I found this great image showing the 1913 University of California (Berkeley) and Stanford University Rugby Teams. They were to meet on the turf at Palo Alto on November 8, 1913. The San Francisco Chronicle said the teams were evenly matched.
Stanford had the "better balanced fifteen, but whetther the Cardinal can succeed in playing its own style of game is what gives Stanford no more than an even break after the initial whistle."
Therefore, it was anyone's guess who would win.
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| Alfred Morrison (The Evening World. April 6, 1900) |
A sneak thief stole an overcoat from
Alfred Morrison’s back porch Thursday evening. When he went to bed that night,
he fell asleep with a big cavalry revolver under his pillow.
His younger daughter, Josephine, slept in
the bed with him. His wife and youngest child slept in a smaller bed on the
other side of the room.
Alfred Morrison woke up at 2:30 a.m.,
standing beside his wife’s bed, holding his pistol. “Run for a doctor, quick,”
she screamed, “you’ve hit me.”
Much like Walter Mitty, Morrison was an
excitable guy who lived in a vague, dreamlike state. For example, that night,
he pictured himself fighting off a hoard of burglars, not his wife.
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| Lemp Brewery in St. Louis, Missouri (color drawing after a photo in the St. Louis Star & Times. March 14, 1914) |
The Lemps knew how to get their name in front of people. They put it on bottles, advertisements, and the side of a smokestack. By the 1870s, they ran the largest brewery in St. Louis.
Before all that, there was a grocery
store.
Johann Adam Lemp came to St. Louis in
1838. He’d learned to brew in Germany and started making beer while running his
store. The lager found customers. Enough of them that groceries stopped being
the principal business.
The family claimed 1840 as the
brewery’s founding year. Historians haven’t quite settled that, but records
show brewing operations by 1841. Adam called it the Western Brewery and set up
near the riverfront.
He had beer to make and a problem to
solve.
Lager needed to stay cold while it
aged. St. Louis got hot, and a brewer couldn’t leave barrels sitting through a
Missouri summer and expect everything to turn out fine.
Adam used caves.
Harper's Weekly Magazine published this print of New York City in 1776 in its February 19, 1876 issue. It's a great look at New York City at the start of the American Revolution.
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| 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.
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| James Fennimore Cooper (colored print after an image in Harper's New Monthly Magazine. 1872) |
James Fenimore Cooper made a living out of
getting people lost.
He
sent them into forests, across lakes, onto ships, and behind enemy lines. Once
they were there, he made sure someone dangerous was close behind. Readers
bought the books as fast as he could write them.
That
may sound ordinary now. In the 1820s, it was a big deal. Americans loved
novels, but most of the popular ones came from Europe. Cooper gave them
adventures that could happen right here, in places with American names and
American problems.
His
breakthrough novel was The Spy (1821). Its hero, Harvey Birch, was
a peddler doing secret work for George Washington. Birch had to let everyone
think he was a traitor, even when his own safety was on the line.
Readers
loved it.
Cooper followed with The Pioneers and
a character they’d want to see again: Natty Bumppo. Natty lived by his own
rules, knew his way through the woods, and had little patience for the settlers
filling them with fences.
Cooper
brought him back four more times.
If you’ve ever caught yourself saying, “I remember that,” you’re in the right place.
I dig up stories about Old West lawmen, outlaws, gunfighters, robberies, murders, forgotten towns, and all the strange, fascinating pieces of history that somehow slipped through the cracks. No clickbait. No fluff. Just authentic stories and actual history.
If you enjoy what you read and would like to help keep the lights on, consider buying me a Big Gulp.
Every little bit helps pay for books, newspaper archives, research trips, and the countless hours spent tracking down stories most people forgot decades ago.
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