On this date in 1861 Herman Webster Mudgett was born. Mudgett is better known by his alias Dr. H. H. Holmes, one of America's first modern serial killers. At the time of the 1893 World Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Holmes opened a hotel in the Hyde Park neighborhood and rented rooms to single women attending the [...]
On this date in 1905 the city of Las Vegas was founded. The San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad auctioned off 110 acres in what is now downtown Las Vegas to start the city. Originally it was a popular stopping point on the railroad and was the staging point for the many mines that [...]
On this date in 1643, four-year-old Louis XIV became king of France when his father, Louis XIII died, who had himself become king on this date in 1610 when his father Henry IV was assassinated. Louis XIV is known as the "Sun King" for the glorious epoch of French history he ushered in. Through many wars [...]
On this date in 1931 Jim Jones was born. A Marxist from an early age, Jones felt frustrated by the repression of communists during the McCarthy era. In order to cloak his beliefs he turned to religion and in 1956 founded what was to become the People's Temple. From the beginning it was an inter-racial [...]
On this date in 1935 Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith met for the first time in Akron, Ohio. Both men struggled with alcoholism and had tried various approaches to control it. Together they founded Alcoholics Anonymous which emphasized the helplessness of the alcoholic rather than the sinfulness of drink. They developed a twelve step program [...]
On this date in 2000 Vladimir Putin was inaugurated as president of Russia. Putin, formerly a Lieutenant Colonel in the Soviet KGB, became acting president in 1999 when Boris Yeltsin unexpectedly resigned. He was able to reach an accord with the Russian oligarchs, in which they were able to retain their power in exchange for [...]
On this date in in 1994 Paula Jones filed suit against President Bill Clinton alleging sexual harassment. During the course of depositions for this case Clinton denied having had an affair with another staffer, Monica Lewinsky. As a result of his statements and continued denials, charges of perjury and obstruction of justice were brought against [...]
On this date in 1925 John T. Scopes was arrested for teaching evolution in violation of the Butler Act. The resulting show trial, usually referred to as the Scopes Monkey Trial was staged to promote the city of Dayton, Tennessee and provide a stage for the opposing sides of the evolution question. Arguing against evolution [...]
On this date in 1932 Al Capone started his eleven year prison sentence for tax evasion. Capone became famous in the 1920's for his crime organization. Located in Cicero, Illinois he eventually took over the south side of Chicago running speakeasies, brothels, and smuggling operations. He enjoyed a reputation as something of a Robin Hood [...]
On this date in 1469 Niccolò Machiavelli was born. Machiavelli was a historian, philosopher, politician and writer who lived in Florence. He is best remembered for his book The Prince which offers guidance on the realities of political power. The book was written about Cesare Borgia, the son of Pope Alexander VI. To find out more about [...]
On this date in 1536 Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII, was arrested and imprisoned in the Tower of London. She gave birth to a daughter, the Future Queen of England Elizabeth I but when no sons followed Henry grew tired of her. Henry had her investigated and she was charged with adultery, incest, [...]
On this date in 1776 the Illuminati was formed in Bavaria by Adam Weishaupt. It was formed to promote the ideals of the Enlightenment and to fight superstition, prejudice, religious influence over public life, and abuses of state power. Even worse in the eyes of the Roman Catholic Church was their promotion of education for women and gender [...]
On this day in 1933 the great Willie Nelson was born. Besides being one of the greatest musicians of the last half century, Willie is famous for his activism in support of the environment, animal rights and American farmers. He is also well known for his fondness for marijuana and his work to have it [...]
On this day in 1863 William Randolph Hearst was born. Hearst was one of the most powerful media moguls of his day. He used his network of newspapers to push a populist agenda that included whipping the country into a fury over Spanish rule of Cuba which led to the Spanish American War in 1898. He also [...]
On this date in 1789 the Mutiny on the Bounty occured. The ship was on a mission to the South Pacific to pick up breadfruit plants and take them to the West Indies to be grown as food for slaves. Relations between Captain William Bligh and sailing master Fletcher Christian deteriorated over the course of [...]
On this date in 1773 the British Parliament passed one of the most ill-conceived laws of all time, The Tea Act. In an effort to save the almost bankrupt East India Company, Parliament granted it a de facto monopoly on tea in the American colonies. The law actually reduced the cost of tea in the [...]
On this date in 1937 the German Luftwaffe conducted its first terror bombing of a civilian target, the Spanish town of Guernica. The raid was in support of Franco's Fascist forces in their eventually successful campaign to overthrown the legitimate government of France. The bombing is most notably remembered through Pablo Picasso's painting Guernica, painted [...]
On this date French highwayman Nicolas Pelletier became the first person to be executed by guillotine. The guillotine was named after Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, a French physician who petitioned for a humane execution method that was to be used on all condemned prisoners, regardless of rank. By 1793 what became known as the Reign of Terror started [...]
On this date in 1984, 48 year old Jerry Lee Lewis married his sixth wife, 21 year old Kerrie McCarver. At 20 years it would prove to be his longest marriage. His first, when he was 14, to 17 year old Dorthy Barton, lasted 20 months. His second lasted 4 years. His third caused a [...]
Today is the Vinalia Urbana, the Roman festival of wine. Every year Romans would gather to celebrate the wine harvest, sample the latest wine from the last harvest and pray for good weather. Venus was the goddess of "profane" wine used for everyday drinking while Jupiter was the god of wine that was good enough [...]
On this date in 1994, Richard Nixon, the 37th President of the United States died. Nixon's paranoia led to the misuse of the FBI for domestic spying and the creation of the "White House Plumbers Unit" to find and destroy his political "enemies". The subsequent scandal became known as Watergate after the name of the [...]
On this day in 1924 the most famous photo of The Loch Ness Monster was published by the British tabloid the Daily Mail. It came to be known as the surgeon's photo as it was supposedly taken by Col. Robert Kenneth Wilson.In 1999, on his deathbed Chris Spurling confessed that he, Wilson and two friends had faked [...]
On this date in 1889 Adolf Hitler was born. Following World War I, this obscure Austrian rose to become the Chancellor of Germany with the help of many wealthy American, British and German industrialists. By this date in 1939 he was powerful enough that his 50th birthday was observed as a national holiday. His extermination [...]
On this day in 1927 Mae West was sentenced to 10 days in jail and fined $500 for obscenity. Her Play Sex was a critical failure but a box office smash. There were 375 performances and more than 325,000 people saw the play before it was shut down by a blue-nose grand jury. She was offered [...]
On this day in 1480 Lucrezia Borgia, the daughter of Pope Alexander VI, was born. She is best remembered as a poisonner and as a femme fatale. She was the mother Alexander's eighth child and was involved in a sex triangle with her bothers Cesare and Juan. To find out more watch our video The Party Pope. [...]
On this day in 1492 Christopher Columbus signed a contract with Spain to search for a direct rout to the Orient. As we now know some islands in the Caribbean got in the way and the European conquest of the New World Started. When Columbus saw some native men wearing gold ornaments, he had them [...]
On this date in 1943 Albert Hoffman discovered the effects of LSD-25 through a laboratory accident. While researching the compound he accidently absorbed some through his finger. He described the effects as "... affected by a remarkable restlessness, combined with a slight dizziness. At home I lay down and sank into a not unpleasant [...]
On this day in 1922 the US Senate opened an investigation into what would become the largest scandal in American history up to then. The Teapot Dome Scandal involved the Secretary of the Interior, Albert B. Fall taking bribes in exchange for leasing oil fields on public lands to Harry F. Sinclair (Mammoth Oil, [...]
On this day in 1907 one of the most brutal dictators in history was born. Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier ruled over Haiti from 1957 until his death in 1971. The depth of his corruption was legendary. He and his family became incredibly rich while the poor literally starved in the streets. He maintained his power [...]
Whether Alexander VI was a good or bad pope continues to be a matter of great debate. Most of the incidents mentioned in this video are generally accepted as factual, although there are revisionists who argue against that. Alexander's great legacy comes from his expertise in diplomacy at a very difficult time in European history. It [...]
