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The Man who Sold the Brooklyn Bridge
Everyone has heard the expression, “If you believe that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.” What most people don’t know is that there was a man who sold the Brooklyn Bridge…over and over again. George C. Parker was a con man extraordinaire in a city full of con men. In his book, The Modern Con Man: How to get Something for Nothing, Todd Robbins write, ““He was one of the ballsiest grifters ever.” So who was George C. Parker and how did he get the guts enough to think up and execute these cons? Born in 1870, not much is known about his early life. New York…
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Inez Milholland Boissevain- The American Joan of Arc
Born Inez Milholland in New York on August 6,1886, she was no stranger to social reform. The eldest daughter of John and Jean Milholland, her father was a New York Tribune reporter and editorial writer and a reformer with National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). John Milholland eventually took over the as head of a company that made pneumatic tubes, which allowed the family to live in comfort. Inez spent her girlhood in a the family’s London home, and attended Kensington Highschool for Girls. This school was unique as it allowed the daughters of shopkeepers to study alongside the daughters of the upper class. In the fall…
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Carrie Nation- A bulldog for Jesus
Carrie Nation did not have an easy life. Born Carry Amelia Moore on born Nov. 25, 1846 in Garrard county, Kentucky, she grew up poor. She spent time with her siblings on her father’s farm, and eventually changed her name to Carrie. As tensions grew ahead of the Civil War, her father moved the family from Kentucky to Cass County, Missouri. However, instead of finding less tension the family found more. They bounced from Missouri to Texas and back to Missouri, ending up in Kansas City. Carrie nursed wounded soldiers at the hospital in Independence. The family suffered much hardship during the war. Her mother ended her days in an…
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Theodore Roosevelt- The Man in the Arena
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at…
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Johnstown Flood- The Great Flood 1889
Johnstown, Pennsylvania was an idyllic little town located where the Little Conemaugh River and Stoney Creek joined to form the Conemaugh River. It prospered with the Cambria Iron Works and by the late 1880s had a population of 30,000. Upstream from the town was the South Fork Dam, which had been previously owned by the state as part of the canal system. As railroads began replacing canals, the dam was sold off to private interests. The dam passed through several different hands and one owner sold the drainage pipes for scrap. This meant the lake could never be drained to make repairs. The dam broke once in 1862, but the…
