Lauren Coontz is a staff writer for Coffee or Die Magazine. Beaches are preferred, but Lauren calls the Rocky Mountains of Utah home. You can usually find her in an art museum, at an archaeology site, or checking out local nightlife like drag shows and cocktail bars (gin is key). A student of history, Lauren is an Army veteran who worked all over the world and loves to travel to see the old stuff the history books only give a sentence to. She likes medium roast coffee and sometimes, like a sinner, adds sweet cream to it.
Enraged and unpredictable, President Richard Nixon drunkenly milled about the Oval Office, ranting at anyone within earshot. The Watergate impeachment proceedings had infuriated and humiliated Nixon a month earlier. During his final days in office, ...
In the end, some hippies resorted to using bombs to make sure everyone understood their message of peace and love. Beginning in 1969 as a Vietnam War protest group, the Weather Underground Organization stood out for its brazen acts of domestic ...
New York City hosts many strange things. Perhaps one of the more remarkable discoveries was the shipwreck of a Revolutionary War-era vessel excavated from under the foundations of the World Trade Center at ground zero. Ten years after 9/11, while ...
OFFUTT AIR FORCE BASE, Neb. — In a World War II bomber hangar that once housed the Enola Gay and Bockscar B-29 bombers, which dropped the two atomic bombs on Japan, forensic anthropologist Traci Van Deest, Ph.D., and her team of ...
When he boarded United Airlines Flight 91 out of Newark, New Jersey, FBI Special Agent Bobby Chacon was only thinking about dive gear. It was the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, and the Michigan State Police had requested assistance from Chacon’s New York ...
In 2010, the Department of Defense purchased 9,500 first-edition copies of Anthony Shaffer’s book, Operation Dark Heart: Spycraft and Special Ops on the Frontlines of Afghanistan — and the Path to Victory. The Pentagon paid $47,500 and then told the ...
Spread out across six miles, the Iraqi Republican Guard's elite 2nd Al Medina Armored Division lumbered across the Iraq desert Feb. 15, 1991. Two US Air Force A-10 Warthogs passed overhead, providing attractive targets for the 10,000 Iraqi soldiers ...
Marine Staff Sgt. Darin Taylor Hoover Jr., who mostly went by Taylor to his friends and "Bubba" to his sisters, was only an elementary school student at the time of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. “When 9/11 happened, he was only 11 years ...
If your pipes are leaking, you call a plumber. President Richard Nixon's White House understood that maxim — except its plumbers carried black duffel bags and guns instead of monkey wrenches and PVC pipes. FBI agents arrived at the offices of Dr. ...
Shot in the groin and dying, Abu Zubaydah arrived in Thailand in April 2002. The FBI nursed him back to health, showed him kindness, built rapport. Combined with a solid “we-know-all” approach, the FBI was thus able to gain valuable, actionable ...
When the US sent Henry Morgenthau Sr., a Jewish lawyer and businessman, to be ambassador to the Ottoman Empire in 1913, he had very little understanding of the culture. He did not comprehend the Muslim Turks' enmity toward the Christian Armenian ...
In March 2001, six months before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the Taliban dynamited two massive Buddha statues hand-carved into a stone mountainside in Afghanistan's Bamiyan province over 1,400 years ago. In one instant, the Islamist militants ...
While deployed to Afghanistan, US Army Special Forces officer Jim Gant self-medicated with alcohol and prescription medications, and he kept classified information in the open. Gant's girlfriend, Ann Tyson, left her respected position with The ...
Contrary to popular belief, the photo above does not show the US Embassy building in downtown Saigon. Rather, the picture shows a UH-1 "Huey" helicopter landing on the roof of a CIA safe house in downtown Saigon at 22 Gia Long Street, April 29, ...
No, Thonis-Heracleion is not Atlantis, although it truly is a lost city. The ancient Egyptian port was inhabited for hundreds of years before Alexander the Great founded the nearby city of Alexandria in 331 B.C. after his army's conquest of ...
The Greenbrier resort in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, has been a luxury haven for diplomats, presidents, and foreign dignitaries since 1778. That legacy of wealth and prestige made the resort the ideal candidate to house members of Congress ...
A colossal explosion shook the streets of Beirut just over a year ago when a cache of ammonium nitrate, stored since 2014, detonated in the city's port. UN officials later blamed Lebanese government authorities for the accident, claiming they had ...
At the height of the Cold War, President John F. Kennedy gave his blessing for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the CIA to cook up a plot for removing the newest dictator in the communist bloc: Fidel Castro. With a broad range of ideas — rumors included ...
Sometimes, when the bad guys escape justice, the United States doesn’t just let them go. The US occasionally oversteps its borders to commit acts of extraordinary rendition, or snatching criminals and terrorists and dragging them back to the US for ...
The CIA has never been short of harebrained operations and wacky ideas. In the 1960s, some of the missions and gadgets sounded like something Acme Corporation would create. Operation Mongoose — an attempt to remove Fidel Castro by killing or deposing ...
President Harry S. Truman signed Executive Order 9981 on July 26, 1948, desegregating the armed forces of the United States. The order to desegregate the military — today viewed as a cornerstone of civil rights progress — represented a massive change ...
Manuel Antonio Noriega ruled Panama with secret police, torture, and intimidation. Noriega actively funneled drugs to the United States, Colombia, Guatemala, and Mexico, was in bed with the Medellin cartel of Colombia (Pablo Escobar’s gang) — and was ...
Thursday marks the 10-year anniversary of one of history's most harrowing hate crimes — the massacre in Norway. In multiple acts of violence on July 22, 2011, Anders Behring Breivik killed 77 people, marking Norway's worst atrocity since World War ...
With the launch of American billionaires into space a mere 10 days apart, these latest giant leaps in “space tourism” are reminiscent of the Cold War-era exploits of the X-15 rocket plane's gutsy group of 12 test pilots. In the early years of the ...
On March 8, 1971, boxers Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier faced off in a bout billed around the world as the “Fight of the Century." The legendary fight, which took place at Madison Square Garden in downtown New York City, went a full 15 rounds, and both ...
Perhaps as many as 10,000 ships were sunk in battle on the high seas during World War II. Most remain undiscovered, but some of the most famous ships lost in the conflict have been found in their final resting places. Their sunken hulls are ...
Few pirates in Caribbean lore stand taller than Blackbeard. So when Black Rifle Coffee Company produced a roast with a bold and dark bite, the name Blackbeard’s Delight was a perfect fit. But who was the real Blackbeard? Born sometime around ...
Grunts in Vietnam, like those in most wars, didn't really have a chance to ask why they were there. They spent their days hot and sweaty; carrying a rifle, bullets, water, grenades, and maybe a radio or medic bag; and patrolling, simultaneously ...
In May 1941, the German Kriegsmarine revealed its newest weapon: the battle cruiser Bismarck. Germany’s largest battleship to date, the Bismarck packed heavy, carrying eight 15-inch guns in four turrets affectionately named Anton, Bruno, Cäsar, and ...
On the morning of June 25, 1876, two great Native generals, Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, prepared between 1,500 and 3,500 warriors for battle. Crazy Horse was an Oglala Lakota war chief. Sitting Bull of the Hunkpapa Lakota provided guidance and ...
