Hometown History

Between 1866 and 1969, the Kingdom and later State of Hawai'i sent over eight thousand people diagnosed with Hansen's disease—then known as leprosy—to permanent exile on the Kalaupapa peninsula on the island of Moloka'i. This breathtaking but isolated landscape, surrounded by the tallest sea cliffs on Earth, became both a prison and, unexpectedly, a community. The vast majority of those exiled were Native Hawaiian, torn...

In July 1860, under cover of darkness, 110 West Africans were smuggled into Mobile Bay aboard the Clotilda—the last known slave ship to reach American shores. Arriving fifty years after Congress banned the transatlantic slave trade and made it punishable by death, these captives were quickly hidden and distributed to local plantations before the ship was burned and sunk to destroy the evidence. But this story doesn't end with e...

On a cold March morning in 1892, five men gathered at Chestnut Hill Baptist Church cemetery in Exeter, Rhode Island, to open a family crypt. Inside lay the body of Mercy Lena Brown, who had died just two months earlier from consumption—tuberculosis. What happened next became one of the most documented cases of vampire folklore in American history. Mercy's body appeared strangely preserved in the frozen crypt, and when examined,...

In 1922, a dream factory opened in Ottawa, Illinois, offering young women exceptional wages to paint luminous watch dials with a miracle element called radium. The Radium Dial Company promised these "ghost girls" that the glowing paint coating their hands, faces, and clothes was not only safe but healthy—that it would give them a vibrant rosy complexion. They believed they were the luckiest women alive, working as artists w...

On June 10, 1897, the Ringling Brothers circus arrived in Wahpeton, North Dakota, transforming the small frontier town's ordinary morning into an extraordinary day of anticipation and wonder. As townspeople gathered to watch exotic animals unload from circus train cars, local children—including twelve-year-old Edward Williams—volunteered to help raise the massive circus tent in exchange for free show tickets. But beneath gather...

In the summer of 1944, as World War II raged overseas and medical resources stretched thin, a deadly polio outbreak swept through western North Carolina. When Charlotte's hospitals reached capacity and turned away desperate families, the small city of Hickory faced an impossible choice: watch children suffer without treatment, or attempt something unprecedented. What happened next would become known as the Miracle of Hickory—a ...

In 1880, Wabash, Indiana became the first city in the world to light its streets with electricity—earning gasps of wonder and cries of "miracle!" But by the 1970s, like downtowns across America, Wabash's Main Street was dying. Storefronts boarded up. Street lights flickering over empty sidewalks. Suburban malls had won.

Then something unexpected happened. Instead of accepting defeat, Wabash fought back. Through grassroot...

From battlefield tents to modern hospitals, nursing transformed from humble care work into one of the world's most trusted professions. This episode traces how pioneering figures like Mary Seacole, Clara Barton, and Lillian Wald built the foundations of modern nursing through war, reform, and unwavering commitment to community health.

Mary Seacole, born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1805, brought her Caribbean medical expertise to the...

It's 2:30 in the morning, November 1854. In a makeshift army hospital above the Bosphorus, rats scurry between cots as another stretcher swings through the door. Then footsteps. Light. A single oil lamp slices the darkness. Behind it, Florence Nightingale—the soldiers call her "The Lady with the Lamp."

At Scutari Barracks, Florence arrived with 38 nurses to find a cesspool: overflowing toilets leaking through ceilings, 4...

In 1910, Florence Nightingale died, leaving behind a transformed profession. But there was a time when nursing wasn't noble—it was shameful work that respectable women avoided entirely. Nurses were recruited from brothels, workhouses, and the desperate underclass. They worked in filthy, overcrowded hospitals where patients were four times more likely to die from infection than anywhere else in London.

Before the 19th century, nu...

On Christmas Eve 1945, five children vanished from their family home in Fayetteville, West Virginia. When fire consumed the Sodder residence that night, George and Jennie Sodder expected to find their children's remains in the ashes. Instead, they found nothing—no bones, no trace, no explanation.

The fire burned for less than an hour, yet investigators claimed it completely cremated five young bodies. The ladder that could have ...

When Othniel Charles Marsh secretly arranged to steal fossils from his friend Edward Drinker Cope's excavation site in 1868, he ignited one of the most infamous rivalries in American science. What followed was nearly three decades of sabotage, public humiliation, and ruthless competition across the American West—yet their bitter feud also resulted in the discovery of 136 new dinosaur species that captured the world's imagin...

In 1955, Rebel Without a Cause became one of Hollywood's most iconic films, capturing teenage rebellion with raw honesty. Within months of the premiere, lead actor James Dean died in a horrific car crash. Over the next 55 years, eight more cast members would meet untimely deaths—from murder and suicide to mysterious circumstances that remain unsolved today.

The film starred James Dean, Natalie Wood, and Sal Mineo in a groundbrea...

In 1929, a recovering alcoholic and twice-discharged military veteran named Frank Bruce Robinson made a $2,500 investment that would transform a small Idaho college town into an unlikely center of American religious innovation. From his home in Moscow, Idaho, Robinson launched Psychiana—a mail-order religion that promised followers they could "literally and actually speak to God" through the power of positive affirmation. W...

In August 1930, New York Supreme Court Justice Joseph Crater walked into a taxi on a Manhattan street corner and vanished completely. His disappearance was so infamous it created a phrase still used today: "to pull a Crater"—meaning to disappear without a trace. The 41-year-old judge had destroyed documents, withdrawn thousands of dollars, and made cryptic references to "straightening those fellows out" before his f...

In August 1858, when the first transatlantic telegraph cable failed after just three weeks, most people saw disaster. Charles Lewis Tiffany saw opportunity. With no formal business education, the Manhattan fancy goods store owner acquired 20 miles of the defunct cable and transformed technological failure into one of history's most brilliant marketing campaigns.

Tiffany cut the cable into four-inch souvenirs, mounted them with b...

In December 1913, one of America's most acclaimed writers sent his final letter from Chihuahua, Mexico, stating he was heading "tomorrow for an unknown destination." Ambrose Bierce, the 71-year-old satirist and Civil War veteran known for his dark wit and biting social commentary, then vanished without a trace. Despite federal searches and military involvement, no concrete evidence of his fate ever emerged, creating one...

Hidden beneath one of America's most luxurious resorts lies one of the Cold War's most remarkable secrets. From 1959 to 1992, the elegant Greenbrier Resort in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, concealed Project Greek Island—a fully equipped underground bunker designed to house the entire United States Congress in the event of nuclear war.

This isn't speculation or urban legend. For more than three decades, while gues...

In 1872, two Kentucky prospectors walked into a San Francisco banker's office carrying a leather bag filled with rough diamonds. They claimed to have discovered a secret gemfield somewhere in the American West—but they refused to reveal its location. What followed was one of the most elaborate cons in American history, drawing in some of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the country.

Philip Arnold and John Slag, cousins an...