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Bob Ford
4 min read
Missouri's Six-Star General [part 1]
One notable assignment was as a Lieutenant with the 6th-colored cavalry, the Buffalo Soldiers. They were sent to Cuba in support of Teddy...
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Bob Ford
4 min read
Look up in the sky, it's a balloon!
Living in 1783 Paris, the Montgolfier brothers are considered the Yuri Gagarin of ballooning. Their family owned a paper manufacturing...
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Bob Ford
4 min read
Quote from 'The Raven' and Dan Sickles: 'Nevermore!'
Seeing a little higher ground, the Peach Orchard, a couple hundred yards out, he decides, without orders, to move his troops. Big mistake...
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Bob Ford
3 min read
Amelia's impact
Not to be deterred, back in Atchison, Amelia, Grace and her favorite uncle secretly built their own roller coaster off the roof of the...
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Bob Ford
4 min read
A Christmas truce: Peach on Earth
Kaiser William II of Germany, for morale, decided to send hundreds of Tannenbaum trees to his troops who were in deep trenches enduring...
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Bob Ford
4 min read
Mustangs unseat Cowboys, Beavers devour Trees, they give a Dam!
Minor league baseball has some of the great wacky names and mascots: The Hartford Yard Goats, Lansing Lug Nuts, Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimps..
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Bob Ford
4 min read
Day two at the Battle of Shiloh: A rebel nightmare
That night both sides realized the enormous cost of the day's fighting. The dead and dying still littered the field as medical teams did...
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Bob Ford
4 min read
With Abe Lincoln's new proclamation, citizens rejoiced and turkeys scattered
To remind Americans how fortunate they were even when the country seemed to be falling apart with many families having a loved one on...
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Bob Ford
5 min read
Day one at the Battle of Shiloh: A Yankee nightmare
On April 6 and 7,1862, two armies fought on the banks of the Tennessee River in a bloodbath that saw as many casualties as the Battle of...
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Bob Ford
3 min read
Irena Sendler: Truly an amazing hero [part 2]
Even in Poland, Irena’s story had remained dormant and forgotten until the girls showed new light from a different generation...
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Bob Ford
3 min read
Irena Sendler: Truly an unsung hero [part 1]
Warsaw, Poland, had the largest population of Jews in Europe. In September of 1939 after swiftly conquering Poland and employing perverse...
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Bob Ford
4 min read
In the old West, a saloon door swings both ways
Back in the day, saloons weren’t fancy like on Hollywood sets. Tents, lean-to’s, dugouts and caves all dotted the West...
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Bob Ford
4 min read
John Brown: From Harpers Ferry to the hangman's noose [part 2]
The South considered Brown an enormous threat. Since Nat Turner’s Virginia slave rebellion in 1831 where 50-plus individuals from white...
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Bob Ford
4 min read
John Brown: The man who started the Civil War [part one]
That led to my first question when I visited Grady Atwater, the Director of the John Brown Museum in Osawatomie, Kansas, “Was John Brown...
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Bob Ford
4 min read
New Madrid: It is your fault!
I don’t know about you, but I’ve never been able to understand the Richter Scale. Why couldn't they just give us a 1-10 on how bad it was?
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Bob Ford
3 min read
Evel Knievel: Jumping into history
The Evel Knievel Museum in Topeka will soon be on the Vegas Strip or in a theme park, it’s that good. Movies, TV shows, pinball machines...
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Bob Ford
4 min read
How a K-State watering hole in Aggieville saved a downed airman's life
On May 10, 1972, Locher and his pilot Major Roger Lodge, part of the 555th, “Triple Nickel” squadron, took off with three other F4s...
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Bob Ford
3 min read
Remembering the Cronkites' impact
It was my first day of kindergarten at Eugene Field Elementary in St. Joseph and I was pretty excited. Mom dropped me off...
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Bob Ford
4 min read
Sir Winston Churchill: The right man, just in time
Churchill climbed steadily through the ranks in his formative years at both educational and military institutions.
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Bob Ford
4 min read
The James Gang: Before Joe Walsh
We got in a car, left Corinth for the short drive to the battlefield, which was along the same trails taken by the 40,000 attacking...
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