Off the coast of Alabama, in about 60 ft of water, there is a forest. Not the ruins of a forest. Not scattered logs or the occasional fossilized stump, a forest. Upright cypress trees, root systems intact, bark still present on some of the trunks standing exactly where they grew. The trees are between 50,000…
In 1613, a 16-year-old boy named Mikuel Romanov was dragged from a monastery in Costa and told he would be the next Zsar of all Russia. The official history tells you the Romanovs were a noble Russian family who emerged from relative obscurity to found one of the most powerful royal dynasties in human history….
There is a mountain range in the eastern United States that built the American industrial economy. Its people dug the coal that powered every factory, every locomotive, every steel mill that made the country rich. And when those people tried to organize, tried to demand wages that would let their children eat, the corporations that…
There is a skull in the Penn Museum that should not exist. It is five thousand years old, from a site called Hasanlu in Iran. A paleoanthropologist named Janet Monge examined its teeth closely. She found them straight, white, and perfectly symmetrical across the arch. The jaw was wide with every tooth…
Rosa Cardo had lived in apartment 3B at 847 West Harrison Street for 18 years. She moved in when her youngest was three, raised three kids in that apartment, watched them graduate high school from that living room. Sent her oldest to college from that kitchen table. The building wasn’t fancy. Three stories, 12 units,…
Maria Aardo was born in Sicily in 1901, came to America in 1919, married Antonio Accart Senior in 1921, raised four children in a small apartment on Chicago’s west side. By 1971, she was 70 years old, widowed for 12 years, still living in the same neighborhood, still walking to the same market, still taking…
Although Mike Licardo wasn’t supposed [music] to be a priest, his family expected him to join the business, the Icardo family business, like his cousins, like his brothers. But Michael had a calling. At 17, he entered seminary. At 24, he was ordained. By 1950, at age 32, he was assigned to St. John’s Baptist…
Michael Licardo knew the rules. His uncle Tony had explained them when Michael was 10 years old. You are my nephew. That means some people will treat you special. Some people will fear you. Some people will try to use you. Don’t let any of it change who you are. Be a good kid. Get…
Maria Cardardo was born in Polarmo, Sicily in 1895. Came to America in 1917, 50 years ago, October 3rd, 1917. Through Ellis Island with $7 in her pocket, didn’t speak English, knew nobody, just 22 years old. With hope and determination, she found work in a garment factory. 12-hour days, six days a week. Saved…
Tokyo, Japan. October 1971. Bruce Lee walks into the most sacred dojo in the city when Japan’s most feared female samurai looks at him and says, “Chinese martial arts are children’s games compared to bushido.” What happens in the next 10 seconds doesn’t just silence the room. It begins a partnership that martial arts historians…
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