The Man Who Was Phileas Fogg

Written by William Bryk on October 19, 1999. Posted in Breaking News, Posts

Born in Boston in 1829, George Francis Train had been orphaned before his fifth birthday when his parents and siblings died of yellow fever in New Orleans. He sailed back alone, "with a shipping tag pinned to his coat as if he had been a bag of coffee," and was raised by his grandmother and
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Who Protested the Malathion?

Written by William Bryk on October 12, 1999. Posted in Breaking News, Posts

The Mayor of the City of New York and his Office of Emergency Management had just sprayed me and my neighbors with malathion to kill mosquitoes believed to carry St. Louis encephalitis. This happened four times in 15 minutes. Now the same geniuses tell us the illness is really West Nile fever. Its symptoms, though
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The Collyer Brothers of Harlem

Written by William Bryk on October 5, 1999. Posted in Breaking News, Posts

Two years after the Collyers’ arrival, African-Americans began settling in Harlem in large numbers. By 1925, Harlem had been transformed from an upper-middle-class white suburb into the center of African-American life. But while nearly all the other white folks left, the Collyers did not. Dr. Collyer died in 1923; Mrs. Collyer in 1929. Their sons
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Mr. Dana of The Sun

Written by William Bryk on September 21, 1999. Posted in Breaking News, Posts

The Sun was founded in 1833 by Benjamin Day, a 23-year-old printer. He produced a racy, sensational paper, focusing on "fires, theatrical performances, elephants escaping from the circus, women trampled by hogs." In August 1835 (as recounted in a recent issue of McSweeney’s), Day began a series of bogus articles recounting life on the moon
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The Wickedest Man in the World

Written by William Bryk on September 7, 1999. Posted in Breaking News, Posts

All my life long thou hast plagued me and affronted me. In thy name, with all other free souls in Christendom, I have been tortured in my boyhood; all delights have been forbidden unto me; all that I had has been taken from me, and that which is owed me they pay not in thy
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The Battle of Brooklyn

Written by William Bryk on July 28, 1999. Posted in Breaking News, Posts

It was June 19, 1776, and the British had come. McCurtin, a private in the Continental army, later wrote that the “whole Bay was full of shipping as it ever could be” and the masts of the ships moored by Staten Island “resembled a forest of pine trees with their branches trimmed.” Gen. Sir William Howe, commanding His Majesty’s forces
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