Author: Ms. R.

This story is excerpted and adapted from Jerry Mikorenda’s book, America’s First Freedom Rider: Elizabeth Jennings, Chester A. Arthur, and the Early Fight for Civil Rights. Eighteen fifty-four was a year of extremes in New York City. As noted in the New York Daily Times, “it was remarkable for wrecks, murders, swindles, defalcations, burnings on sea and land.” The year began with high hopes for a long-awaited railroad line on Broadway and ended with the arrests of several officials……

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This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original here. Groundbreaking discoveries in science often come with two iconic images, one representing the breakthrough and the other, the discoverer. For example, the page from Darwin’s notebook sketching the branching pattern of evolution often accompanies a portrait of Darwin in his early years, when the notebook was written. Likewise, the drawing of the orbits of the moons of Jupiter often accompanies a portrait of……

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There’s a well-known legend that says that somewhere deep beneath Northern California’s 14,179-foot-tall Mount Shasta is a complex of tunnels and a hidden city called Telos, the ancient “City of Light” for the Lemurians. They were the residents of the mythical lost continent of Lemuria, which met its demise under the waves of the Pacific (or the Indian Ocean, depending on who you ask) thousands of years ago. Lemurians believed to have survived the catastrophe are said to have……

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The spectacular hermitage of San Bartolomeo in Legio, one of the many rock hermitages amongst the Majella’s peaks, sits on the side of a cliff overlooking the valley of Santo Spirito. In the Middle Ages, hermits dug an entrance through the rock and carved the steps that lead to a small chapel which still preserves traces of medieval frescoes, specifically a fresco of Jesus Christ and one of the Virgin, located just above the door. At the back, small rooms……

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Between 1950 and 1953, Hungary’s State Protection Authority (Államvédelmi Hatóság, or ÁVH, the secret police) operated a forced labor camp near the small town of Recsk. Founded without any legal justification, it extended Joseph Stalin’s gulag model into the then-communist country. Some 1,500 political prisoners were imprisoned in barracks and behind barbed wire, where they performed 12 to 14 hours of backbreaking work at a nearby mine each day—all on the basis of trumped-up charges. After Stalin’s death, in 1953, Hungarian……

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Hermitage Castle lies on the border region between England and Scotland. The desolate beauty of this area hides a turbulent and bloody history. For centuries, notably during the late Middle Ages, the English border with Scotland was a lawless and dangerous land fought over for both religious and political reasons. Settlements were scarce and many homes were fortified to protect them from frequent border raids. Situated deep in the Liddesdale valley, the site of Hermitage castle dates back as……

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