She’s been breaking barriers all of her life. First in fishing, where Jenn Duff was often the only female in a tournament, then as the owner of Jef International, Inc., an import and export trading business specializing in sport fishing tackle, and now, as the Vice Mayor of Mesa, Arizona (when she was elected to…
Fishing for Success: How the Vice Mayor of an Arizona Town Once Blazed a Trail for Female Pro-Anglers
Mentoring Troubled Youth Through Basketball
His early life was no crystal staircase. Mister Harriel grew up in a single-family, low-income home in a South Sacramento neighborhood. Drug dealing and gang violence were commonplace. That and his father’s absence became an on-ramp to a street life of drug dealing and property crime. Meanwhile, Harriel played high school basketball mainly to calm…
A Tragedy Forgotten: A 1919 Boston Molasses Tank Explosion That Caused Death and Destruction
“Send all available rescue vehicles and personnel immediately,” Boston Police Patrolman Frank McManus managed to relay to dispatch through the call box located on the North End near the harbor. A bizarre tragedy was unfolding before his eyes and momentarily left him speechless. “There’s a wave of molasses coming down Commercial Street.” As the policeman…
How Resourceful Depression-Era Women Made Chicken Feedsacks Into a Fashion Statement
April 12, 2022
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Farm and dry goods—such as oats, chicken feed, agricultural seed, flour, sugar, cornmeal, salt, dried beans, etc.—were typically bagged in generically-named feedsacks from the late 1800s through the 1950s. These feedsacks were sometimes called “chicken linen,” a country twist name that combined a common feedsacked product, chicken feed, with a generic household term, linen. During…
American Pioneer Adventures: Nelson Story Led The Longest Cattle Drive in History, from Texas to Montana
April 12, 2022
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If you were to visit Virginia City, Montana, today, you’d find a town that looks much like it did in May 1863. That’s when a rich placer deposit of gold was discovered in Alder Gulch, the streambed behind the town. Miners returning from gold fields in Bannack, Montana, stumbled across the gold, and despite a…
How Industrious Irish Immigrants Overcame Prejudice to Achieve the American Dream
When American poet Emma Lazarus wrote the iconic words that would be inscribed on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty—“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses”—she certainly had the Irish in mind. The Irish immigrants that arrived on America’s shores in the mid-19th century came with nothing more than the shirts on…
Currier and Ives, Two Illustrators Who Created Colorful Prints Found in Nearly Every Home in 19th-Century America
April 11, 2022
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The impressive body of work by 19th-century lithographers Nathaniel Currier and James Ives is widely recognized today as hallmark Americana. Currier & Ives, as their business was known, specialized in producing inexpensive lithographic prints that were sold throughout the United States and in Europe, ranging from a couple dimes to $5, depending on size and…
How a Tough Texas Lawman Took Down the Notorious Criminal Couple Bonnie and Clyde
Frank Hamer was once asked how he felt about the 52 gunfights he was alleged to have participated in throughout his 45 years as a Texas lawman—and the 30 dead men these violent clashes accounted for. “The men I have shot down have all been criminals in the act of committing a crime or resisting…
A Man of Steel and Letters
“The whole trend of your mind seemed to be towards big things,” Andrew Carnegie’s childhood friend Tom David wrote him later in life. Carnegie rarely did anything small, especially once he amassed his fortune through steel. However, the captain of industry didn’t have grand or affluent roots. Carnegie was born in Dunfermline, Scotland, on November…
The Elephant Keeper
Adam Brooks looks more like a banker than an elephant keeper. The 29-year-old assistant curator at the Birmingham Zoo is a clean-cut young man with a happy smile and an easy demeanor. He is in charge of three massive African elephants and all the primates at the facility. Adam adores his job, including feeding time….
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