Originally, football was all scrimmage in a no-pass zone, with rules and machismo sensibilities dismissing passing as wimpy. The game was a grinding ground war, a smash-up derby for big galoots, with occasional breakaway survivors fleeing the pack. The revolutionary who gave football an air …
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Showing: 11 - 20 of 82 RESULTS The Daily Beast: Forgotten History
She Was the Steve Bannon of the Great Depression
When she smiled her face could look cherubic, with wide eyes and chubby cheeks conveying a calm she rarely felt. In fact, she became famous by twisting her face with such disgust and issuing such cutting remarks she could have been the Gold Medalist in …
When Nixon’s Henchmen Plotted to Assassinate a Journalist with LSD
For those who think the future of press freedom is facing unprecedented challenges, a reminder of the time Nixon aides hatched a plot to kill a troublesome journalist. What happens when America’s president is insecure, touchy, prickly, vengeful, narcissistic, and paranoid, more obsessed with crushing …
The Millionaire Who Took on McCarthy
A melodramatic mix of half-truths, rants, and innuendoes made Wisconsin’s junior Senator Joseph P. McCarthy powerful and intimidating. By 1951, he had cowed some of the Senate’s all time all stars, including Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, Estes Kefauver, Robert Taft, J. William Fulbright, and Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. The rare …
The Man Whose Dream Became Israel
Theodor Herzl was a man with an idea that once seen to fruition would change the world dramatically. But his reasons for creating the modern Zionist movement were never as black and white as people made them out to be. History tries correcting the tricks memory …
When The New York Times Defended Putting a Black Man in the Bronx Zoo
One of the biggest attractions in New York City in 1906 was none other than an African man bought and placed in a cage with apes. Just as the late Stephen Jay Gould updated Charles Darwin by arguing that humans evolved through fits and starts—“punctuated equilibrium”—social progress also is …
The English Settler Who Ate His Pregnant Wife
Starvation was a constant problem in the early years of colonization—and in multiple tragic cases some settlers took to eating each other. Thanksgiving. It’s about family. It’s about gathering “together to ask the Lord’s blessing,” as we sing in our all-American, non-denominational, way. It’s about …
When The Electoral College Took Down a Winner
Richard Mentor Johnson was a war hero and Jackson protégée whose contradictory life as a slaveowner carrying out a public interracial marriage cause faithless electors to reject his candidacy and send the vice presidency to the Senate. To call America’s ninth vice president Richard Mentor Johnson …
The Myth Behind the First Cleveland Indian: Louis Sockalexis
Faster than Cobb, stronger than Ruth—and one of baseball’s most tragic figures. Could embracing Louis Sockalexis, the game’s first Native pro, help heal one of its deepest racial rifts? Of course, baseball is just a game. It’s about balls and bats and bases. It’s about scores …
The Rhino Who Won an Election by a Landslide
With two of the most unpopular candidates ever, many voters are weighing a protest vote or staying home. Citizens of São Paulo once took a different approach—and elected an animal. As the day approaches to choose between America’s two historically unpopular major party nominees, some Americans still …