Stories

In 1878, Thomas Edison’s incandescent bulb invention was incomplete—it stayed lit for only minutes before overheating. With competitors like Joseph Swan in England racing to develop a working light bulb, Edison felt the pressure.

In the early 1800s, a mysterious illness called “milk sickness” plagued Midwestern settlers. Those afflicted suffered weakness, vomiting, and sometimes death. Many attributed it to curses or poisonous vapors, with no clear cause in sight.

On August 2, 1923, President Warren G. Harding died unexpectedly in San Francisco at 57. Initially, his death was attributed to a stroke, but conflicting reports and a lack of autopsy fueled widespread rumors. Harding’s widow, Florence, declined an autopsy, and his body was returned to Washington, D.C., for a state funeral before burial in his hometown of Marion, Ohio.

In 1972, San Francisco’s first Pride parade drew thousands, cementing the city’s status as a gay haven. Among its activists was Reverend Raymond Broshears, who led the Lavender Panthers, a group defending LGBTQ people from violence.

In 1973, artist Chris Burden staged a provocative performance called 747, where he planned to fire a pistol at a Boeing 747 flying overhead at Los Angeles International Airport. Known for his extreme and daring pieces, Burden wanted to explore themes of power, danger, and distance.

Sprites, mysterious red flashes resembling lightning, were first recorded in 1989 by scientists at the University of Minnesota. They appear high above thunderclouds, occurring at altitudes between 30 and 55 miles in the atmosphere, far above where typical lightning strikes.

Born in 1892 as Rose Wenger, Helen Gibson became an accomplished horse rider and performer in Wild West shows. Her skills caught the attention of filmmakers, and in 1915 she was cast as a stunt double for actress Helen Holmes in The Hazards of Helen, a popular action series. Gibson eventually took over the lead role, becoming one of the first women to perform dangerous stunts on screen.

Unity Valkyrie Mitford, born into Britain’s aristocratic Mitford family in 1914, developed an early fascination with fascism. At 19, she joined her sister Diana in supporting the British Union of Fascists, and soon became captivated by Adolf Hitler’s ideology.

In the 1920s, Soviet scientist Ilya Ivanov experimented with crossbreeding humans and chimpanzees, hoping to create a “humanzee”—a human-chimp hybrid. Ivanov’s work aimed to investigate evolutionary questions and push the boundaries of genetic science.

In December 1997, Julia “Butterfly” Hill climbed a 200-foot-tall California redwood tree named Luna, intending to stay a few weeks. Hill, a 23-year-old environmental activist, was protesting the logging of ancient redwoods by Pacific Lumber Company.