Frederick Rutland, Britain’s Most Beloved WW1 Pilot, Became a Spy for Imperial Japan
Frederick Rutland was an accomplished aviator, British WWI war hero, and real-life James Bond. He was the first pilot to take off and land a plane on a ship, a decorated warrior for his feats of brave...
29 Feb 202436min
The Rise and Fall of the Global Age of Piracy (17-19th Centuries)
Piracy didn’t spring into existence in the 18th century Caribbean. It has existed as long as there has been commercial shipping and people to steal the goods. There were medieval pirates. Vikings love...
27 Feb 202444min
A WW2 Polish Diplomat Forged Thousands of Paraguayan Passports to Save Jews from the Holocaust
Between 1940 and 1943, Polish diplomats based in Bern, Switzerland, engaged in a remarkable – and until now, almost completely untold – humanitarian operation. This operation was one of the largest ac...
22 Feb 202448min
Stories From Captives on The Last Slave Ship to America
The Clotilda was the last slave ship to land on American soil, docked in Mobile Bay, Alabama, in July 1860—more than half a century after the passage of a federal law banning the importation of slaves...
20 Feb 202429min
Was Union Support in the Confederacy Actually Widespread? The Alabamans Who Fought for Sherman Say 'Yes'
As the popular narrative goes, the Civil War was won when courageous Yankees triumphed over the South. But an aspect of the war that has remained little-known for 160 years is the Alabamian Union sold...
15 Feb 202449min
The Heroes, Legends, and Liars Who Fought in WW2
Veterans of World War 2 are called the Greatest Generation for their uncommon courage and self-determination. Whether this descriptor is true or part of America’s self-mythologizing during the 20th ce...
13 Feb 202435min
Turning Okies Into New Dealers: How 1930s Technocrats Pushed Progressivism on Dust Bowl Refugees in Federal Farm Camps
In the midst of the Great Depression, punished by crippling drought and deepening poverty, hundreds of thousands of families left the Great Plains and the Southwest to look for work in California’s ri...
8 Feb 202438min
Whistle-Stop Tours: When Trains Ruled American Presidential Elections
For nearly two centuries, the beating heart of electoral politics was on the back of a train. William Jennings Bryan spoke to an estimated 5 million people from a train car in his 1896 presidential ca...
6 Feb 202436min
