Black Tom Island, a major munitions depot in NY Harbor was the scene of a massive explosion in July of 1916 that was originally blamed on lit smudge pots.

Before copyright laws lyricists and musicians freely took popular tunes and used them for their own purposes, as Francis Scott Key did with the popular British drinking song The Anacreontic Song.

In 1859 farmer Lyman Cutler discovered a pig gorging itself on his potatoes so he shot it. The sequence of events that would follow would bring the United States and Great Britain to the edge of war.

You may know that Coca-Cola actually started out with its main selling point being that of its cocaine content, but did you know that the drink still uses coca leaves?

In 1943 President Roosevelt allowed the formation of a combat unit comprising mostly of interned Japanese-Americans which would later distinguish itself in combat in France and Italy.

Amid the tension and competition of the space race the Soviet Union attempted to steal America's thunder by landing a probe on the moon at the same time as the Apollo 11 landing.

During Prohibition bootleggers filtered industrial alcohol in order to remove poisonous additives, only to see the government react by increasing the levels of poison, thus creating an epidemic of alcohol poisoning.

At the height of the Cold War the US decides to construct a nuclear missile base under the ice sheet of Greenland, without anticipating an unfortunate consequence.

In June of 1865 the CSS Shenandoah, a Confederate ship, continued to pursue and attack Union whalers in the Bering Sea despite the Civil War being officially over.

Host Joe Moniaci takes a peek into a long-forgotten bomb shelter in New York's Brooklyn Bridge.

In a long-forgotten passage from civil rights history, Elizabeth Jennings fought for her and other "colored persons'" rights to ride streetcars in New York City after she had been thrown off of one in July 1854.

Veterans and footage from the invasion of Normandy provide the details as to just how treacherous the initial landings and fierce the German defenses were their with underwater mines, 88-milimeter artillery rounds and machine gun emplacements.

Private Hal Baumgarten and his fellow GIs are victims of a deadly German ambush as they advance inland from the beach at Normandy. As he is about to be evacuated a sniper hits him, then gets "exterminated" by an unexpected friend.

A formidable German defense in Caen forces the Allies to unleash a massive aerial bombardment on the key city, with both the enemy and allies forced to seek cover.

As Lance Cpl. Stan Matulis is moving house to house clearing out the Germans in the Falaise pocket during the Battle of Normandy he and his comrades take a break in a home. After passing a window a couple of times he is shot in the neck by a sniper.

As the Germans were withdrawing from Normandy and Belgium many regrouped in Holland and attacked the Allies, inflicting many casualties. As the body count grew so did the letters that had to be written to family members of the deceased.