Shaking America

In 1968, ten days before the Summer Olympics in Mexico City, around ten thousand mostly student demonstrators gathered in Tlatelolco Square to protest their country’s authoritarian regime.  In response, the Mexican Army massacred the protestors, opening fire on the crowd and killing hundreds.  

In the year 1780, deep in the Pine Barren forests of New Jersey, a gang of marauders, criminals and British sympathizers  terrorized local American colonists.  These bandits would emerge from the Barrens to steal from travelers, break into homesteads and raid local towns before escaping back into the woods.  Over time they earned the name "the Pine Robbers".

They called the dense forest home for years, killing anyone who attempted to bring them to justice.

Joseph Medicine Crow was a scholar, a cultural leader, and a writer. He also was an incredible soldier who thoroughly and repeatedly humiliated the Nazis in World War II. By taking an enemy hostage, taking an enemy's weapon, stealing an enemy's horse and leading a successful war party Joseph accomplished all of the prerequisites for becoming a War Chief of the Crow.  This achievement was made all the more remarkable considering he was fighting in a modern war with machine guns and Panzer tanks. 

Joe was the Last War Chief of the Plains tribes, and his amazing story would prove inspirational for generations of Crow people.

Before Party Pizzas and Pizza Rolls, there was Rose Totino.  A first-generation Italian American, Rose's hard work and ingenuity created a multi-million dollar frozen pizza empire while popularizing pizza across the Midwest and beyond.

Banning books is a practice that has existed since the first book came off the printing press.   Even in the US, a country that prides itself on its free speech, books have been banned for various (and almost always illegitimate) reasons.  

Here is a short history of banned books in the US and how the practice harms American society.

Jean Lafitte was an infamous pirate and smuggler who ran the black market port of Barataria in the swamps of Louisiana.  Flamboyant and charismatic, Lafitte was a public enemy of the US government until he helped Andrew Jackson defend New Orleans from a British attack in the War of 1812.

Around 1100 CE the massive city of Cahokia dominated the Mississippi floodplain.  It contained a variety of colossal earthen mounds and had a population of 30,000 people, making it the largest (and possibly first) city in North America at the time.  

Two hundred years later the city was completely deserted.

What happened to Cahokia and its people?

The Landsat Program is a NASA-led operation that shows us earth from space.  It helps us understand our environment and has saved millions of lives by allowing scientists to predict crop yields worldwide.  
At the heart of the program's early years was a woman named Valerie Thomas, a brilliant young African American physicist who would become one of the most respected inventors of her generation. 

Joe Louis and Max Schmeling fought each other in two iconic, culturally significant boxing matches.  The two men remained defiant in the face of racism and became good friends after their careers ended.

The covert installation of Weather Station Kurt was the only armed German incursion into North America.  This top-secret automatic weather station was built by Nazi scientists in an effort to win the war in the Atlantic.