''All at once I was startled by the howling of members and rattling of ponderous chains ... he grasped me with Herculean strength and shook me violently, dragging me up and down the room ... the funniest appearance was their grotesque and ludicrous dresses, and all wore burlesque masks" a member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows recalled of his initiation in 1832.
When a man sleepwalks and falls out of his hotel window on the second floor, that's odd. When two men sleepwalk and fall out of the windows of their rooms on the second floor of the same hotel, that's very odd. But when three men in three years sleepwalk and fall out of their windows on the second floor of the same hotel, that's a mystery.
The influenza pandemic of 1918-1919, also known as Spanish Flu, claimed the lives of 675,000 Americans and as many as 40 million people worldwide. The roll among U.S. servicemen during WW1 was especially severe. "Of the U.S. soldiers who died in Europe, half of them fell to the influenza virus and not to the enemy. An estimated 43,000 servicemen died of influenza." No part of America escaped this pandemic.
Kevin Patrick, Pennsylvania Caves & Other Rocky Roadside Wonders. Stackpole Books, 2004. Photographs, maps, diagrams, visitor information, bibliography, index, 248 pages, paperback $19.95.
Hermann Wellenreuther and Carola Wessel, editors, The Moravian Mission Diaries of David Zeisberger 1772-1781. Penn State University Press, 2005. Maps, appendix, register of persons, index of place and river names and other geographical terms, bibliography, and index, 666 pages, hardcover $65.00.
Brian Lockman, World War II in Their Own Words. Stackpole Books, 2005. Photographs, timeline, maps, bibliography, index, 251 pages, paperback $19.95.
Vincent P. Carocci, A Capitol Journey: Reflections on the Press, Politics and the making of Public Policy in Pennsylvania. Penn State University Press, 2005. Photographs, index, 298 pages, hardcover $39.95.
David Valuska and Christian B. Keller, Damn Dutch: Pennsylvania Germans at Gettysburg. Stackpole Books, 2004. photographs, endnotes, index, 236 pages, hardcover $26.95.
Clark DeLeon, Pennsylvania Curiosities: Quirky Characters, Roadside Oddities & Other Offbeat Stuff, Second Edition. The Globe Pequot Press, 2004. Photographs, index, 242 pages, paperback $13.95 (ISBN 1548- 2987; 0-7627-3039-0).
In April 1968, syndicated columnist James J. Kilpatrick delivered the Detroit Historical Society's annual Lewis Cass Lecture. The lectureship was then twenty years old, and Kilpatrick followed such distinguished historians as Bruce Carron and Sylvester K. Stevens. Unlike his predecessors, Kilpatrick was a journalist, and so he took his inspiration from Thomas Carlyle's belief that "Histories are a kind of distilled newspapers."