In 1921, coroners had Edward Searles body exhumed months after his death. Their conclusion, after examination, was that he had not been poisoned with arsenic as they had suspected. He died of natural causes. And when they planted him back ...

On Aug. 6, 1920, Shaker Brother Irving Greenwood brought a new Cadillac home to Canterbury Shaker Village. It was a beauty, he wrote in his diary. The Cadillac arrived 146 years to the day after a poor group of immigrants ...

A little Vermont schoolhouse washed away in the 1927 flood became an inspiring symbol of the state’s resilience when schoolchildren around the country sent in their pennies to replace it. A wealthy woman made a big donation as well, but ...

Wallace Stevens was a plodding insurance executive in Hartford for nearly all of his adult life, except when he spent winter vacations in Key West. There he got drunk and fought with Robert Frost and Ernest Hemingway. Stevens was also ...

In 1867, Harriet Beecher Stowe and her husband Calvin, tiring of New England's cold climate, visited Florida for the first time. They were instantly smitten, bought a home complete with orange groves, and for the next 17 years were regular ...

The summer season inspires far fewer sayings in New England than spring, fall or winter, probably because it’s so short and so cool. After all, three straight days of 90 degrees is considered a heat wave in New England. The ...

The story of the Duchess of Dix Island begins with a bad investment. In 1839 Horace Beals became a partner in the Franklin Granite Company, with quarries in Quincy, Mass., and New York. After just 18 months, the firm floundered, ...

  On Jan. 13, 1942, German U-boat attacks officially started against merchant ships along the Eastern Seaboard of North America. From then until early August, Nazi U-boats dominated the waters off the East Coast, sinking fuel tankers and cargo ships ...

Charles Ponzi in his office. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.Charles Ponzi sent Bostonians into such a frenzy over his get-rich-quick scheme in 1920 that police had to subdue enthusiastic investors. They overflowed from his North End banking ...

The Hoosac Tunnel disaster killed 13 miners in 1867, but the tunnel took the lives of an estimated 180 workers during decades of construction. All those lost lives convinced some workers the Hoosac Tunnel had a curse on it. Some walked off ...