Since 1977, Texans have considered chili con carne the official dish of the Lone Star state. While the chili's status has only been official in the Lone Star state for about 45 years, the iconic staple of Tex-Mex cuisine gained popularity in the ...
Clint Emerson Teaches Readers to Live ‘The Rugged Life’ With New Book
In today’s society, someone can tap the screen of a smartphone, and moments later, food or supplies arrive on the doorstep. Modern technology and the convenience it brings have made the average American lazy and complacent — so much so that they ...
1947 Texas City Disaster: The Deadliest Industrial Accident in US History
On the morning of April 16, 1947, a fire broke out in the hold of a cargo ship docked at the Port of Texas City. Crowds of spectators gathered to watch firefighters work and to watch oddly colored smoke plume from the ship. Then, in an instant, they ...
How Charles ‘Minnie’ Dole Created the National Ski Patrol
In the winter of 1936, Charles “Minnie” Dole, a veteran and outdoors enthusiast, recognized a problem. On a skiing trip on the Toll Road at Mount Mansfield in Vermont, Dole fell and broke an ankle. His friend and fellow skier, Frank Edson, assisted ...
Sky Cowboys: Irish and Native American Ironworkers Changed America
The best part of ironworking is the view. At least that’s what the men who fearlessly live their lives on the beam have said. For most onlookers, scaling the skeleton of a skyscraper that reaches 1,400 feet above the pavement may seem death-defying, ...
The Real-Life Outlaws Behind ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid hit the silver screen in 1969 and revived the guns-blazing legacy of two iconic outlaws of the American West. The movie starred Paul Newman as Butch Cassidy and Robert Redford as the Sundance Kid and won four Oscars ...
Chuck Wagon: The History of America’s First Food Truck
It’s not real cowboy coffee if you can’t float a horseshoe in it. In many instances, a mug of coffee was all the cattlemen had for a meal along the trail. After a long day in the saddle, exhausted cowboys set up camp only to immediately seek refuge ...
The Maxims: One Family Invented the Machine Gun and the Suppressor
On Nov. 1, 1914, Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim set the record straight in an article for The New York Times titled “‘How I Invented Maxim Gun' — Hiram Maxim. Outbreak of World-War Moves Veteran American Inventor to Describe for The Times His Epoch-Making ...
Aldo Leopold: A Conservationist’s Life in Pictures
On a bench along the Wisconsin River sat Aldo Leopold, a revered conservationist and outspoken advocate for wildlife science. On any given day in the late 1930s, Leopold, although in poor health, would venture to his writing haven he and his ...
6 Crazy Facts About the Man-Eating Lions of Tsavo
The sounds of drilling and blasting amid the big rock cliffs over the Tsavo River for the Kenya-Uganda Railroad didn’t scare off the big cats of Africa — it did just the opposite. At night when the bridge construction stopped, and the laborers ...
The Spider-Web: An Odd Fly-Fishing Rod Used Beyond WWI’s Trenches
Pvt. John Henry Hirst was determined to land a trout on the fly. It was nearing the summer of 1915, and the Germans had just launched a surprise offensive along the Western Front. While other British soldiers braced for impact from a German artillery ...
Meet Nat Love, the Most Famous Black Cowboy of the American Frontier
If Nat Love hadn’t learned how to read and write, then we’d never know one of the greatest Black heroes of the American frontier. We wouldn’t have learned his firsthand account of life growing up as a slave. We wouldn’t have the perspective of one of ...
5 of the Wildest Presidential Pets To Stay at the White House
If you’re expecting a list of all the presidents’ doggos and good boys, this isn’t the place for that. The most common presidential pets to have blessed the hallowed White House grounds have been dogs, cats, birds, and horses. Even President Joe ...
6 Reasons America’s First Daredevil Is a Dude Worth Remembering
Long before Evel Knievel, Travis Pastrana, or Smagical, Sam Patch was launching off Niagara Falls for money, wowing crowds, and, notably, not dying in the process. America’s first daredevil was the original extreme sports badass — and here are six ...
Tom Crean: 5 Facts About the Most Badass Explorer You’ve Never Heard Of
Rugged and tough, athletic and gritty, with a tobacco pipe clenched between his teeth, Tom Crean was the toughest Antarctic explorer you’ve never heard of. He spent more days in Antarctica than both Ernest Shackleton and Robert Falcon Scott. His crew ...
Carl Akeley: The Father of Modern Taxidermy
Carl Akeley had never been to Africa. Daniel Elliot, one of Akeley’s mentors and the curator for the zoology department of the Field Columbian Museum in Chicago, invited the 32-year-old in 1896 on an eight-month expedition to Somaliland. Akeley ...
Mountaineering in a Skirt: 4 Trailblazing Female Climbers
Sexism and ill-suited clothing didn’t stop these four 19th-century women from achieving greatness in mountaineering. One climbed two dozen peaks that hadn’t yet been named, most of them while wearing a wool skirt. Another bicycled up mountains ...
The San Diego Bottom Scratchers: The Men Who Hunted Sharks Barehanded
All 19 members of the San Diego Bottom Scratchers are dead. At the bottom of the ocean, a few hundred yards northwest of Boomer Beach and the Point in La Jolla, is an underground cemetery of tombstones and rock cairns. Inscribed are the names of some ...
The 2-Continent Photography Escapades of Martin and Osa Johnson
Martin and Osa Johnson relied on Boculy, the elephant tracker who joined them on many of their African safaris. They sometimes referred to him as the “Little Brother of the Elephant” because he knew the precise locations of the elephants no matter ...
The Trailblazer Who Pioneered Prospecting in the Canadian Wilderness
Conformity wasn’t an accepted word in the vocabulary of Kate Rice. The blond beauty had all the basics and intangibles to lead a safe and risk-averse life. She was born to wealthy parents, but her father, Henry Lincoln Rice, may be to blame for ...
Ishi, Pope, and Young: The History of Modern Bowhunting
In 1912, Ishi crouched behind a bush and put his index and middle fingers to his lips. He made a sharp, high-pitched kissing sound — a rabbit distress call. To his left, Saxton T. Pope watched in amazement as a small group of rabbits came within ...
Presidential Elections: 4 Little-Known and Unusual Stories
Election years throughout the more than 200-year history of the United States are often rife with contention, political upheaval, social unrest, and surprise. On Jan. 7, 1789, Congress required state electors for the nation's first presidential ...
Baghdad Angler’s Club: How a US Navy Sailor Brought the Fly Fishing to Iraq
When Joel Stewart arrived in Iraq in February 2005, he didn’t expect he would be able to fly fish in the middle of a combat zone. Fortunately, he came prepared and even started teaching others the sport. The Baghdad Angler’s Club was born. The US ...
John Wesley Powell and the 1869 Discovery of the Grand Canyon
Four fragile wooden rowboats, 10 months’ worth of provisions, and 10 courageous men set out on May 24, 1869, on an audacious expedition from the Union Pacific’s Green River Station in Wyoming en route for the “Great Unknown,” the last unexplored ...
