Harry Houdini spent his younger years as a trapeze performer in the circus and various vaudeville shows with little success. His father was a rabbi and emigrated to the US from Hungary then settled in New York City in 1882. Houdini gained an international reputation for daring feats by 1900. He escaped from handcuffs, shackles, […] Read more

Helen Keller was blind, deaf, and mute from early childhood. She rose above her challenges and inspired others to achieve the impossible. After WW II she went to Japan where children in remote villages recognized her right away and cried her name in celebration. Her story made it into remote areas of the world even […] Read more

Hilary Swank is a conscientious professional dedicated to presenting her life and her work with purpose. After winning an Oscar for Boys Don’t Cry, she chose The Affair of the Necklace for her next performance. Her characters in each film are nearly mirror opposites. One was a fearless, inspiring, gender-melting fighter, and the other a […] Read more

Though the self-described “nice Republican girl” had campaigned for Barry Goldwater, Hillary began to develop a more liberal outlook at Wellesley College, where she was student body president of the class of 1969. She went on to Yale Law School, at the time a hotbed of student protest, but she felt the best path to […] Read more

In 1938, a Swiss chemist named Albert Hofmann synthesized LSD for the first time while studying ergots, a type of fungus. Though the pharmaceutical company that he worked for, Sandoz, didn’t have any interest in the compound, Hofmann found himself inexplicably drawn to it. Five years later, in the spring of 1943, he synthesized it […] Read more

William Hogarth was an artist and engraver who lived from 1697 until 1764. He specialized in satire, which would be referred to these days as, heavy-handed moralizing on the wages of sin. His engraved plates were actually pirated because they were so popular. This led Parliament to protect the copyright by enacting the Hogarth Act […] Read more

Driven by scientific curiosity, wealthy and inquisitive foreigners spent the short winter season dabbling in archaeology. What had not been found yet was an intact tomb of the Pharaoh. Howard Carter hoped to be the one to change that fact. He was the son of an English painter, who brought him to Egypt at the […] Read more

Abraham Lincoln was one of the most revered Presidents in American history. In the years after his assassination, the story of the man behind the myth began to fade. In order to create an accurate record of his life, his friend William Herndon began to collect evidence. Documents and confidential memories from Lincoln’s family and […] Read more

Jack London describes the East End as an abyss where “poor and miserable humans cling to the garbage heap of life.” This is the 19th-century setting of one of the most diabolical serial killers of all time and his unsolved crimes. Jack the Ripper took victims from England’s lowest class and his evil deeds impacted […] Read more