Today, June 12^th, is the 111^th anniversary of gruesome murders in Iowa.  Eight people, including 6 children were bludgeoned with an axe.  Worse yet, the murders remain unsolved. I found this article on allthatsinteresting.com website.

The Gruesome Story Of The Unsolved Villisca Axe Murders

By Katie Serena | Edited By John Kuroski

Updated September 29, 2022

On June 10, 1912, all eight people inside the Moore family’s house in Villisca, Iowa — including two adults and six children — were murdered by an axe-wielding assailant.

At the end of a quiet street in Villisca, Iowa, there sits an old white frame house. Up the street, there are a group of churches, and a few blocks away is a park that faces a middle school. The old white house looks like many of the others that fill the neighborhood, but unlike them, it lies abandoned. The house emits no light or sound, and upon closer inspection, the doors are found to be tightly boarded up. A small sign out front reads: “Villisca Axe Murder House.”

Despite its ominous air, the little white house was once filled with life, life that was harshly stamped out one warm summer’s night in 1912, when a mysterious stranger broke in, and viciously bludgeoned its eight sleeping inhabitants to death. The event would come to be known as the Villisca Axe Murders and it would baffle law enforcement for over a century.

The Brutal Story Of How The Villisca Axe Murders Unfolded

On June 10, 1912, the Moore family was sleeping peacefully in their beds. Joe and Sarah Moore were asleep upstairs, while their four children were resting in a room down the hall. In a guest room on the first floor were two girls, the Stillinger sisters, who had come for a sleepover.

Shortly after midnight, a stranger entered through the unlocked door (not an uncommon sight in what was considered a small, safe, friendly town), and plucked an oil lamp from a nearby table, rigging it to burn so low it supplied light for barely one person. On one hand, the stranger held the lamp, lighting the way through the house.

In his other, he held an axe.

Ignoring the sleeping girls downstairs, the stranger made his way up the stairs, guided by the lamp, and a seemingly unerring knowledge of the home’s layout. He crept past the room with the children, and into Mr. and Mrs. Moore’s bedroom. Then he made his way to the children’s room, and finally back down to the bedroom downstairs. In each room, he committed some of the grisliest murders in American history.

Then, as quickly and silently as he had arrived, the stranger left, taking keys from the home, and locking the door behind him. The Villisca Axe Murders may have been quick, but as the world was about to discover, they were unimaginably horrifying.

The Horrors Of The Villisca Murders Come To Light

The next morning, the neighbors became suspicious, noticing that the usually rambunctious home was dead quiet. They alerted Joe’s brother, who arrived to take a look. What he saw after letting himself in with his own key was enough to make him sick.

Everyone in the house was dead, all eight of them bludgeoned beyond recognition.

The police determined that the Moore parents had been murdered first, and with obvious force. The axe that had been used to kill them had been swung so high above the murderer’s head that it gouged the ceiling above the bed. Joe alone had been hit with the axe at least 30 times. The faces of both parents, as well as the children, had been reduced to nothing but a bloody pulp.

The state of the bodies wasn’t the most concerning part, however, once the police had searched the home.

After murdering the Moores, the killer had apparently set up some kind of ritual. He had covered the Moore parent’s heads with sheets, and the Moore children’s faces with clothing. He then went through each room in the house, covering all of the mirrors and windows with cloths and towels. At some point, he took a two-pound piece of uncooked bacon from the fridge and placed it in the living room, along with a keychain.

A bowl of water was found in the home, spirals of blood swirling through it. Police believed that the murderer had washed his hands in it before leaving.

By the time the police, the coroner, a minister, and several doctors had thoroughly perused the crime scene, word of the vicious crime had spread, and the crowd outside the home had grown. Officials cautioned the townspeople against going inside, but as soon as the premises was clear at least 100 townspeople gave in to their gross fascinations and traipsed through the blood-spattered home.

One of the townspeople even took a fragment of Joe’s skull as a keepsake.

Who Committed The Villisca Axe Murders?

As for the perpetrator of the Villisca Axe Murders, the police had shockingly few leads. A few half-hearted efforts to search the town and surrounding countryside were made, though most officials believed that with the roughly five-hour head start that the killer had had, he would be long gone. Bloodhounds were brought in, but with no success, as the crime scene had been fully demolished by the townspeople.

A few suspects were named over time though none of them panned out. The first was Frank Jones, a local businessman who had been in competition with Joe Moore. Moore had worked for Jones for seven years in the farm equipment sales business before leaving and starting his own rival business.

There was also a rumor that Joe was having an affair with Jones’ daughter-in-law, though the reports were unfounded. The townspeople insist, however, that the Moores and the Joneses harbored a deep hatred for each other, though no one admits it was bad enough to spark murder.

The second suspect seemed far more likely and even confessed to the murders – though he later recanted claiming police brutality.

Lyn George Jacklin Kelly was an English immigrant, who had a history of sexual deviancy and mental problems. He even admitted to being in town the night of the Villisca Axe Murders and admitted that he had left early in the morning. Though his small stature and meek personality led some to doubt his involvement, there were certain factors police believed made him the perfect candidate.

Kelly was left-handed, which police determined from blood spatters that the killer must be. He also had a history with the Moore family, as many had seen him watching them while at church and out and about in town. A dry cleaner in a nearby town had received bloody clothing from Kelly a few days after the murders. He reportedly also asked police for access to the home after the crime while posing as a Scotland Yard officer.

At one point, after a long interrogation, he eventually signed a confession detailing the crime. However he almost immediately recanted, and a jury refused to indict him.

The Case Goes Cold And The Villisca Axe Murders House Becomes A Tourist Attraction

For years, police looked into every possible scenario that could have culminated in the Villisca Axe Murders. Was it a single attack, or part of a larger string of murders? Was it likelier to be a local perpetrator, or a traveling killer, simply passing through town and taking an opportunity?

Soon, reports of similar enough crimes happening throughout the country began to pop up. Though the crimes were not quite as gruesome, there were two common threads – the use of an axe as the murder weapon, and the presence of an oil lamp, set to burn extremely low, at the scene.

Despite the commonalities, however, no actual connections could be made. The case eventually ran cold, and the house was boarded up. No sale was ever attempted, and no changes were made to the original layout. Now, the house has become a tourist attraction and sits at the end of the quiet street as it always has, while life goes on around it, undeterred by the horrors that were once committed within.

SOURCE: allthatsinteresting.com

Without the brilliant planning and heroic sacrifices of the D-Day invasion, the Allies may have never defeated the Nazi forces in Europe. On June 6, 1944, more than 156,000 American, British and Canadian troops stormed 50 miles of Normandy’s fiercely defended beaches in northern France in an operation that proved to be a critical turning point in World War II. Below are key facts on the planning and execution of the epic Allied invasion.

D-Day Meaning: The ‘D’ in D-Day doesn’t actually stand for anything.

Unlike V-E Day (“Victory in Europe”) or V-J Day (“Victory over Japan”), the “D” in D-Day isn’t short for “departure” or “decision.” As early as World War I, the U.S. military used the term D-Day to designate the launch date of a mission. One reason was to keep the actual date out of the hands of spies; another was to serve as a placeholder until an actual date was chosen. They also used H-Hour for the specific time of the launch.

The D-Day invasion took years of planning. 

Allied leaders Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill knew from the start of the war that a massive invasion of mainland Europe would be critical to relieve pressure from the Soviet army fighting the Nazis in the east. Initially, a plan called “Operation Sledgehammer” called for an Allied invasion of ports in northwest France as early as 1943, but Roosevelt and Churchill decided to invade Northern Africa first and attack Europe’s “soft underbelly” through Italy.

D-Day was the largest amphibious invasion in military history. 

According to the D-Day Center, the invasion, officially called “Operation Overlord,” combined the forces of 156,115 U.S., British and Canadian troops, 6,939 ships and landing vessels, and 2,395 aircraft and 867 gliders that delivered airborne troops.

Allied forces carried out a massive deception campaign in advance of D-Day.

The idea behind the ruse was to trick the Nazis into thinking that the invasion would occur at Pas-de-Calais, the closest French coastline to England. The Allies used fake radio transmissions, double agents, and even a “phantom army,” commanded by American General George Patton, to throw Germany off the scent.

A D-Day dress rehearsal was a fiasco.

Two months before D-Day, Allied forces conducted a disastrous dress rehearsal of the Normandy invasion on an evacuated English beach called Slapton Sands. Known as “Exercise Tiger,” 749 U.S. troops lost their lives after a fleet of German E-boats caught wind of the mock invasion and torpedoed American tank landing ships. Survivors described the Exercise Tiger fiasco as more terrifying than the D-Day landing on Omaha Beach.

Germany had fortified France’s coast.

Anticipating an Allied invasion somewhere along the French coast, Adolf Hitler charged Field Marshal Erwin Rommel with fortifying Nazi defenses in France. In 1943, Rommel completed construction of the “Atlantic Wall,” Germany’s 2,400-mile line of bunkers, landmines and beach and water obstacles. It’s estimated that the Nazis planted 4 million landmines along Normandy’s beaches.

The U.S. shipped tons of supplies to the staging area in England.

Since Operation Overlord was launched from England, the U.S. military had to ship 7 million tons of supplies to the staging area, including 450,000 tons of ammunition.

Bad weather delayed the invasion.

Troops and supplies were in place by May, but bad weather delayed the launch date of the invasion. On June 5, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander in charge of Operation Overlord, decided that the invasion would happen the next day, in part because the weather was still rough and Nazi planes were grounded. That same day, 1,000 British bombers dropped 5,000 tons of munitions on Nazi gun batteries along the Normandy coast to cripple Germany’s defenses before the imminent invasion.

D-Day was carried out along five sections of beachfront.

Operation Overlord was divided among sections of beachfront along the Normandy coast code named, from West to East: “Utah,” “Omaha,” “Gold,” “Juno” and “Sword.”

Paratroopers launched the operation before dawn .

The D-Day invasion began in the pre-dawn hours of June 6 with thousands of paratroopers landing inland on the Utah and Sword beaches in an attempt to cut off exits and destroy bridges to slow Nazi reinforcements. American paratroopers suffered high casualties at Utah beach, some drowning under heavy equipment in flooded marshland, others shot out of the sky by Nazi snipers. The British and Canadian paratroopers met less resistance at Sword beach and quickly took two key bridges. 

More than 156,000 Allied ground troops stormed the beaches.
In wave after wave of thousands of landing ships, more than 156,000 Allied infantrymen stormed the five beaches. Facing them were around 50,000 Germans troops. Stormy seas made the landings incredibly difficult, with many regiments coming ashore far from their target destinations. At Omaha Beach, only two of the 29 amphibious tanks even made it to land on their own power (three were later transported to the beach). At Utah Beach, the American troops included 14 Comanche “code-talkers” who relayed critical tactical messages in their Native American tongue

The toughest fighting was on Omaha Beach.

At Omaha Beach, bombing runs had failed to take out heavily fortified Nazi artillery positions. The first waves of American fighters were cut down in droves by German machine gun fire as they scrambled across the mine-riddled beach. But U.S. forces persisted through the day-long slog, pushing forward to a fortified seawall and then up steep bluffs to take out the Nazi artillery posts by nightfall. All told, around 2,400 American troops were killed, wounded or unaccounted for after the fighting at Omaha Beach.

Canadian troops at Juno Beach captured the most territory.

Canadian soldiers also suffered terrible casualties at Juno Beach, battling rough seas before landing on a heavily defended strip of shoreline. Similar to the Americans at Omaha Beach, the first lines of Canadian troops were gunned down en masse by Nazi artillery—estimates put the initial casualty rate at 50 percent—before pushing beyond the beachfront and chasing the Germans inland. In the end, the Canadians at Juno captured more towns and territory than any other battalions in Operation Overlord.

All five beaches were secured by Allied forces by June 11. 

Five days after the D-Day invasion, troops immediately began installing two massive temporary harbors that had taken six months to construct back in England. All told, the Allies unloaded approximately 2,500,000 men, 500,000 vehicles and 4,000,000 tons of supplies at the temporary harbors over the remaining course of the war.

The D-Day invasion marked a turning point in the war.

The total Allied losses at Normandy are estimated to be at least 4,413. Total Allied casualties in the Battle of Normandy, which dragged on until August, topped 226,000. But thanks in part to the massive influx of troops and equipment, D-Day marked a decisive turning point in the war. Less than a year later, on May 7, 1945, Germany signed an unconditional surrender.  

SOURCE: History.com Dave Roos

Updated: June 3, 2022 | Original: March 12, 2019

In honor of this momentous occasion, I present a recipe I found in a recipe book called Old Timey Recipes.

Moonshine

“In making “mountain dew” or “white lightning” the first step is to convert the starch of the grain into sugar.  (Commercial distillers use malt.) This is done by “sprouting” the corn.  Shelled, whole corn is covered with warm water in a container with a hole in the bottom.  Place a hot cloth over it.  Add warm water from time to time as it drains.  Keep in a warm place for about 3 days or until the corn has 2-inch sprouts. Dry it and grind it into a meal. Make mush (or mash) with boiling water.  Add rye mash that has been made the same way, if you have it.

Yeast (1/2 pound per 50 gallons of mash) may be added to speed up the fermentation if you have it.  Without it, 10 or more days will be required instead of about 4. In either case, it must be kept warm.

When the mash gets through “working” or bubbling up and settles down, it is ready to run.  At this stage, the mash has been converted into carbonic acid and alcohol.  It is called “wash” or beer and it is sour.

The “cooker” consists of two main parts, mainly the top and the bottom.  After the mash is put inside, the top is pasted on with “red dog chop” or some other paste.  This is so that if the fire is too hot, the pressure builds up, the top will blow off preventing an explosion which might wreck the still.In the top of the cooker a copper pipe, or “arm” projects over to one side and tapers down from a 4 or 5 inch diameter to the same diameter as the “worm” (one or one and a quarter inch).To make the “worm”, a 20-foot copper pipe is filled with sand, the ends are stopped up, and it is wrapped around a fence post. The sand prevents “kinking” of the pipe.  The spiral or coil, called the worm, is then cleaned and attached firmly to the end of the arm in such a way that it is down inside a barrel.  The barrel will be kept full of cold, running water.  If the water runs in the top and out an opening in the bottom, it can circulate better.

A fire under the cooker causes the spirit to rise in the vapor along with the steam.  It goes into the arm and then the worm where the cold water causes condensation.  This is collected at the end in a container.

The first run off, or “singlings” is weak and impure and be redistilled to rid it of water and rank oils.

For the second run off, or the “doublings,” the cooker is cleaned out and the singlings, along with some water, is heated and run through again.

The first quart will be far too strong (about 200 proof) and towards the last it will be too weak (about 10 proof).  The skill is in the mixing to make it 100 proof.

If a tablespoon of the liquid does not “flash” or burn when thrown on the fire, there is not enough alcohol left to bother running any more.

To test for the right proof, a small glass vial is used.  When the small bubbles rise properly after the vial is tilted and when they set half above and half below the top of the liquid, then it is the right proof.  The liquor is then filtered through charcoal and is ready for consumption.

There are many ways of making moonshine.  This is just one way.  For other ways, check with your nearest revenuer.”

In honor of her historic flight, here are 10 fun facts you may not know about this courageous aviator!

She was only the second person to fly solo across the Atlantic… ever

Amelia Earhart is best known for being the first woman to complete the feat, but it wasn’t like a whole slew of men had accomplished the task before her. She was only the second person ever to do it! The first was Charles Lindbergh, who made the flight in May 1927. Earhart did it in May 1932. She completed the flight in just shy of 15 hours—quite the accomplishment for our list of inspirational female firsts, dating from ancient Egypt to today.

The first time she saw an airplane, she was unimpressed

After Earhart’s disappearance, several of her diary entries were published as a book called Last Flight. In one, she recalls the first time she ever saw an airplane. She was ten years old, visiting a state fair in Iowa. She remembers seeing “a thing of rusty wire and wood” that “looked not at all interesting.” Even after someone standing nearby told her that the contraption could fly, Earhart still admitted that she was more impressed with the fancy hat she had just purchased. Little did young Amelia know what the future held.

She wasn’t quite as ahead of her time as you might think

While the playing field in the 1920s and ’30s was far from even, Earhart was not actually the only successful female pilot of the time. Several of her contemporaries were also women who were just as good, if not better, fliers than she. Louise Thaden, for instance, set new records for women’s speed, altitude, and solo-endurance flying in 1929 and remains the only pilot to hold all three records at the same time. Another pioneer, Ruth Nicols, set women’s flight records for speed, altitude, and distance two years later. Earhart was, however, the first female pilot to gain such wide notoriety. Her contemporaries definitely count as amazing women in history that you may not have heard of.

She was hand-picked for the feat that would make her famous

After Charles Lindbergh’s trans-Atlantic flight, publisher George Putnam hoped to duplicate the success and massive media attention that Lindbergh had enjoyed. His opportunity came when a socialite named Amy Phipps Guest bought a small passenger plane with the hopes of becoming the first woman to be flown across the Atlantic. (She was not a pilot.) But her parents refused to let her take such a risky journey. So Guest turned to Putnam, requesting that he find “the right sort of girl” to make the trip in Guest’s stead. Putnam chose Amelia Earhart, capitalizing on her existing passion for flying as well as her resemblance to Lindbergh. He fed the press a nickname for her—”Lady Lindy”—that would become widespread.

Before her solo flight, she flew across the Atlantic once before…

…but it wasn’t enough for her. While Earhart’s solo flight across the Atlantic made her go down in history, it was her first trip that made her a household name. In 1928, Earhart made the journey orchestrated by Putnam and Guest, making her the first woman to travel across the Atlantic by air. But she didn’t do any of the flying herself. A man named Wilmer Stultz did. Earhart was far from satisfied with being just a passenger, admitting, “I was just baggage, like a sack of potatoes.” So, four years later, she decided to make the flight herself. That quote sums up her distaste for the journey, but it’s not the quote of hers that made it onto our list of our favorite quotes from inspiring historical women.

She didn’t like coffee or teaAccording to worldhistoryproject.org, Earhart was not a coffee- or tea-drinker. Her answer for keeping herself awake on her hours-long flights? A bottle of smelling salts. There is one hot drink that she did like, though—she revealed that, during her flight across the Atlantic, she enjoyed a mug of hot chocolate.

She encouraged other women to fly

In 1928, Earhart became the first-ever “aviation editor” of Cosmopolitan magazine. She wrote 16 articles for the magazine, several of which discussed the role of women in aviation. She wondered “Why Are Women Afraid to Fly?” and addressed reluctant parents in “Shall You Let Your Daughter Fly?” In 1933, after her famed solo Atlantic flight, she even wrote a letter to a 13-year-old female reader who wanted to become a pilot. Earhart told the young reader about the steps she might have to take to achieve her dream and offered some encouraging words. “As far as women’s opportunities in flying go, I think they will improve as they have in all industries,” she wrote.

She set three impressive records in the same year

In the first five months of 1935, Earhart became the first person—not just woman—to make three impressive flights. That January, she flew 2,408 miles from Honolulu, Hawaii, to Oakland, California, the first person ever to do so alone. In April, she flew from Los Angeles to Mexico City; less than a month later, she flew from Mexico City to Newark. None of those flights had ever been made alone before, by a man or a woman. You go, girl!

She may actually have survived her final flight

Tragically, Amelia Earhart’s fame is bolstered by her mysterious disappearance in 1937. Accompanied by her navigator, Fred Noonan, she set out to fly around the entire world. But on July 2, after the pair set out on the final leg of their trip, which would take them across the southern Pacific Ocean, the plane simply vanished. Though the government conducted a massive search—the most expensive of its kind at the time—no trace of them or their plane was ever found. This, of course, led many people to theorize that she had actually survived. In July 2017, a mysterious photo was discovered, appearing to show Earhart and Noonan on the Japanese-controlled island of Saipan, that seemed to prove those theorists true. However, the photo has no date, and its legitimacy has been seriously questioned, just like these other conspiracy theories still floating around about Amelia Earhart’s disappearance.

There’s a record-setting pilot named Amelia Earhart flying today

How’s this for poetic justice? In 2014, another woman named Amelia Earhart—yes, that’s her real name—became the youngest woman to fly around the world in a single-engine plane. She felt that considering her name and her similar passion for flying, she almost had a duty to do what her namesake couldn’t. “By recreating and symbolically completing her flight around the world, I hope to develop an even deeper connection to my namesake,” this Amelia Earhart claimed. We think her predecessor would be proud for sure—not to mention amazed by such an incredible historical coincidence!

Source: Meghan Jones @Readers Digest

In spring 1607, a group of 104 English men and boys landed on the banks of a large river in present-day Virginia and built a fort on hunting land that belonged to the Powhatan Chiefdom. They formed a small settlement—the first permanent English colony in North America—and named it Jamestown after King James I of England. Over the next several decades, Jamestown nearly collapsed multiple times as the colonists succumbed to disease and famine.

The settlement’s history is pocked with dramatic events and historical figures. Here are 11 eye-opening facts about Jamestown.

The Virginia Company funded the colonizing expedition.

In April 1606, King James I chartered the Virginia Company, a joint stock venture in London, to colonize the eastern coast of North America between latitudes 34° and 41° North (roughly between Wilmington, North Carolina, and Long Island, New York). The company was made up of merchants and entrepreneurs and was named for James’s predecessor, Queen Elizabeth I, the “virgin queen.”

In December 1606, the Virginia Company sent about 100 of its members on three ships—the Susan Constant, the Godspeed, and the Discovery—to establish the new colony of Virginia, with Jamestown as its capital. The company’s investors expected to recoup their funds from the discovery of gold and silver and/or a river route to the Pacific Ocean, which they could use to establish trade with Asia. (Neither was discovered.)

Captain John Smith arrived in Virginia as a prisoner.

John Smith, a prominent English soldier and adventurer, arrived in Virginia aboard the Susan Constant in shackles. Expedition leader Christopher Newport had accused Smith of mutiny on the four-month journey across the Atlantic and held him below deck for the remainder of the trip.

When they reached shore, the group’s leaders opened a box containing their orders from the Virginia Company’s leaders and learned that Smith was among those named to the governing council. At least one report says that Smith was saved from being hanged only through the efforts of the colony’s minister, Reverend Robert Hunt. Smith eventually assumed his council position.

Life in Jamestown was precarious.

At first, colonists were awed by the apparent abundance of food and beauty of the Virginia landscape. The river teemed with mussels and oysters and the forests were full of game. But they were less than adept at hunting and soon ran low on food. They drank contaminated water, contracted diseases like the “bloody flux” (dysentery) and possibly plague; their fort burned down, and they suffered through an unusually cold winter with little shelter. By January 1608, just 38 of the original 104 colonists were still alive.

The legend of Pocahontas saving John Smith’s life is probably not quite true.

In September 1608, Smith was elected president of the colony and is credited with a dramatic drop in the death toll. Smith led efforts to rebuild the fort, plant crops, and dig a well—but he also annoyed the Powhatan leaders.

While on a trading mission to obtain food for the colonists, he met 11-year-old Pocahontas, a member of the Pamunkey tribe and the daughter of Powhatan, chief of more than 30 Algonquian-speaking tribes of the Powhatan Chiefdom in territory called Tsenacomoco. Pocahontas was her nickname (translating to “playful one” or even “naughty child”); her given name was Amonute and she was called Matoaka by her family.

According to legend arising from one of Smith’s accounts (there are several), Smith had been kidnapped by Pocahontas’s brother on his way to ask the chiefdom’s leaders for food. He was taken before Powhatan, who decided to execute him. Pocahontas supposedly saved Smith just before the ax fell.

Historians debate the circumstances of the story. One theory suggests that Smith was instead part of a ritual inducting him into the Powhatan tribe, but he didn’t understand what was happening and assumed they wanted to kill him. Either way, Smith returned to Jamestown several months later and Pocahontas became a sort of diplomat between the colonists and the chiefdom, though relations remained strained.

Jamestown’s first colonists resorted to cannibalism to survive.

A new group of colonists arrived in August 1609 without the expected provisions needed to survive the winter; their ships carrying supplies for the whole colony had run aground in Bermuda. Now, Jamestown had more mouths to feed and even less to eat.

Hostilities over food and other issues with the Powhatan Chiefdom escalated that fall and erupted into what the English viewed as the First Anglo-Powhatan War. Powhatan ordered a siege of Fort James, preventing the colonists from venturing out to hunt, fish, or steal the tribes’ food. The English ran out of provisions and fresh water. They resorted to slaughtering their horses for meat, then ate dogs, cats, rats, and snakes; archaeological and written evidence from the time also indicates cannibalism. Colonist George Percy wrote that some ate their comrades and others “Licked upp the Bloode wch hathe fallen from their weake fellowes.”

The brutal winter of 1609-1610 became known as “the starving time.” More than half of the colony died by the spring, at which time Powhatan’s forces lifted the siege so they could begin planting crops. In May 1610, the crew of the Sea Venture—a supply ship that had been wrecked in Bermuda the previous year—arrived with a group of carpenters, shipwrights, farmers, and other skilled laborers. Then another ship arrived with a years’ worth of provisions, saving the foundering colony.

John Rolfe smuggled in seeds for Virginia’s first cash crop—tobacco.

Colonist John Rolfe—who later married Pocahontas—brought South American tobacco seeds to Jamestown, though it’s unknown where he got them. King James hated tobacco; Spain, which controlled Central and South America, threatened to punish anyone who sold their tobacco seeds to non-Spaniards with death. South American tobacco was considered sweeter and more desirable than the bitter tobacco typically smoked in North America.

Historians guess that Rolfe, a passenger on the Sea Venture, could have acquired the seeds while he was shipwrecked in Bermuda. Others speculate that Rolfe may have picked them up in Trinidad or another Caribbean location.

Rolfe’s successful cultivation of tobacco led to a commercial venture that saved Virginia financially. In 1617, tobacco exports to England totaled 20,000 pounds, then more than doubled the following year. Exports exceeded 1.5 million pounds by 1630.

Virginia’s House of Burgesses was the American colonies’ first democratically elected legislative body.

The House of Burgesses was the first English representative government in North America. It grew out of the General Assembly, established in 1619, which included a governor, council of legislators appointed by the Virginia Company, and two representatives (burgesses) from each of Virginia’s 11 communities. Only the burgesses were elected.

In 1643, the governor created a bicameral legislature by making the House of Burgesses its own law-making body. In the 18th century, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Patrick Henry all served as elected burgesses.

The first enslaved Africans arrived in Jamestown in 1619.

On August 20, 1619, an English privateer named the White Lion landed at Point Comfort, Virginia, with about 20 enslaved Africans. The ship had attacked the San Juan Bautista, a Portuguese vessel transporting the enslaved people to Mexico, and had taken its captives to Jamestown. The White Lion’s captain traded them “for victualls,” according to John Rolfe.

The Africans had lived in the Ndongo Kingdom in Angola, where the Portuguese mercenaries and their allies had kidnapped them. Their arrival in Virginia is viewed as the beginning of slavery in English North America (slavery existed in Spanish-controlled Florida already). The site where they landed is now Fort Monroe National Monument in Hampton, Virginia.

Women went to Jamestown as “tobacco brides.”

By 1621, Jamestown’s population was faltering, and women of child-bearing age weren’t eager to travel to a rough-and-tumble settlement where disease and famine had taken their toll. To boost their numbers, the Virginia Company placed an ad in London seeking “young and uncorrupt” women to marry Jamestown’s well-off colonists. The women were promised their choice of husbands and free passage to the colony; the husbands agreed to reimburse the company’s expenses with up to 150 pounds of tobacco. The arrangement drew 90 “tobacco brides” in 1620 and another 56 in 1621 and 1622.

Jamestown served as Virginia’s capital until 1699.

Jamestown’s buildings, including the fort, state house, and church, burned down several times and were rebuilt. In 1676, a century before the American Revolution, a planter named Nathaniel Bacon led an armed uprising against England’s colonial government in Virginia. His beef with the governor arose when he was denied military help to violently expel Native Americans from their lands bordering the colony. Poor farmers who opposed the governor’s high taxes fell in with Bacon’s revolt. After Bacon battled the Native people on his own, his forces drove out the governor and set Jamestown on fire.The rebellion was short-lived, but the damage had been done. The seat of the colonial government moved to Williamsburg in 1699. (The capital moved to its present site in Richmond in 1780.)Jamestown is under threat from climate change.Remnants of Jamestown’s original structures and more than 3 million artifacts have been unearthed by archaeologists, and the site is still an active dig. But rising sea levels, intense storms, and frequent flooding threaten the site, which sits on a low-lying tidewater island between a swamp and the James River. Engineers are holding the damage at bay with sandbags, sump pumps, and tarps, and an effort is underway to shore up an existing sea wall. In 2022, the National Trust for Historic Preservation placed Jamestown on its list of the country’s most endangered historic places.Source: Karin Crompton @ Mental Floss

Jamestown is under threat from climate change.Remnants of Jamestown’s original structures and more than 3 million artifacts have been unearthed by archaeologists, and the site is still an active dig. But rising sea levels, intense storms, and frequent flooding threaten the site, which sits on a low-lying tidewater island between a swamp and the James River. Engineers are holding the damage at bay with sandbags, sump pumps, and tarps, and an effort is underway to shore up an existing sea wall. In 2022, the National Trust for Historic Preservation placed Jamestown on its list of the country’s most endangered historic places.

Source: Karin Crompton @ Mental Floss

On May 3, 1937, the Hindenburg left Frankfurt, Germany, for a journey across the Atlantic to Lakehurst’s Navy Air Base. Stretching 804 feet from stern to bow, it carried 36 passengers and crew of 61. While attempting to moor at Lakehurst, the airship suddenly burst into flames, probably after a spark ignited its hydrogen core. Rapidly falling 200 feet to the ground, the hull of the airship incinerated within seconds. Thirteen passengers, 21 crewmen, and 1 civilian member of the ground crew lost their lives, and most of the survivors suffered substantial injuries. 

Survivors of the Hindenburg disaster far outnumbered the victims.

Anyone who has seen the graphic newsreel video of the Hindenburg plunging to earth in flames may be amazed to know that of the 97 passengers and crew on board, 62 survived. The disaster’s 36 deaths included 13 passengers, 22 crew members and one worker on the ground. Many survivors jumped out of the zeppelin’s windows and ran away as fast as they could.

The Hindenburg disaster wasn’t history’s deadliest airship accident.

Thanks to the iconic film footage and the emotional eyewitness account of radio reporter Herbert Morrison (who uttered the famous words “Oh, the humanity!”), the Hindenburg disaster is the most famous airship accident in history. However, the deadliest incident occurred when the helium-filled USS Akron, a U.S. Navy airship, crashed off the coast of New Jersey in a severe storm on April 4, 1933. Seventy-three men were killed, and only three survived. The 1930 crash of the British military airship R101, which claimed 48 lives, was also deadlier.

The Hindenburg disaster wasn’t broadcast live on radio.

Morrison was on the scene to record the arrival of the Hindenburg for WLS in Chicago, but he wasn’t broadcasting live. His wrenching account would be heard in Chicago later that night, and it was broadcast nationwide the following day. His audio report was synched up with separate newsreel videos in subsequent coverage of the Hindenburg disaster.

U.S. law prevented the Hindenburg from using helium instead of hydrogen, which is flammable.

After the crash of the hydrogen-filled R101, in which most of the crew died in the subsequent fire rather than the impact itself, Hindenburg designer Hugo Eckener sought to use helium, a non-flammable lifting gas. However, the United States, which had a monopoly on the world supply of helium and feared that other countries might use the gas for military purposes, banned its export, and the Hindenburg was reengineered. After the Hindenburg disaster, American public opinion favored the export of helium to Germany for its next great zeppelin, the LZ 130, and the law was amended to allow helium export for nonmilitary use. After the German annexation of Austria in 1938, however, Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes refused to ink the final contract.

The Hindenburg had a smokers’ lounge.

Despite being filled with 7 million cubic feet of highly combustible hydrogen gas, the Hindenburg featured a smoking room. Passengers were unable to bring matches and personal lighters aboard the zeppelin, but they could buy cigarettes and Cuban cigars on board and light up in a room pressurized to prevent any hydrogen from entering. A steward admitted passengers and crew through a double-door airlock into the smokers’ lounge, which had a single electric lighter, and made sure no one left with a lit cigarette or pipe.

A specially designed lightweight piano was made for the Hindenburg.

The Hindenburg’s owners, seeking to outfit their airborne luxury liner, tasked the renowned piano making firm of Julius Blüthner with building a special lightweight baby grand piano to meet the airship’s strict weight standards. The piano, which was made mostly of aluminum alloy and covered in yellow pigskin, weighed less than 400 pounds. It was only used during the Hindenburg’s first flying season, so it wasn’t aboard the ill-fated voyage.

The Hindenburg first took flight on a Nazi propaganda mission.

Although the Hindenburg was in development before the Third Reich came to power, members of the Nazi regime viewed it as a symbol of German might. Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels ordered the Hindenburg to make its first public flight in March 1936 as part of a joint 4,100-mile aerial tour of Germany with the Graf Zeppelin to rally support for a referendum ratifying the reoccupation of the Rhineland. For four days, the airships blared patriotic tunes and pro-Hitler announcements from specially mounted loudspeakers, and small parachutes with propaganda leaflets and swastika flags were dropped on German cities. (The referendum, approved by 98.8 percent of Germans, was hardly a squeaker.) Later in 1936 the Hindenburg, sporting Olympic rings on its side and pulling a large Olympic flag behind it, played a starring role at the opening of the Summer Games in Berlin. The airship, which had swastikas emblazoned on its tail fins, was such a symbol of Nazi power that it was subjected to constant bomb threats—including some before its final flight, which led to suspicions of sabotage in the disaster.

Dozens of letters carried aboard the Hindenburg were ultimately delivered.

Zeppelins pioneered airmail service across the Atlantic, and the Hindenburg carried approximately 17,000 pieces of correspondence on its final voyage. Amazingly, 176 pieces stored in a protective container survived the crash and were postmarked four days after the disaster. The pieces, charred but still readable, are among the world’s most valuable philatelic artifacts.

Goebbels wanted to name the Hindenburg for Adolf Hitler.

Eckener, no fan of the Third Reich, named the airship for the late German president Paul von Hindenburg and refused Goebbels’ request to name it after Hitler. The Führer, never enthralled by the great airships in the first place, was ultimately glad that the zeppelin that crashed in a fireball didn’t bear his name.

Source: Christopher Klein @ History.com

Melania Trump, née Melania Knauss, {original name Melanija Knavs}, was born April 26, 1970, in Novo Mesto, Yugoslavia [now in Slovenia]. She grew up in Sevnica, Yugoslavia, where her father sold cars and her mother worked in the textile industry. She attended the Secondary School of Design and Photography in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. She then studied Architecture and Design at the University of Ljubljana for one year before leaving to pursue a modeling career. She found success, first in Slovenia and later—under the name Melania Knauss—in Milan and Paris. In 1996 she was brought to New York by Paolo Zampolli’s modeling agency. In the course of her career, she appeared on the covers of several magazines, and in 2000 she modeled for Sports Illustrated’s popular swimsuit edition.  Melania is fluent in Slovene and English, and also speaks Italian, French, German and Serbo-Croatian.

Knauss first met Donald Trump in 1998 at a fashion industry party in New York City. He was then married to Marla Maples, whom he was to divorce in 1999. After a long courtship, Trump and Knauss were married on January 22, 2005, at his estate in Palm Beach, Florida. It was his third marriage and her first. In 2006 Melania gave birth to Barron William Trump, her first child and Donald’s fifth. In that year she also became a U.S. citizen. During this time, Melania continued her career. In addition to occasionally modeling, she marketed a line of jewelry sold by the QVC company and developed a line of caviar-based skin care products. Melania strongly believes in women equality and stands for it.

In 2015 Donald announced that he was entering the U.S. presidential race. When he made immigration a central issue, the details of Melania’s own immigration history were scrutinized, including allegations that she worked in the United States before acquiring the appropriate visa. Although Melania did not take a prominent role in the campaign, she spoke at the Republican National Convention in July 2016. Her speech initially drew praise but was later revealed to contain sentences and phrases similar to those spoken by Michelle Obama eight years previously. A speechwriter apologized for the seeming plagiarism.

Melania subsequently maintained a low profile until several weeks before the election, when she defended her husband after a series of women accused him of sexual assault and harassment. On November 8, 2016, Donald was elected president of the United States, defeating Hillary Clinton; he took office on January 20, 2017.

Melania initially made few appearances as first lady, and she did not move into the White House until June, after her son finished the school year. In 2018 she launched the Be Best initiative, which focused on children. Its main objectives included ending cyberbullying. In May 2018 she underwent an embolization procedure for a benign kidney condition. During her husband’s reelection campaign in 2020, Melania took a limited role, though she spoke at the Republican National Convention in August. Two months later both she and the president tested positive for COVID-19, but both recovered.

The Controversies

The Photos

When Donald announced his intentions to make a 2016 presidential bid for the White House, the normally private Melania was pushed into the national spotlight along with her past modeling work, some of which was considered racy. One of the first controversial images that began circulating online was her 2000 British GQ spread that had her lying naked on a fur blanket.

Not long after, more controversy followed. On July 30, 2016, the New York Post published nude photos of a then 25-year-old Melania, including one in which she lay in bed with another woman. Many of the photos were published for a men’s French magazine that is no longer in circulation.

Discussing the nude photos, Donald told The Post, “Melania was one of the most successful models and she did many photo shoots, including for covers and major magazines. This was a picture taken for a European magazine prior to my knowing Melania. In Europe, pictures like this are very fashionable and common.”

The Speech

While Donald Trump was campaigning for the 2016 presidential elections, Melania Trump gave a speech on July 18, 2016, at the Republican National Convention. The speech became controversial after it was found to be partly similar to Michelle Obama’s speech given at the Democratic National Convention in 2008. According to the Biography website, a staff writer took responsibility for the mistake:

Shortly thereafter, Melania staff writer Meredith McIver took responsibility for the gaffe, claiming she accidentally included part of Obama’s speech in Melania’s talking points. McIver issued the following statement explaining what transpired:

“In working with Melania on her recent first lady speech, we discussed many people who inspired her and messages she wanted to share with the American people. A person she has always liked is Michelle Obama. Over the phone, she read me some passages from Mrs. Obama’s speech as examples. I wrote them down and later included some of the phrasing in the draft that ultimately became the final speech.”

The LanguagesMelania Trump is a multi-linguist with good command over Slovene, English, German, French, Italian, and Serbo-Croatian. {Britannica}According to Stephanie Winston Wolkoff (“Melania and Me”) and Mary Jordan (“The Art of her Deal”), nobody has ever heard her speak anything but English and Slovenian, except for “Bonjour” and a few such basic expressions. {Imdb}

The Degree

She was embroiled in a controversy regarding her degree in architecture and design from the University of Ljubljana. This alleged false claim was mentioned on her official website. After this was highlighted by the media, it was removed.

Imdb made a larger issue with the claim:

On July 29, 2016, USA Today reported that Melania Trump’s personal website was taken offline. Previously, Melania’s bio-statement stated there that she received a “degree in design and architecture at University in Slovenia.” However, a biographer questioned the veracity of that claim by suggesting that Melania never completed her studies. At http://www.archive.org, the WayBack Machine has preserved a 2012 snapshot of Melania’s website, where she printed the now-disputed statement.

The Books

An early attempt to use the first lady platform for public good generated attention for the wrong reasons: In September, Melania sent a package of Dr. Seuss books to one deserving school in each state as part of National Read-a-Book Day. However, the gift was spurned by a Massachusetts elementary school librarian, who decried both the selection of her school and the choice of Dr. Seuss as a “tired and worn ambassador for children’s literature.”

The Unnamed Family Friend Revealing Secrets

The following month, the secretive first lady was profiled in Vanity Fair. According to the article, it was Melania who pushed a waffling Donald into announcing his candidacy for president, knowing that he would regret the missed opportunity if he didn’t. On the flip side, she supposedly never expected to find herself in the White House. “This isn’t something she wanted and it isn’t something he ever thought he’d win,” said one longtime friend of the couple. “She didn’t want this come hell or high water. I don’t think she thought it was going to happen.”

(I cannot believe she “pushed” him into something she didn’t want and never thought he would win.)

Personal Quotes

[on the accusations against her husband] I believe my husband. This was all organized by the opposition. Did they ever check the background of these women? They don’t have any facts. (…) That never happened. [Oct.2016]

My husband is real. He’s raw. He tells it like it is. [Oct.2016]

Don’t feel sorry for me. I can handle everything. [Oct.2016]

[about the attacks on her husband] The opposition doesn’t want to talk about WikiLeaks and the Emails and Benghazi and all the rest of the stuff – they don’t want to talk about it. So, they said: ‘Let’s do something to hurt his campaign’. [Oct.2016]

[defending her husband’s attacks on the Clintons] They’re asking for it. They started it. They started from the beginning of the campaign, putting my pictures from the modeling days [into the newspapers]. That was my modeling days and I’m proud of what I did. I worked very hard. [Oct.2016]

[on the media bias against Donald Trump] When did we hear or read any great stories about my husband – or about me? The true stuff. The facts. The real stuff. We never read the New York Times. They are bashing, bashing, bashing. [Oct.2016]

Sources: Biography, Brittanica, Imdb

In my opinion, Melania has only gotten more beautiful as time has passed.  Her look is softer somehow and she is by far the most gorgeous First Lady we’ve ever had.