Terrible But True: Awful Events in American History

by Dinah Williams

Overview

Terrible But True invites readers to explore some of the weird, fascinating, scary, and altogether strange stories from America's past.

Think American history is all boring battles and snooze-worthy old dudes? Think again!Welcome to Terrible But True, where you'll dig deep into America's forgotten past to uncover some creepy, disgusting, and just plain bizarre stories. From America's first serial killers and deadly vampire-like diseases to haunted ghost ships and vicious river pirates, our nation's history is weirder than you could have ever imagined. So dive in and prepare to be shocked, because sometimes the truth is even stranger than fiction.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780545909730
Publisher:	Scholastic, Inc.
Publication date:	10/25/2016
Sold by:	Scholastic, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	192
Sales rank:	975,733
File size:	127 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	12 - 18 Years

About the Author

Dinah Williams is an editor and children's book author, who is fascinated by odd and unusual stories. Her nonfiction books include Abandoned Amusement Parks; Secrets of Walt Disney World; Haunted Hollywood; and Spooky Cemeteries, which won the 2009 Children's Choice Award. She lives in Cranford, New Jersey, with her husband and daughters, who hate all things scary. Visit her online at dinahwilliams.com.

Table of Contents

Introduction 2

Part I Revolutionary War and the New Nation (1764-1828) 4

1775 The Disease-Ridden Prison Ships of the Revolutionary War 6

1775 Benedict Arnold's Long, Deadly March 9

1776 Daniel Boone's Rotten Luck 12

1780 The Butcher of Buford's Massacre 16

1788 Corpse-Stealing Doctors Cause a Riot 18

1793 Philadelphia's Yellow Fever Plague 21

1797 The Ohio River's Most Vicious Pirate 24

1799 George Washington, Nearly Superhuman, Killed by a Sore Throat 27

1804 The Poison Pills of Lewis & Clark 30

1812 The Embarrassing Defeats at Lacolle 32

1814 Britain's Merciless Burning of Washington, D.C 35

Part II Western Expansion and Reform (1829-1859) 38

1835 Andrew Jackson: Too Mean to Die 40

1836 Victory or Death at the Alamo 43

1843 The Many Ways to Be Killed on the Oregon Trail 46

1846 Cannibalism on the Trail to California 49

1851 Olive Oatman's Kidnapping and Life with the Mohave 53

1857 The Mountain Meadows Massacre 56

1859 John Brown, Harper's Ferry, and the Failed Slave Revolt 59

Part III Civil War and Reconstruction (1860-1869) 63

1860 The Packed Pemberton Mill, A Recipe for Death 64

1863 Worked to Death Along the Transcontinental Railroad 67

1863 The Ghosts of Gettysburg 70

1863 The Ugly Civil War Draft Riots in New York City 72

1863 Starving Mothers Riot for Bread in Richmond 75

1864 Andersonville Prison: "Can This Be Hell?" 78

1864 Lincoln Under Fire at Fort Stevens 81

1865 Abraham Lincoln's Funeral Train 83

1865 More than 1,500 POWs Perish on the Sultana 85

1865 The Stomach-Churning Filth of the Meatpacking Industry 88

1866 The Dismal Leper Colony in Paradise 91

1868 The Million Unvisited Graves on Hart Island 94

Part IV The Gilded Age and the Progressive Era (1870-1913) 96

1871 The Raging Fire That Incinerated Chicago 97

1874 The Plague of a Billion Locusts 100

1880 White House Doctors Kill a President 103

1884 Cholera and the Fear of Being Buried Alive 106

1888 The Great White Hurricane 109

1890 The Appalling World of Baby Farms 112

1891 Tuberculosis and the Last American Vampire 114

1892 The Pinkertons' Deadly Bungling of the Homestead Strike 116

1893 The Living Exhibits at the World's Fair 118

1900 Hundreds Burn in the Hoboken Docks Fire 121

1900 Galveston, America's Deadliest Natural Disaster 123

1903 Six Hundred Die in Ten Minutes in "Fireproof" Theater 126

1903 Westinghouse and Edison's War of the Currents 129

1904 The Fiery End of the General Slocum 132

1906 San Francisco's Trifecta of Terror: Earthquake, Fire, and Plague 134

1907 Typhoid Mary, Serving Up Death One Family at a Time 137

1908 The Shocking Truth of Child Labor 139

1910 The Short, Dark Life of a Coal Miner 142

1911 Jumping to Escape the Flames at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory 145

1912 A Bullet in His Chest, Teddy Roosevelt Keeps Talking 148

Part V The Great War and the Jazz Age (1914-1936) 151

1915 Eight Hundred Drown Ten Feet from the Dock in the Chicago River 152

1918 One Million American Soldiers in One Battle 155

1918 Spanish Influenza Infects a Quarter of All Americans 158

1919 The Gooey Molasses Flood of Boston 160

1919 Charles Ponzi, the Godfather of Financial Schemes 163

1920 Radium, A Cure That Makes Your Jaw Fall Off 166

1921 Machine-Gunning Miners at the Battle at Blair Mountain 168

1925 The Tri-State Tornado's Trail of Death 171

1927 The 23,000-Square-Mile Mississippi River Flood 173

1928 The Deadly Collapse of the St. Francis Dam 176

1935 Black Sunday, a Devastating Dust Storm 179

1936 Dr. Freeman's Lobotomobile 182

Selected Sources 186

Photo Credits 186

About the Author 188

Editorial Reviews

""What’s more alluring than a catastrophe? This easy-reading collection of calamities should attract both browsers and researchers like a magnet."" -Booklist

From the Publisher

11/01/2016
Gr 5 Up—Williams introduces readers to a variety of tragic events in chronological order. Famous and lesser-known topics are represented, including Revolutionary War prison ships, Philadelphia's Yellow Fever epidemic, the San Francisco earthquake, the Boston Molasses Flood, and 56 other occurrences. While many incidents are indeed tragic, others seem out of place. For instance, there is a chapter dedicated to the mercury-laden pills provided to the members of the Lewis and Clark expedition, but no injury or fatality came about from them. In relating the plight of Chinese railroad workers, Williams discusses their strike demands, but no mention is made of any resulting deaths until an inset at the end of the chapter. Likewise, scale is also an issue (the failed assassination attempt on Andrew Jackson in relation to other events that involved the deaths of many people). The chapters are extremely brief, and the narrative is overall uninspiring except for the quotations by witnesses. Readers should instead check out Jim Murphy's The Great Fire and An America Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793 and Steven Otfinoski's The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire: Core Events of an Industrial Disaster. VERDICT Despite the promising premise and the introduction of many little-known tragic events, the flat narrative and the brevity in detail make this a secondary purchase.—Margaret Nunes, Gwinnett County Public Library, GA

School Library Journal