Ballsy History

In the early years of the 20th century, radioactivity was discovered, astronomers began to define the true scale and nature of the universe, and another mystery sprung out of scientific circles: the origin of a newly detected form of energy from outer space, known as cosmic rays.

Their discovery was like opening a door to the mysteries of creation, while posing questions that, if they could be answered, might explain nearly everything—or reveal God’s plans, depending on your spiritual beliefs.

William Leonard Laurence was the first full-time American science journalist, and these rays lead a story about the first scientific proof of the existence of God. Quite a controversy!

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How did these “doctors” hired by the government, roaming from town-to-town into plague-stricken areas, counting the dead, and administering dubious treatments manage not to disappear into the fog of history like link-boys or knocker-ups?

Plague doctors lived in the netherworld between medicine and undertaking, larceny and bookkeeping, and life and death.

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Breakfast cereal, an American invention, began life as an aid to digestion with religious overtones (kind of), became a sugary morning standby and today can be found in rows of boxes ranging from health food and sugar bombs.

Historians mostly agree breakfast became a daily, first-thing-in-the-morning way to start the day once workers moved to cities and had set schedules. By the Industrial Revolution, there was already a tradition of foods—like bread, cheese, ale, porridges, or leftovers—being cooked or eaten in the morning.

We’ll learn how that humble bowl of morning goodness, breakfast cereal, came to be a staple even though it began with a lawsuit.

How did a food that originated as part of a spa cure knock beefsteak and boiled chicken from the morning menu for Americans in cities, on farms, and in small towns?

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Sarah Winchester unhappily found herself the sole remaining family member after her daughter and then her husband died. Unsure of what to do, she—like many people of the late 1800s—turned to spiritualists to help.

Help came in the form of a warning: that she needed to move to the West Coast, build a house large enough to accommodate the spirits of the people killed by Winchester rifles, and not stop the work or she’d die too.

The Winchester Mystery House is rich with tales we’ll be sharing as we explore the story of this most haunted house from the ground up.

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At the beginning of the twentieth century there was a boom as people worldwide tried to figure out how to fly.

People’s imaginations had been captured as hydrogen balloons became all the rage in Paris and Britain; and an even larger airship combining a balloon and an internal combustion engine was flown by a Brazillian around the Eiffel tower.

Everyone wondered, “Who would be the first to figure out how to build a craft for a sustained, powered flight?”

In the United States, Samuel Pierpont Langley desperately wanted to be that man.

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