A Brief History On October 24, 1901, Annie Edson Taylor became the first confirmed person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel on her 63rd birthday! Digging Deeper Annie Edson Taylor was born on October 24, 1838. She worked as a school teacher before traveling around searching for other employment opportunities. In her later life, the future “Queen of the Mist” eventually decided to become the first person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel, earning her a ranking of seventh on a list of “Top 10 Daredevils”. To prepare for her short journey, she designed a special…
Browsing: The Bizarre
A Brief History On October 23, 1739, the War of Jenkins’ Ear began when British Prime Minister Robert Walpole declared war on Spain following the exhibition in Parliament of the severed ear of a British captain allegedly maimed by Spaniards. Digging Deeper In 1731, a British captain named Robert Jenkins captained a British brig sailing off of Florida’s coast. When a Spanish patrol boat boarded Jenkins’s brig, the Spanish commander cut off Jenkins’s left ear, accusing the British captain of smuggling. The ear-severing Spaniard then taunted Jenkins, daring him to “tell your King that I will do the same, if…
A Brief History On October 22, 1926, J. Gordon Whitehead dealt a potentially deadly sucker punch to magician Harry Houdini’s stomach. Digging Deeper Harry Houdini (born Erik Weisz in Budapest on March 24, 1874) is almost without any doubt the most famous magician and escape artist of all time, arguably surpassing the David Copperfields and Chris Angels of more recent years. From 1891 to 1926, Houdini dazzled audiences around the world with his many mind-boggling tricks. He gradually acquired such memorable nicknames as “The King of Cards” and “The Handcuff King”. For his many amazing abilities, he is accordingly ranked…
A Brief History On October 13th, 2010, roughly thirty years after the famed Rendelsham Forest incident, thousands of eyewitnesses reported seeing shiny, circular objects in the skies above New York City – validating the mass UFO sighting predicted by Stanley A. Fulham, a former NORAD officer and relatively well-known author, a few months earlier. Digging Deeper Many people scoff at the idea of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. In fact, just mentioning the words “I believe” along with “UFOs” in the same sentence will often discredit anything else the person might have to say. A man as shrouded in mystery…
A Brief History On October 9, 2013, American Horror Story: Coven debuted on FX with at least three characters based on real life infamous Americans! Digging Deeper First off, yes, most of the show’s plot and characters are the inventions of the show’s creative writers, but the story does have elements based in our country’s history. This approach is actually consistent with previous incarnations of the show as the original series did, after all, include notorious bisected murder victim Elizabeth Short a.k.a. The Black Dahlia in a memorable episode. This series (yes, series, not season, because for some reason when…
