gigante feigned insanity for decades in an attempt to avoid prosecution, wandering the streets in a bathrobe and slippers.His lawyer claimed he was not mentally fit for trial, but in reality Gigante was the m...

  During the Cold War the Soviet Union tricked the American military into believing that the US had less long-range bomber jets than the Soviets.  This resulted in a massive increase in defense spending to combat a threat that didn'...

The presidency of Ulysses S Grant was riddled with scandals, including one of the largest cases of tax evasion in American history -- the White House Whiskey Ring.

Lady Six Sky was a warrior-queen of the Maya during their Classical Age.  She took a ruined city on the brink of destruction and turned it into a powerful kingdom filled with monumental art.