Our American Stories

On this episode of Our American Stories, most people know the story of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Fewer know what happened next. After flames destroyed the heart of the city and left more than 100,000 people homeless, Chicago didn’t collapse. It rebuilt faster and bigger than anyone thought possible. Businesses reopened while the rubble was still smoking. New buildings rose within months. In just a few decades, the city ...

On this episode of Our American Stories, it began with a few rare bottles and a collector who thought he’d found perfection. But what looked like the discovery of a lifetime turned out to be one of the most elaborate wine scams in modern history. Billionaire Bill Koch, known for his meticulous taste and love of authenticity, discovered that his prized collection included counterfeits, some of them forged so well that even exp...

On this episode of Our American Stories, before the Pink Panther ever tiptoed across a screen, Henry Mancini was a steelworker’s son from Pennsylvania with a trumpet and a dream. Music took him from Army bands during World War II to the backlots of Hollywood, where he helped shape the sound of American film. Through works like Peter Gunn and “Moon River,” Mancini turned simple themes into lasting emotions.

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On this episode of Our American Stories, Dominico Canale arrived in America from Italy in 1859 and eventually settled in Memphis, Tennessee. He began with a fruit cart and built it into a thriving business, one that eventually included a whiskey bearing his name. Then Prohibition shut that part of the family business down, and Old Dominick disappeared from Memphis. The Canales kept the name and the stories, but for generations, the...

On this episode of Our American Stories, Edgar Allan Poe is best known for his dark tales and haunting poems, yet his imagination stretched far beyond the macabre. Behind the tragedies that shaped his life was a writer who helped define Gothic literature, pioneered detective fiction, and even ventured into early science fiction.

Chris Semtner, curator at the Poe Museum in Richmond, Virginia, reveals the wit, creativity, and ...

On this episode of Our American Stories, Jack Marucci didn't set out to create a sporting goods company; he was simply trying to find a wooden baseball bat for his son. When he couldn't find one small enough, he opened up his shed and made one from scratch. Then another kid wanted one. Then another. Before long, the bats that had started as a project for his son were finding their way into the hands of Major League players and gain...

On this episode of Our American Stories, Mike Leven learned one of his most important business lessons in the hotel franchise world: treat the franchisee like a customer, and give that owner every reason to succeed. Done well, he argues, franchising combines the resources of a larger brand with the energy and accountability of individual entrepreneurs.

Sharing the story through recalling his time with Days Inn and Holiday In...

On this episode of Our American Stories, a century ago, much of the American South was brutally uncomfortable in summer, skyscrapers could only rise so far, and keeping track of thousands of products in a store was a slow, manual job. Then a handful of inventions quietly changed how people lived and worked. Air conditioning helped transform entire regions of the country. A safer elevator made the modern skyscraper practical. And a ...

On this episode of Our American Stories, in February 2006, Buck O'Neil and Bob Kendrick were packed and ready to fly to Florida for what they believed would be a Hall of Fame celebration. Instead, O'Neil fell one vote short. Kendrick was devastated. Hundreds of supporters gathered at the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum were angry. Buck responded differently.

Bob Kendrick, president of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansa...

On this episode of Our American Stories, George O'Brien became one of Hollywood's biggest leading men after starring in John Ford's 1924 silent epic The Iron Horse. But long before Hollywood made him famous, O'Brien had already served in the Navy during World War I, and when Pearl Harbor brought America into World War II, the 41-year-old husband and father volunteered to serve again.

As part of our ongoing Hollywood Goes to ...

On this episode of Our American Stories, it was the Cold War on ice, and no one expected Team USA to win. But in 1980, a ragtag group of college kids stunned the world when they beat the seemingly unbeatable Soviet Union at the Lake Placid Winter Olympics.

Our own Greg Hengler and Mike Eruzione himself, captain of the U.S. men’s hockey team and the man who scored the game-winning goal, share the inside story of one of ...

On this episode of Our American Stories, in May 1861, three enslaved men, Frank Baker, Shepherd Mallory, and James Townsend, escaped from Confederate labor at Sewell's Point, Virginia, and crossed to Union-held Fort Monroe. When their enslaver demanded their return, General Benjamin Butler faced a problem. Sending them back would mean returning three men to work on Confederate defenses aimed at his own fort.

Our regular cont...

On this episode of Our American Stories, before Randall Wallace wrote Braveheart and directed We Were Soldiers, his father, Thurman Wallace, taught him what it meant to keep your word, work hard, and treat everyone with dignity. Thurman had grown up without a father, went to work at 14, and spent his career as a traveling candy salesman who seemed to know everyone he met.

Randall remembers the man he calls "the greatest man ...

On this episode of Our American Stories, Sarah Gonzalez was six years old when her father, a former gang member and addict who became a jail chaplain, suddenly died. His death shattered the joyful childhood she had known and eventually led Sarah to reject the Christian faith in which she had been raised. By her teenage and college years, she was using drugs, drinking heavily, and practicing witchcraft.

Then, during a trip to...

On this episode of Our American Stories, during World War II, U.S. leaders feared German bombers could strike American soil. To protect the nation’s most important treasures, the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Gettysburg Address, and the Magna Carta, Britain’s most important document, which was on loan at the time, were secretly moved to Fort Knox.

Steve Puleo, author of American Treasures, sh...

On this episode of Our American Stories, on January 9, 2007, Steve Jobs stepped onto the stage at Macworld and unveiled a device that would forever change the way we communicate. To the audience, it looked like a flawless presentation. Behind the scenes, however, Apple engineers were bracing for disaster. The iPhone prototype was so fragile that Jobs had to follow a carefully rehearsed sequence of demonstrations, secretly switching...

On this episode of Our American Stories, when Apollo astronauts drove across the Moon, Craig Sumner had already spent years helping make that possible. As a young engineer at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, he worked on the Lunar Roving Vehicle, solving the kinds of problems that come with designing a car for a place where no one had ever driven before. He later left NASA to become a military pilot, then returned for Skylab an...

On this episode of Our American Stories, in the early 1900s, Harvard President Charles W. Eliot made a remarkable claim: with just 15 minutes of reading a day, a person could give himself the equivalent of a liberal education from a shelf of books only five feet long. Publisher P. F. Collier challenged him to prove it.

Our American Stories regular contributor John Elfner and historian Robert Johnston tell how Eliot's idea be...

On this episode of Our American Stories, on a summer walk through one of Antrim, New Hampshire's old public cemeteries, Bill Bryk begins reading the stones. A Revolutionary War militiaman rests near a Civil War cavalryman. Veterans of two world wars lie beneath familiar family names. Some markers tell long stories. Others offer only a few words, including one man's simple epitaph: “an honest man.”

Bill, who helps...