The Committee of Secret Correspondence is one of those names that sounds like they should be on Double Secret Probation or something. However, when you look at their purpose, the name makes sense. The

The Minuteman statue in Lexington, Massachusetts is said to represent Captain John Parker, who died on this day. Except Parker wasnt a minuteman. He also probably didnt look like the man in the stat

So obviously this Josiah Bartlett isnt the guy on The West Wing, in part because President Bartlet is fictional. (Okay, maybe entirely because of that.) But he is supposed to be a direct descendant o

Since the early 1700s there have been several Fort Johnsons on James Island in the Charleston Bay. The curious thing is that few people know what happened to each fort as it was destroyed, with the ex

John Henry Hobart was born on this day in 1775, and he came that close to dying on the same day in 1830, on September 12. We read once that, statistically, men tend to die before big dates, e.g. bir

Lets talk state vexillology. Believe it or not, there are people who are very passionate about state flags. (Not me, he said, about to go into a mini-rant.) Most states have a very utilitarian purpos

We mentioned a while back that John Adams had siblings, as did George Washington. This wasnt one of them, and as far as anyone can tell, its more of a cousin-type relationship. William Washington es

As the winter of 1775 approached, George Washington had to think about the state of the siege of Boston. In short, housing and clothing thousands of men in a New England winter is a very different pro

The riflemen in the Continental Army were a special breed of soldier. They werent subject to all the drudge work that most of the other soldiers had to endure. The downside to this is, they knew it a

The Independence Hurricane from September 2 is still going strong, and on this day it made landfall again, this time in Newfoundland, Canada. The devastation was immense, and perhaps would have been w