The Movie Star And The President's Brother

In the early hours of August 5, 1962, something felt wrong in Marilyn Monroe’s Brentwood home.

Her housekeeper, Eunice Murray, woke around 3:30 a.m. and noticed a light still on beneath Monroe’s locked bedroom door. Monroe wasn’t answering. A psychiatrist was called and broke a window to enter.

 

Marilyn Monroe was found face down on her bed, nude, clutching a telephone receiver.

 

The official cause of death was a probable overdose of barbiturates. Still, the details were unsettling.

 

Why was the door locked? Who was she trying to call?

 

Years later, Murray said Robert Kennedy had visited Monroe that night and argued with her. She hadn’t mentioned him in her original statements or the  police reports.

 

No evidence ever confirmed the visit.

 

What remains are fragments: a locked room, a telephone in her hand, and a lot of unanswered questions.

 

The death was ruled an overdose. The questions never went away.

The Law That Made Al Capone

 

In 1919, the United States tried to outlaw alcohol.

 

The 18th Amendment was meant to curb drunkenness, crime, and moral decay. Supporters believed banning liquor would create a healthier, more orderly nation.

 

Instead, it created a black market. Alcohol didn’t disappear. It went underground. Speakeasies replaced saloons. Bootleggers replaced bartenders. Demand stayed high, and prices soared.

 

Someone had to supply it.

 

Criminal organizations stepped in, smuggling liquor across borders, hijacking shipments, and bribing police. Violence followed. Territory mattered. Enforcement became selective and corrupt.

 

In Chicago, one man thrived.

 

Al Capone didn’t invent organized crime, but Prohibition handed him an industry. His network supplied illegal alcohol to thousands of bars and clubs. The profits were enormous. The law that was supposed to stop alcohol consumption gave criminals structure, money, and power.

 

By the early 1930s, Prohibition was widely viewed as a failure. Drinking continued. Crime increased. Respect for the law collapsed.

 

In 1933, the amendment was repealed. Alcohol returned to legality.

 

None of it mattered. Al Capone was already a legend.

It's A Great Story, But --

We’ve all heard the story.

 

George Washington visits a Philadelphia seamstress. He sketches a flag. She suggests five-pointed stars instead of six. With a single snip of her scissors, Betsy Ross changes history.

 

It’s a great story. It just wasn’t widely told for nearly a century.

 

Betsy Ross died in 1836. During her lifetime, no newspapers mentioned her role in creating the American flag. No letters from Washington confirmed the visit. No official records backed the claim.

 

Then came 1876.

 

As the nation prepared to celebrate its centennial, Americans were hungry for patriotic stories. That’s when Betsy Ross’s grandson stepped forward with a family tradition. He said Betsy had told relatives about sewing the first flag after meeting Washington and other founders.

 

The story spread quickly. It was simple, visual, and had a cutting edge.

 

Historians noticed the problem. Flags were being made by many people during the Revolution. Designs varied. The government never officially credited Ross.

 

That didn’t stop the story. By the end of the century, Betsy Ross was a household name.

 

History didn’t prove the legend. It adopted it.

The Battle That Shouldn't Have Been Fought

On January 8, 1815, American and British forces met outside New Orleans in one of the most famous battles in U.S. history.

Weeks earlier, diplomats in Ghent had signed a peace treaty ending the War of 1812. But the news hadn’t crossed the Atlantic yet. There were no telegraphs. No fast ships. Armies fought based on orders that were already obsolete.

 

So the battle went forward anyway.

 

British troops attacked fortified American positions along the Mississippi River. They were cut down by artillery and rifle fire. The fighting was one-sided and devastating.

 

The British suffered heavy losses. The Americans suffered few.

 

When word finally arrived that the war had ended before the battle was fought, the victory stood. There was no undoing it.

 

Andrew Jackson emerged as a national hero. The country celebrated the win, not the timing. The battle transformed Jackson’s reputation and launched him toward the presidency.

 

The War of 1812 ended in peace. Its most famous battle was unnecessary.

 

History remembers the triumph, not the delays that made it possible.

They Made Him Vice President To Get Him Out Of The Way

 

By 1900, Theodore Roosevelt was a problem.

 

As governor of New York, he pushed reforms that angered party bosses. He attacked corruption, interfered with patronage, and refused to stay quiet. 

 

The political machine wanted him gone. So they promoted him.

 

Party leaders made Roosevelt vice president. It was widely considered the most useless job in American politics. Vice presidents had no actual power, platform, or influence. It was where careers went to stall.

 

Roosevelt accepted.

 

He campaigned hard, gave speeches, and then disappeared into the vice presidency exactly as planned. No one expected what came next.

 

In September 1901, President William McKinley was shot. Eight days later, he died.

 

The quiet office meant to neutralize Theodore Roosevelt made him president.

 

The men who tried to sideline him watched in disbelief.

 

They hadn’t removed a problem. They promoted it.

 

The Plan To Bring George Washington Back To Life

George Washington died at Mount Vernon in December 1799 after a sudden illness. The nation mourned as the body was prepared for burial.

Then Dr. William Thornton arrived with an idea.

Thornton was a physician, an architect, and a close admirer of Washington. He proposed a radical plan to bring the former president back to life.

He suggested warming the body, performing a tracheostomy, inflating the lungs, and transfusing lamb’s blood to restart circulation. The method reflected the experimental medicine of the era, when the line between science and speculation was thin.

Washington’s family refused, and the plan was never attempted.

Afterward, Thornton designed the U.S. Capitol and lived a respected life.

History remembers the president’s death. And mostly forgot how close someone came to trying to reverse it.

The Dream Lincoln Couldn't Shake

Not long before his death, Abraham Lincoln told a small group of friends about a disturbing dream.

In the dream, he wandered through the White House and heard muffled sobbing. He followed the sound into the East Room, where a body lay on a raised platform, guarded by soldiers. Flowers surrounded the corpse. Mourners stood silently nearby.

 

Lincoln asked the guard who had died.

 

“The President,” he said. “He was killed by an assassin.”

 

Lincoln rarely spoke about it publicly, but those close to him noticed he couldn’t shake it. The war was ending. Threats were everywhere. Lincoln knew better than most how fragile his safety was.

 

On April 14, 1865, he was shot at Ford’s Theatre. Days later, his body lay in state in the White House’s East Room—just as it had in the dream.

 

History remembers the assassination. It forgets that Lincoln had seen it coming.

The Speech That Wouldn't Stop The Bleeding

 

On October 14, 1912, Theodore Roosevelt stepped out of a hotel in Milwaukee to deliver a campaign speech.

 

He never made it to the car.

 

A man in the crowd raised a revolver and fired at point-blank range. The bullet struck Roosevelt in the chest.

 

It should have killed him.

 

Instead, it hit a steel eyeglass case and a thick, folded copy of his speech—over fifty pages long. The objects slowed the bullet just enough. It tore through the president’s body, but didn’t kill him.

 

Then he made a decision.

 

Roosevelt refused to go to the hospital. He waved off aides and climbed onto the stage. Blood seeped through his shirt as he spoke.

 

“I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot,” he told the crowd. “But it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose.”

 

He spoke for nearly ninety minutes.

 

Only after finishing did Roosevelt agree to medical treatment. Doctors later found the bullet lodged in his chest. It was never removed.

 

The wound healed. The speech became legend.

The President Who Disappeared

 

In October 1919, Woodrow Wilson suffered a massive stroke while in the White House.

 

It left him partially paralyzed, visually impaired, and unable to conduct normal business. For weeks, the public was told almost nothing. Official statements described the president as resting and recovering.

 

In reality, Wilson was incapacitated.

 

Cabinet members were kept away. Congress was shut out. Even the vice president didn’t know the full extent of Wilson’s condition.

 

All access to the president fell to his wife, Edith Wilson.

 

She screened documents, decided which issues reached her husband, filtered conversations, and determined who could see him. Matters she considered unimportant never made it past her desk.

 

Edith Wilson later insisted she made no decisions, only judgments about what was necessary. But for nearly a year, no one outside the White House could verify what the president knew, approved, or even understood.

 

The country had a president who couldn’t govern, and no constitutional process to replace him.

 

The situation ended in 1921, when Wilson left office. The episode exposed a dangerous gap in American governance. The Twenty-Fifth Amendment, clarifying presidential incapacity, would not exist for another four decades.

 

For months, the United States was led by a man who could not lead — and a woman no one had elected.

 

History calls it a recovery. Many historians call it something else entirely.

 

The War That Wasn't A War

 

The Black Hawk War of 1832 is often described as a brief frontier conflict.

 Many of the men who took part remembered it as something different.

 

When Black Hawk and several hundred followers—many of them women and children—crossed the Mississippi to return to their homes along the Rock River, American officials treated it as an invasion. Militia units were called up, and fear spread faster than facts.

 

What followed wasn’t a traditional war. U.S. troops and militia chased Black Hawk’s band across Illinois and the Wisconsin Territory. Skirmishes often involved hungry families searching for food. Villages were burned, and noncombatants were killed.

 

The last encounter at the Bad Axe River ended any doubt.

 

As Black Hawk’s people tried to cross the Mississippi, soldiers opened fire. Many were shot in the water. Others were killed on shore.

 

History called it a war. Soldiers on the ground called it a massacre.

 

Over five hundred women and children perished in a matter of months.

The Miracle That Started A Fire Zion City

At the turn of the twentieth century, John Alexander Dowie promised his followers something extraordinary.

He claimed divine protection. Divine healing. A city protected by faith.

 

That city was Zion City, Illinois, founded and controlled almost entirely by Dowie himself. Alcohol was banned. Doctors were discouraged. Prayer was the cure for illness, injury, and disaster. Dowie promised that faith would shield the city from harm.

 

Then the fire came.

 

In 1906 and 1907, Zion City suffered a series of devastating fires. Factories burned. Businesses were destroyed. Homes were lost. One major blaze wiped out the city’s lace factory, its largest employer.

 

There was no miracle.

 

The flames spread. Buildings collapsed. Dowie’s promises offered no protection.

 

The town rebuilt. Dowie did not.

 

Financial ruin followed the fire. His authority collapsed. His followers drifted away. Within a few years, Dowie was removed from power and disappeared from public life.

 

Faith survived in Zion City.

The buildings did not.

 

History remembered the lesson quietly: belief alone does not stop fire.

The Coffin Salesman Who Followed Epidemics

When epidemics swept through American towns in the 1800s and early 1900s, death often arrived faster than help.

And sometimes, so did the coffin salesman.

 

Newspapers noted the same figure appearing wherever disease struck hardest. He traveled quickly, hauling a dark wagon loaded with coffins of different sizes. He arrived early. Too early, some thought.

 

Families noticed he often showed up before official announcements. Before doctors. Before churches rang their bells.

 

He priced aggressively. He spoke calmly. He offered certainty when everything else felt unstable.

 

Rumors followed him from town to town. Some believed he had inside information. Others suspected instinct, experience, or pure opportunism. No proof ever surfaced. No crime was established. No charges were filed.

 

Still, people remembered.

 

They remembered the wagon waiting at the edge of town.

The coffin silhouettes stacked in the back.

The man who seemed to know where death would land next.

 

When the epidemic passed, he moved on.

 

History left him unnamed—remembered not for what he did, but for when he arrived.