Stories

John Jeremiah Garrison Johnston, born in 1824 in New Jersey, became known across the American West for one thing: eating the livers of men he killed. After deserting the military, he changed his name and moved west, becoming a trapper, hunter, and scout.

On October 27, 1904, New York City opened its first subway line. Its southern terminal, the City Hall station, was the centerpiece—a single curved platform beneath City Hall Park, clad in Romanesque Revival architecture.

On April 28, 1988, Aloha Airlines Flight 243 departed Hilo for Honolulu with 95 people on board. At 24,000 feet and 23 nautical miles from Maui, an 18-foot section of the fuselage tore off, exposing the cabin to open sky.

Between 1227 and 1241, Pope Gregory IX led the Catholic Church through a time of growing superstition. In 1233, he issued Vox in Rama, a papal bull that associated cats—particularly black ones—with satanic rituals.

The Broomway, a 600-year-old tidal path across the Essex foreshore, once served as the only low-tide access to Foulness Island. Running six miles over the Maplin Sands, it followed a faint ridge of firmer ground, marked by bundles of twigs known as “brooms.”

In June 1878, photographer Eadweard Muybridge captured what no one had seen before—a horse in full gallop with all four legs off the ground. Working with Leland Stanford at the Palo Alto track, Muybridge used 12 cameras triggered by tripwires to photograph Stanford’s racehorse, Sallie Gardner, running at a 1:40 gait.

Nearly two millennia before rockets ever launched, a writer in the Roman Empire imagined battles in space, Moon cities, and cosmic travel. Around 175 CE, Lucian of Samosata wrote True History, a satirical narrative that sent its characters to the stars, armed with turnips and riding giant fleas.

In the 1800s, telling time wasn’t as simple as glancing at your phone. Without watches or synchronized clocks, noon could mean three different things—one time by the sun, another by the town square clock, and a third by the railroad.

Motorists on the A44 in mid Wales often do a double take near Llandegley, where a sign points confidently toward “Llandegley International Airport – Terminals 1 & 3 – 2½ miles.” No such airport has ever existed. The sign, a perfect spoof of standard UK road signage, was first installed in 2002 by Nicholas Whitehead on private land as a joke.

In East Vancouver, a wild crow with a red zip-tie on his leg captured the city’s imagination by doing things no other bird dared. From commuting by train to interfering in police work, Canuck became a local celebrity—and then, just as suddenly, vanished.