history – TheStoryIstheThing

‘Rosa Parks’ feet did not hurt her’

February 10, 2021

The actual story of the stalwart moment Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of an Alabama bus in 1955 was far more powerful than a supposed frail, tired old Black lady sitting where she shouldn't.

Remembering the Faces of Miners Lost at Big Branch

April 5, 2020

It is has been ten years since the Upper Big Branch mine Disaster in West Virginia, which killed 29 miners, from their 20s to their 60s. Here is a video remembrance of their faces, as still-grieving families brace once more for Don Blankenship to rub salt in their wounds.

The West Virginia Disaster that Changed Coal Mining Forever

December 4, 2018

A half-century later, one of the worst labor disasters in American history still reverberates in the courts and in the lives of families of the 78 lost miners from a conflagration for which no one has ever been held responsible.

ELIZABETH and GEORGE: Part 1: A life on the streets

October 8, 2018

She called herself Elizabeth and she was a woman of the streets. But Elizabeth was also — or had been — named George. And she had a surprising former life. | PART 1

ELIZABETH and GEORGE: Part 2: He was a musician on the go and then gone

October 8, 2018

George was an up-and-coming singer-songwriter who had connected with Ric Ocasek of The Cars. Then, George was gone like the wind. Ocasek turned to Rolling Stone to find out: "Where's Geo?"

ELIZABETH and GEORGE: Part 3: A long-sought reunion, but with whom?

October 8, 2018

The long-sought reunion between the three sisters and their long-lost sibling was set to take place after a quarter-century apart. But who would they be meeting: Elizabeth? Or George?

How the pawpaw was found, got lost and was found again

October 8, 2018

Pawpaws have been rediscovered and celebrated in a host of products from pawpaw beer to pawpaw popsicles. But how did the custardy fruit get forgotten since a pawpaw patch today might have been one cultivated ages ago by American Indians?

A surprise encounter with a shrunken replica of the Vietnam War Memorial

October 3, 2018

What happens when you shrink Maya Lin's Vietnam War Memorial down to a third its size, making a replica featuring all 57,661 names and then ship the thing across the country and bolt it together, say, one day beside the Ohio River? Oddly, the exact same thing that happens with the real thing in Washington, D.C.