Today, a mystery rooted in Vermont history: the case of the missing Tinmouth Apple. Once thought to be lost, the search for this rare apple reveals how one community worked to preserve a piece of its agricultural heritage.

Thanks to our friends Sabine Poux, Josh Craneat, Vermont Public and their podcast Brave Little State for sharing this story with us. Here’s a link to the original episode.

It’s believed that some of the oldest preserved depictions of Jesus Christ are from a town in Syria, abandoned nearly 2000 years ago.  The paintings, on a rough stone wall, can be seen at the Yale Art Gallery in New Haven.

The Yale Art Gallery holds some treasures from an ancient city in Syria, where many religions flourished side by side, including a new one called Christianity. The city was attacked, abandoned, and then rediscovered by archeologists in the 1920s. But tragedy struck the city again, more recently, at the hands of terrorists.

Every Halloween, WSHU’s Off the Path gets a little .... spooky. Visits to Lizzie Borden’s house, a haunted pirate cave, and Sleepy Hollow, to name a few. This year, reporter Davis Dunavin finds himself on a boat in the middle of New York Harbor — surrounded by creatures of the night — for New York City’s 5th annual vampire cruise.

The Gothic Vampire Cruise on the Hudson is co-hosted and features music by The Sedona Effect

The origins of the word "podunk" are shrouded in history. In the Algonquin language, it most likely meant a boggy place, a swamp or a junction of streams and rivers. But we now use it to mean a small, unimportant, and isolated place. There was also a tribe called the Podunk, one of many who lived and fished on the Connecticut River.

The Appalachian Trail stretches more than 2,000 miles from Maine to Georgia. It was the brainchild of an idealistic forester who drew inspiration from a mountain top in Vermont. 

We like to picture Theodore Roosevelt as this vigorous, energetic, hyper-manly guy. And he was. But he didn’t start that way. He began as a bedridden, asthma-stricken boy in New York’s East Village. He went through a lot to become the guy who led the charge up San Juan Hill and served as our 36th president.

Back in the summer of 1989, a lot of weird little stickers appeared on the streets of Providence, Rhode Island. They were on walls, trash cans and utility poles. You’d find them outside bars, record stores and skate shops. They were all the same, a grainy black-and-white picture of a bulky scowling man, with the words: “Andre the Giant has a Posse.”

 It began with one of America's richest men jumping out of a moving train to trudge through the mud and scope out the property. It was the cultivating grounds for the 'queen of American etiquette,' Emily Post, as well as the most iconic men's suit in the modern world. This week, join us for a tour of Tuxedo Park, New York! 

Everyone knows the story of the first manned airplane flight, right? The Ohio-based Wright Brothers flew a biplane more than 850 feet across North Carolina’s Outer Banks in December of 1903. That historical event is featured on the license plates and on the state quarters of Ohio and North Carolina. But some people say someone else deserves the credit: a German immigrant named Gustave Whitehead. He supposedly flew his flying machine two years before the Wright Brothers in Fairfield, Connecticut.

Additional mixing by Bella Fabbo.
Historical voices by Carter Dewees and Bill Buchner.