An English newspaper reporter who witnessed the execution

said Mata Hari refused a blindfold.

Her hands remaining unbound,

she blew a kiss to her assailants moments before they fired.

Some say she believed their bullets were blanks.

No one claimed Mata Hari’s body

and it was given over to medical science.

Her head was removed and embalmed,

then placed in storage in a Paris anatomy museum.

In the year 2000, researchers looking for Mata Hari’s head failed to find it.

They concluded that the head had been taken from the museum

some time back,

perhaps as early as 1954.

It’s still missing.

I’ll see you tomorrow.

— Brenda

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The brief but spectacular crime spree of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

in the American West — barely spanning two years — ended in 1901,

with a quick trip to New York City to elude Pinkerton Detective agents

followed by a voyage to Argentina.

Seven years later, Butch and Sundance found themselves

in a small rental house in San Vicente, Bolivia,

surrounded by soldiers intent on capturing or killing them

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Maria lived with her husband, John, on a farm in an area of eastern Wisconsin

populated by Bavarian immigrant families.

In the dozen years of her marriage, Maria had borne five children,

including the little boy, Emil, who had died soon after his first birthday.

The four children who remained ranged in age from ten to three,

and the oldest girl, eight-year-old Estella, was my great-grandmother.

Another child was expected in March 1900.

It would be Maria’s sixth baby.

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It is May 23, 1861.

Three enslaved men belonging to Confederate Col. Charles Mallory

of Hampton, Virginia, have escaped and arrived at Fortress Monroe,

a federal installation in the Hampton harbor.

The Civil War is now six weeks old,

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Reading the paper on January 11, 1941

A bill was introduced in Congress yesterday which would confer upon President Franklin Roosevelt the authority to order the manufacture or procurement of war materials and transfer them to other nations if in the interest of US defense.

The purpose of the bill, called ‘lend-lease,’ is to aid anti-Axis nations now under attack.

FDR said the need for speed was the reason for requesting this unprecedented grant of executive authority.

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Seventy-five canneries dotted Maine’s eastern coastline in 1900,

producing canned sardines which were shipped across the nation.

The work was seasonal, with intense periods coming in the fall

which required many unskilled workers willing to work long hours.

Rural families, then at the end of the fall harvest season,

were recruited for this work;

and entire families took these jobs,

in keeping with the rural tradition that everyone, including children,

contribute to the family’s economic well-being,

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It is January 1962.

The ten-year US defoliant spraying program over South Vietnam,

Laos and Cambodia has begun.

The program is intended to deprive the Vietcong

of food and defensive jungle cover.

An unmentioned objective of the program, revealed later,

is to drive Vietnamese villagers out of their rural hamlets,

where they often hide enemy Vietcong fighters.

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It is Labor Day, 1935.

A hurricane is sweeping the Florida Keys.

It will kill more than 400 people.

Most of the dead are unemployed veterans of World War I.

They had taken jobs with a New Deal program to build the Overseas Highway, carrying US Route 1 through the Florida Keys to Key West.

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It is September 27, 1907.

And 1,002 young women, mostly from the United Kingdom,

have stepped down the gangplank of the RMS Baltic

and arrived at the foot of Manhattan’s West 11th Street.

They have come to America to look for husbands.

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It is January 14, 1963.

President Kennedy is in the House Chamber delivering his third, and final, State of the Union Address to a joint session of Congress.

The 1964 election weighs heavy on his mind.

So, in an effort to bolster his political standing, he proposes an aggressive domestic agenda,

coupled with significant reductions in personal and corporate tax rates.

‘Both are needed,’ he said.

‘[T]ax reduction alone is not enough to strengthen our society.’

“This country cannot afford to be materially rich and spiritually poor.”

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