THG's Year in Review

In 1891, British humorist Jerome K. Jerome wrote that “Whenever five or six English-speaking people meet round a fire on Christmas Eve, they start telling each other ghost stories.”

A Busy Week

Solenopsis invicta, the “Red Imported Fire Ant”, native to South America, has proven a tenacious and destructive pest in the United States, costing Americans billions of dollars every year. That is why, in the late 1950s, the United States embarked on an all out war against the six-legged menace.

There is legitimate controversy over which ship was America’s first true battleship. But the Navy answers that question relatively clearly- USS Indiana was, from the outset, called "Battleship Number One."

On October 7, 1864 a battle between a Confederate commerce raider and a US sloop of war brought the nation to the brink of a foreign war.