Tag: history
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Jackie Mitchell Couldn’t Win
This article originally appeared on Lapham’s Quarterly‘s Roundtable blog on March 29, 2018. Click here to read the full story. On the first pitch of that April 1931 game, Chattanooga Lookouts pitcher Clyde Barfoot gave up a double to New York Yankees outfielder Earle Combs. Then Lyn Larry singled to centerfield, bringing Combs home. Now […]
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Paradise Lost
This article originally appeared on Lapham’s Quarterly‘s Roundtable blog on November 29, 2017. Click here to read the full story. Harman and Margaret Blennerhassett moved to the United States to lay low. Although some have suggested they left England to avoid scandal—Margaret was both Harman’s wife and his niece—their flight had more to do with […]
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They Keep Old Trains A-Rolling
This story originally appeared in the June 4, 2012 edition of the Charleston Daily Mail. CASS — When something breaks on a train at Cass Scenic Railroad, whether it’s as small as a bracket or as big as a boiler, the men and women in the park’s locomotive shops fix it. They have to. Chances […]
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The Quest Gets Tougher
This story originally appeared in the May 4, 2012 edition of the Charleston Daily Mail. Becoming a knight or lady of the Golden Horseshoe has never been a small feat, but winning the state history award now requires an even deeper understanding of West Virginia’s past. Every West Virginia student takes the Golden Horseshoe test […]
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W.Va. Knights, Ladies Honored: Rumors Surround Golden Horseshoe Artifact
This story originally appeared in the May 7, 2010 edition of the Charleston Daily Mail. This morning, State Schools Superintendent Steve Paine will dub more than 200 West Virginia eighth-graders “knights and ladies of the Golden Horseshoe” for their knowledge of state history. But there’s one question none of these adolescent history aces, or anybody […]
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Dogs, by Design
This story originally appeared in the February 2017 issue of Wonderful West Virginia magazine. Look around Old Hemlock, the historic Preston County home of writer and illustrator George Bird Evans and his wife Kay, and it doesn’t take long to get a sense of the lives that once filled these walls. There’s a folksy quilt […]
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Silver Bridge tragedy still haunts river city residents
This story originally appeared in the December 11, 2012 edition of the Charleston Daily Mail. Ben Cedar crossed the Silver Bridge three times on the day it fell. He was working as a Kirby sweeper salesman back then, and crossing the bridge was the fastest way to get across the Ohio River from his home […]
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A Creek Runs Through It
This story originally appeared in the September 2016 issue of Wonderful West Virginia magazine. The fish weren’t biting when Rick Burgess and his twin brothers Denny and Danny arrived at Spruce Knob Lake for a weekend camping trip in 1976. Denny suggested they try their luck in a nearby stream he’d heard about, so he […]
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Whatever happened to Randolph Scott?
This story was originally published in the Charleston Daily Mail on Friday, May 30, 2014. Donald Moore knows everything there is to know about film projectors. He’s sold bunches of them over his half-century running Moore Theater Supply Company on Lee Street. When a repair call came in, he could usually diagnose the problem over […]
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Renaissance man saved Daily Mail from bankruptcy in 1914
This story originally appeared in the Charleston Daily Mail on Friday, April 4, 2014 to mark teh newspaper’s 100th birthday. One hundred years ago this Sunday, a former Alaskan governor purchased a small bankrupt newspaper in Charleston, W.Va. The publication, known at the time as The News-Mail, had spent decades in and out of financial […]