Edgar Allan Poe: Master of Suspense

 

Edgar Allan Poe (Harper's New Monthly Magazine. 1872)

Edgar Allan Poe knew how to make a room feel unsafe.

 

A man hears a heartbeat under the floorboards. Another walls up a body and figures he’s gotten away with murder. A house seems to rot along with the family inside it.

 

Poe didn’t need a monster at the door. He could leave a man alone with his thoughts and wait for him to come apart.

 

Poe’s life gave him plenty to work with. 

 

His father left, and his mother died when he was two. John and Frances Allan took him in, but never adopted him. They fought over money.

 

He did well in the Army. But West Point was another matter. Poe did well in French and mathematics, but he wanted out. John Allan wouldn’t agree to his resignation, so he stopped showing up for classes and duties. A court-martial dismissed him in 1831, seven months after he entered the academy.

Amerigo's Land: How America Got Its Name

 

Amerigo Vespucci (Scribner's Magazine. June 1876)

Naming a continent is a funny thing.

One man is the acknowledged discoverer of a new world, yet it gets named after another by pure chance.

History tells us Martin Waldseemüller, a German cartographer, scribbled America over Brazil on a new map he made in 1507. He’d read Vespucci’s account of his discoveries and decided it was a good way to honor the navigator and discoverer of that area.

“I see no reason,” said Waldseemüller, “why anyone should justly object to calling this part America, after Amerigo [Vespucci] its discoverer, a man of great ability.”

Over time, the name stuck.

In 1538, the famed mapmaker Gerardus Mercator extended the name to North and South America. Amerigo Vespucci’s Novus Mundo, or the new world, would bear his name from then on.

Consuelo Vanderbilt, Duchess of Marlborough

 

If ever there was a poster child for the phrase “money can’t buy happiness,” it was Consuelo Vanderbilt.

Born into the Vanderbilt fortune in 1877, Consuelo grew up surrounded by mansions, servants, and more money than most people could spend in ten lifetimes. She was beautiful, wealthy, and famous before she was old enough to vote. Society reporters followed her around like paparazzi.

Sounds great, right?

Not exactly.

Alfred T. Mahan The Naval Influencer Who Never Fought A Battle

Alfred Thayer Mahan spent most of his career talking about naval battles he never fought.

While many military thinkers built their reputations in combat, Mahan built his surrounded by books. He’d served in the Navy, but he’d never commanded a fleet in battle.

 

He studied the men who did.

 

At the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, Mahan developed a reputation as the guy who was always digging through history books. While other officers argued about ships and guns, Mahan wanted to know why some countries became powerful while others fell apart.

 

He kept running into the same answer.

 

Ships.

 

Not just warships. Merchant fleets. Ports. Naval bases. Trade routes. The whole machine.

Frances Folsom Cleveland America's First Celebrity First Lady

 

Frances Folsom Cleveland (Colorized image from Munsey's Magazine. 1896)

If Taylor Swift married the President tomorrow, the internet would probably melt down.

 

That’s what happened to Frances Folsom Cleveland when she married President Grover Cleveland in 1886; Americans couldn’t get enough of her. Newspapers followed her every move. People collected her pictures. Companies slapped her face on advertisements. She couldn’t walk into a room without becoming the story.

 

Part of the fascination was that she was only 21. Grover Cleveland was pushing 50. He’d known Frances since she was a child, which raised plenty of eyebrows. It felt like something ripped from the headlines of the National Enquirer.

 

The funny thing is Frances was completely comfortable with the attention. She was smart, charming, and knew how to handle a crowd.

 

She also pulled off something no other First Lady has ever done. She moved out of the White House after Cleveland lost his second term run, then moved back in four years later when he won again. Most people don’t get a second lease on the White House.

 

More than a century later, Grover Cleveland is mostly remembered by history buffs. Frances Cleveland is still remembered because she became something much bigger than a First Lady. She became a celebrity.