Is this in code?  Really!  Take another look.  By the time you get to line 3 you should see that, in fact, it is just another way of writing. What’s the point?  Your mind is the most powerful tool in … Continue reading →

Like your job? Like your doctor? Have you thanked your grandmother lately?  (Or your great-grandmother if you are a millennial.) You should say a little prayer of thanks to those women because they made that job and that doctor possible. … Continue reading →

I’ll bet you didn’t know that Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven” was based on a real bird.  It was a raven (no surprise there) – flesh and blood – owned by Charles Dickens named Grip. The bird could parrot sentences … Continue reading →

Contrary to popular belief, history is not the story of the past.  It is the study of the future. Also, contrary to general belief, the present does not exist.  The present is simply the razor’s edge of where the past … Continue reading →

If you live in New York you will have no problem recognizing the Flat Iron Building. Modest by today’s standards, it was the first modern high rise constructed with a steel frame.  As it was being constructed people would stand … Continue reading →

This is one of those historic photographs that would never make a book – much less an article – but is an on-the-ground important glimpse into the past.  What you see here is an Alaska Gold Rush shot of a … Continue reading →

Just across the border from Eagle Pass, Texas, a booming metropolis of 26,255 in 2010, is the Mexican city of Piedras Engrams, a town of 163,000.  (Piedras Negras translates as “black stones” for the coal in the area.)  In 1943, … Continue reading →

Jean Lussier was the ultimate entrepreneur. In 1928, he went over Niagara Falls in rubber ball six feet in diameter, seen here, lined with inner tubes.  He survived the falls – or, rather, Falls – and proceeded to sell pieces … Continue reading →

Mary Dyer was the first woman in American history to be hanged. In 1685, she defied a law in the Massachusetts Bay Colony which made it illegal to be a Quaker.  She was arrested and banished from the colony with … Continue reading →

This was Mary Katherine Goddard, one of the first women publishers in America.  She ran a newspaper, bookstore and the Baltimore Post Office and, as printer, actually printed the Declaration of Independence. She, her mother and brother printed the first … Continue reading →