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History of the Americas
Anjette Lyles, Restaurateur of Death
One of the most popular lunch spots in 1950s Macon was Anjette’s on Mulberry Street. With a handy location for a lot of local offices, most weekdays it was packed with white collar workers. Businessmen and lawyers, taking a break for some…
Ethel “Etta” Place, Western Woman of Mystery
In some respects, stories of America’s Wild West feel like a young country trying to build itself a mythology from scratch. Legendary figures like Wyatt Earp, Jesse James, Belle Starr and the Apache Kid had their exploits built up far out…
Mary Ellen Pleasant, Businesswoman and Civil Rights Activist
If you’ve heard of Mary Ellen Pleasant before, then chances are that what you’ve heard wasn’t good. “Mammy Pleasant” has often been a favourite of sensational accounts, the “evil Voodoo Queen of San Francisco” who made a good villain to…
Fred Korematsu, Unjustly Imprisoned American
Fred Korematsu was born in Oakland, California in 1919. His parents Kotsui and Kakusaburo had emigrated from Japan fourteen years ago to start a new life for themselves in America, setting up a plant nursery in Oakland and having four sons.…
Count Johann von Bernstorff, Ambassador and Spymaster
Johann Heinrich von Bernstorff was born in London in 1862. His father Albrecht was a Prussian Count and experienced diplomat who had just spent seven years as the Prussian ambassador to Great Britain. Shortly before Johann’s birth he had…
Delia Bacon, Writer and Shakespeare Theorist
Delia Bacon was born in a log cabin in Ohio in the February of 1811. Her father David was a Congregationalist minister who had been born in Connecticut forty years earlier. In 1801 he had tried to establish a mission in Detroit, but it had…
Ruth Snyder, housewife and murderer
Ruth Brown, later to become Ruth Snyder, was born in Manhattan in 1895. She came from a working-class family but was determined to better herself. So though she had to leave full time education around the age of fifteen she got a job…
Jack Bee Garland aka Babe Bean, the Trousered Enigma
Jack Bee Garland, also known as Babe Bean, Beebe Bean, and several other names besides, was born in December of 1869 as Elvira Virginia Mugarrieta. Jack was the child of a former Mexican consul named José Marcos Mugarrieta and an upper…
William Randolph Hearst, the Original Media Mogul
William Randolph Hearst was born in San Francisco in 1863. His father George was a former Missouri farmer who had come to California for the gold rush, but had been smart enough to see the money to be made in quartz and silver mining as…
Pauline Cushman, Actress and Union Spy
The woman who became famous as Pauline Cushman was born under the name Harriet Wood in New Orleans in 1833. Her father was Spanish, and her mother was French - two nations that had both ruled the Louisiana colony before the USA bought it…