Sudden, severe storms can rake the Great Lakes at any time of year.
The Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum estimates that from 1875 to 1975, somewhere around 6,000 commercial ships sank on the Great Lakes — and those are only the ones that were documented. Some experts say the actual number could be more than four times that. Between one-fourth and one-third of them happened in November.
Communes, seeing how they are often made up of individuals who possess a similar innate trait (generously called “self-interest”), always fail.
The first Utopia
In the 1830s, our still-new republic was a land of religious chaos. New denominations arose and populist movements formed as some folks grew disillusioned with the status quo or frustrated by economic woes.
It was with that as the setting that French philosopher Charles Fourier’s views on communal living began to gain popularity: that everyone should share equally in both the work and the wealth of a community. Fourier-inspired communes called phalanxes began to spring up from New York to Texas.
Standing in a dusty corner of the eclectic Memorial Museum in Mansfield is part of a tree trunk, dark with age, measuring about 8 feet long and a foot wide.
Chapman had always been drawn to the woods and wilderness, intrigued by Native people, wildlife, and the many medicinal plants the vast forests provided. A kind, gentle, religious man, he was also a born storyteller. And he respected all animals, both domestic and wild — he was never known to have carried a weapon. Historian Henry Howe, who traveled Ohio during the early 19th century, while Johnny was still alive, even related this story:
On February 17, 1871, the Ohio State Journal published a letter to the editor describing what the writer said was a dire situation of neglect at the graveyard at the Ohio Penitentiary: “Their bodies are buried by days, to be dug up at night by unforbidden resur
Students enrolled in the departments of medicine at various Ohio medical schools soon discovered the answer to their quandary lay inside the gates of the local graveyards.
Baaa-DUM, ba-DUM, ba-DUM, ba-dum-dum-dum! Native Ohioans — college football fans and non-fans alike — grow up with that rousing snare-and-brass intro on autumn Saturdays and automatically know what’s coming.
So — now that you’ve got the song ringing in your head — read on for the story of Dorothy Sloop.
Dorothy (known as “Dottie”) was born into a musical family in Steubenville in 1913. “Her grandfather owned a music store, and her father played the pump organ and was the theater organist for silent movies,” says her nephew, Fred Ruland of Marietta.
If you’ve ever flown over Ohio and points west, you cannot help but notice the checkerboard of farm fields and woodlots — the corn-and-soybean plaid that’s repeated westward until it finally exhausts itself at the edge of the Pacific Ocean.
In 1774, the Ohio Country was a vast land populated by a host of Native American tribes, and the British Crown wanted to use it as feudal property — owned by the king — where occupants would pay a tribute to live there. A young Thomas Jefferson was having none of it. He penned a pamphlet denouncing the plan — he hated the thought that only aristocrats and kings and churches could own land in America. More on that in a bit.
Americans obviously celebrate July 4, Independence Day, honoring the date on which the Continental Congress officially adopted Thomas Jefferson’s statement declaring the American colonies’ independence from Britain. This year, as part of the official U.S.
“They transformed a resolution into a binding act of commitment,” says David Zavagno, executive director of Lake Erie Heritage Foundation. “That moment — where individuals stepped forward and put everything on the line — is at the heart of our event.”
Zavagno says that the July 4 action was important, but it was the delegates’ actual signing of the declaration that was an act of mutiny against Britain and its king. “Signers picked up a pen and risked their life, knowing they would be forced to pick up a sword to defend it,” he says.
The early hours of February 22 were typical for a Sunday morning in rural Highland County.
“Over long periods of time, small changes in stress in the earth can tip a fault over the edge,” Brudzinski says. “How many cocked guns are left and how many faults are really primed? There is no way to know; we really can’t anticipate when and where they will occur. Our ability to forecast earthquakes is not great.”
While Hillsboro may have been the site of the most recent shaker, Brudzinski says that Anna, a town of 1,500 people between Dayton and Lima, is the earthquake epicenter of the Buckeye State.
The name of John Solomon Rarey is known to most folks in the small Franklin County town of Groveport; there’s a statue of him at the community’s recreation center, after all, and his brother William was one of the original founders of the village (which at the time was called Rarey’s Port).
Rarey cemented his international reputation as one of the greatest horse trainers the world has ever known when he won a bet with England’s Earl of Dorchester in 1852. The earl, it so happened, owned a horse named Cruiser, reported to be the fastest in England. But Cruiser also was vicious — a living fury who kicked two grooms to death, and who, as if in a rage, snapped an inch-thick iron bar with his teeth as numerous witnesses watched. He was considered too dangerous to race.
