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[subtitle: The incredible (and indeed untrue) story of President Taylor's APE]It’s 1849, and a Gold Rush is drawing thousands of American prospectors to California, which was snatched from Mexico only a year earlier. The lay of the land is still poorly surveyed, the risks and resources of the terrain as yet largely unknown.So US President Zachary Taylor initiates a top secret government programme to speed-map the last piece in the puzzle of America’s Manifest Destiny...Predating the launch of Sputnik by over a century, President Taylor’s task force, consisting of civil engineers and frontiersmen, constructs a rocket in the Californian wilderness,...

An expert on the "Mona Lisa" says he has ascertained with certainty that the symbol of feminine mystique died on July 15, 1542, and was buried at the convent in central Florence where she spent her final days. Giuseppe Pallanti found a death notice in the archives of a church in Florence that referred to "the wife of Francesco del Giocondo, deceased July 15, 1542, and buried at Sant'Orsola," the Italian press reported Friday. Born Lisa Gherardini in May 1479, she is thought to have been the second wife of Del Giocondo, a wealthy silk merchant, with whom she had...

Scientists: 13th-C. Saint Died From Blocked Heart Researchers examining Saint Rose of Viterbo's mummified body have concluded that she died of a heart condition, rather than tuberculosis, as had previously been thought. (June 12) -- The miracles performed by Rose of Viterbo are well known to many Catholics. Legend has it the 13th-century Italian saint stood for hours on a raging pyre without being burned (a useful skill if you want to impress and convert pagans) and could foretell events. But exactly how this godly young prodigy died in 1252 at the age of just 18 or 19 -- some...

Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela, has exhumed the remains of South American independence hero Simon Bolivar to determine the cause of his death nearly 200 years ago. Mr Chavez suspects that Bolivar was murdered and did not die from tuberculosis, as most historians believe. Announcing the exhumation of his hero on Twitter, Mr Chavez said he "wept with emotion". "What impressive moments we have lived tonight. We have seen the bones of the Great Bolivar!" he wrote. "That glorious skeleton must be Bolivar, because his flame can be felt. Bolivar lives!" he added. A team of forensic pathologists and...

Famous Explorer's Relatives Deny Suicide Talk, Seek to Dig Up Body Meriwether Lewis conquered rivers, mountains and bears leading the Lewis and Clark Expedition across 8,000 miles of wilderness from St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean and back. Two centuries later, relatives of Mr. Lewis are having a tough time moving his remains down 80 miles of paved Tennessee highway from a national park to a forensic lab. Mr. Lewis's body rests beneath a 20-foot-high stone monument at milepost 385.9 of the Natchez Trace Parkway. A plaque next to the gravesite states that it was here, in 1809, three years...

A weakened economy has spurred Americans to revamp their household budgets from the ground up – even in the afterlife. With the average cost of a typical burial service hovering around the $10,000 mark, cremation has become the go-to burial practice for more than 41 percent of American deaths, The New York Times' Kevin Sack reports. There are a number of factors that could be behind the spike in cremations, with budget restraints landing at the top of the list. According to the National Cremation Research Council, crematory services cost a little more than $1,100 on average – a fraction...

We write under the weight of a great national calamity. Zachary Taylor, Twelfth President of the United States, expired, with perfect calmness, at Washington last night at 35 minutes past 10 o'clock, after a painful illness of little more than five days. His disease began with cholera morbus, which passed into a billious remiitant fever; he was treated with all the skills that science could form and affection render vigilant, as we learn, after the old system of practice, with purging, by calomel and otherwise, and blistering. Gen. Taylor had endeared himself to the American people to a degree which...

Forget the Twitter blog for emoji responses to how millennials feel about student debt. As the New York Daily News’ Alejandro Alba notes, the condescending approach didn’t generate much respect from Hillary Clinton’s target audience. The beleagured Democrat tried to shift attention to policy from the e-mail scandal, focusing on her $350 billion proposal to overhaul higher-education finances, which is in a shambles largely due to federal government intervention in the first place.Mission not accomplished: While some users thought the question was “relatable,” others believed the question was offensive and condescending.Many users began to reply to the tweet with...

Based on historical patterns, the next president is likely to be a GenXer. This is not good news for the many baby boomers running, or thinking about running, in 2016. When voters decide it is time to move the presidency on to the next generation, they keep electing presidents in that next generation, or they go on to the one that follows. They do not go back. Bill Clinton and George W. Bush were from the baby boomer generation. Barack Obama is from the Gen X generation (those born 1961 to 1981). If the pattern holds, the next president will...

On front page of website, no registration required.Shockingly, neither Carter nor the present occupant of the White House are choices...

Third Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Jonesboro, Illinois September 15, 1858 MR. DOUGLAS' SPEECH. LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: I appear before you today in pursuance of a previous notice, and have made arrangements with Mr. Lincoln to divide time, and discuss with him the leading political topics that now agitate the country. Prior to 1854 this country was divided into two great political parties known as Whig and Democratic. These parties differed from each other on certain questions which were then deemed to be important to the best interests of the Republic. Whig and Democrats differed about a bank, the...

The trouble with many of the past ratings of America's presidents is that the "consensus" has been arrived at by academics who act alike, do alike, and think alike. In the view of many, they are suspect of viewing history exclusively through the prism of Ivy League faculty lounge discourse. Alvin Stephen Felzenberg (Ph.D.) — who has taken a fresh and comprehensive look at the nation's chief executives in his book The Leaders We Deserved (and a Few We Didn't): Rethinking the Presidential Rating Game — does not challenge the credentials of the conventional historians. Rather, as he explains in...

Soldiers stationed in Corpus Christi with Zachary Taylor's army - from August 1845 to March 1846 - found that wild mustangs could be had cheap. Lt. Ulysses S. Grant, who was a fine rider and loved horses, soon had four mustang ponies. A free black man named Valere, whom he and another officer had hired to prepare their meals and keep their tent clean, was taking Grant's horses to water and they got away. Capt. W.W. Bliss, Gen. Taylor's adjutant, joked, "I heard that Grant lost five or six dollars' worth of horses the other day." The men seemed to...

Lord, Keep our Troops forever in Your care Give them victory over the enemy... Grant them a safe and swift return... Bless those who mourn the lost. . FReepers from the Foxhole join in prayer for all those serving their country at this time. ...................................................................................... ........................................... U.S. Military History, Current Events and Veterans Issues Where Duty, Honor and Countryare acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated. Our Mission: The FReeper Foxhole is dedicated to Veterans of our Nation's military forces and to others who are affected in their relationships with Veterans. In the FReeper Foxhole, Veterans or their family members should feel...

BROWNSVILLE, Texas (AP) -- A cactus-dotted stretch of land that lay forgotten for more than a century is where the National Park Service decided to put its first site dedicated to the U.S.-Mexican War. Appropriately, the 3,400-acre Palo Alto Battlefield is where U.S. and Mexican soldiers began a fight that led to Mexico losing half its territory and the United States gaining claim to the Southwest. However, the visitor's center, which officially opens Saturday, will feature displays reflecting both U.S. and Mexican perspectives on the war -- in English and Spanish -- in hopes of attracting visitors from both sides...