The Incidents Log

The Incidents Log where history meets real-life moments that inspire, move, and stay with you

09/03/2026

Story of innovation: Julia Morgan became California’s first licensed female architect in 1904. After helping rebuild San Francisco following the 1906 earthquake, she designed more than 700 buildings—including the famous Hearst Castle.

08/25/2026

Winema Riddle crossed dangerous lines during the Modoc War, working to communicate between her people and the U.S. government. She warned officials about an attack and risked her own safety to help afterward. Years later, Congress honored her service with a military pension.

08/23/2026

Auguste Piccard wanted to study the upper atmosphere, so he built a pressurized aluminum gondola and climbed into it. In 1931, he and his companion reached 15,781 meters—the highest altitude humans had ever reached at the time—despite dangerous technical problems.

08/22/2026

Three explorers vanished in the Arctic after a failed 1897 balloon expedition. In 1930, their abandoned camp was found with diaries and photographs, finally revealing clues about the mysterious final journey of Salomon Andrée and his companions.

08/21/2026

Eunice Newton Foote studied something remarkably important in 1856: how gases respond to heat. Her experiments revealed carbon dioxide’s heat-trapping properties, but her contribution was largely forgotten until historians brought her work back into the spotlight.

08/18/2026

Po’Pay achieved something remarkable in 1680: he coordinated a rebellion across roughly 400 miles without modern communication. His leadership united Pueblo communities and forced Spanish forces out of New Mexico, creating 12 years of Indigenous control.

08/17/2026

Story of a hidden photographer: Raoul Minot was an ordinary department-store employee who secretly photographed occupied Paris during World War II. Arrested and deported, he died in 1945. Decades later, investigators identified him and revealed his remarkable photographic record.

08/16/2026

Story of adventure: Louise Arner Boyd inherited a fortune but chose to explore the Arctic instead. She photographed Greenland, mapped remote regions, and searched for Roald Amundsen. During World War II, her Arctic expertise became valuable to the U.S. government.

08/15/2026

Story of a hidden hero: Elizebeth Friedman was a pioneering American codebreaker who helped expose N**i spy networks during World War II. Her team intercepted thousands of messages, including a warning that helped protect the RMS Queen Mary and thousands of people.

08/14/2026

“While everyone else went to war with guns… this British officer carried a sword.”

His name was John Churchill, but soldiers called him Mad Jack.

During World War II, he went into battle carrying a Scottish broadsword.

And he wasn't pretending.

In 1941, during a raid on German positions in Norway, Churchill reportedly played his bagpipes as his men went into battle.

Then came the grenades, gunfire and explosions.

But Churchill kept leading from the front.

He eventually became a highly decorated Commando officer.

In a war dominated by machine guns, Mad Jack Churchill somehow made a medieval sword part of his battlefield identity.

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