Weather history often shapes our lives in ways we can't imagine. But for storms of 1746, the French, under leadership of Duc D’Anville, might well have bombarded New England into submission. Would our state names sound better in French? We'll ...

In 1890, the descendants of two of America’s first families – the Sargents and the Hamiltons – traveled to Wyoming to start a new life. Their story of murder and insanity, if it wasn’t provably true, would seem like the ...

The City of Cleveland and nearly all of Northeastern Ohio once belonged to Connecticut. The land, 3.5 million acres of it, was called the Western Reserve. It’s why  a university in Cleveland is called Case Western Reserve. It’s why towns ...

Boston native Lydia Bacon decided to join Army Lt. Josiah Bacon -- her brand-new husband -- in the Pittsburgh wilderness in 1811. That meant uncomfortable and often frightening rides in stagecoaches and keelboats. Fortunately for history, she wrote about her ...

Julia Archibald Holmes ignored people who told her not to do it, and on Aug. 5, 1858 became the first woman on record to make the five-day trek up Pikes Peak. And she did it scandalously, in pants. it wasn't the first ...

In the spring of 1853, Boston-born Amelia Stewart Knight, her husband Dr. Joel Knight and their seven children set out from Monroe County, Iowa, along the Oregon Trail in a covered wagon. She was pregnant, but she never complained during ...

If it weren’t for Benning Wentworth, Vermont probably wouldn’t exist. Wentworth was the Colony of New Hampshire’s first governor, and on Jan. 3, 1749, he issued the first of 135 land grants west of the Connecticut River.  Unfortunately for the ...

On Dec. 27, 1919, theatrical producer and Red Sox owner Harry Frazee announced he would deal any player except right fielder Harry Hooper. While Babe Ruth was the most popular baseball player in the world, Hooper, then 32, was the ...

Philander Chase brought the infant Episcopal Church to America’s frontier and founded one of the country’s finest liberal arts colleges in what was then wilderness. Chase was descended from Aquila Chase, who arrived in Hampton, N.H., from England in 1640. ...

Manasseh Cutler, a Congregationalist minister, left his home in Ipswich, Mass., to help build the first permanent settlement in the Northwest Territory. While there, he founded Ohio University – and then he returned home. Cutler played an important role in ...