Years before Hernán Cortés reached Mexico, a shipwreck left Spaniards on the Yucatán coast. Then two expeditions sailed from Cuba, meeting Maya communities, fighting at Champotón and carrying news of the Gulf coast home. When…
A sixteenth-century chronicle says Túpac Yupanqui sailed west, and the story helped inspire a Spanish voyage from Callao. Ancient DNA supports contact between South America and Polynesia, but it cannot identify an Inca…
The final drilling at Mount Rushmore took place on October 31, 1941. Four presidential faces were finished, but a vast hall remained a rough tunnel. The story of that ending includes the workers who carved…
As the centenary of Houdini’s death approaches, a surviving letter reveals the researcher behind the handcuffs. His escape routines, collection of spiritualist papers and contemporary death notices trace a career built on making…
On October 29, 1969, a UCLA programmer tried to log in to a computer at SRI. Two letters arrived before the receiving machine failed. The repaired connection marked an early ARPANET milestone, but the Internet…
On October 28, 1746, an earthquake devastated Lima and a tsunami overwhelmed Callao. The following months brought hunger, disease and a dispute over how to rebuild. The surviving records reveal both the disaster and the…
The Statue of Liberty was dedicated on 28 October 1886, but the poem that made it a symbol of welcome entered its pedestal later. Its 140th anniversary brings together French abolitionists, an Atlantic construction project…
In 1975, the crews of Salò and Novecento met on a Parma football pitch. Purple shirts, disputed reinforcements and a fifteen-year-old Ancelotti made the match unforgettable.
On October 27, 1904, a mayor steered the first subway train from City Hall to 145th Street. Crowds boarded that evening. The new line was a political and engineering achievement built by workers too often…
