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.
On Tuesday, May 17, the UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) Task Force — now calling itself the Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group, or AOIMSG — took questions from Congress during a hearing on Capitol Hill, speaking ...
Tuesday morning, May 17, lawmakers attended the first congressional hearing on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, or UAPs, in more than 50 years in the veterans’ affairs hearing room on Capitol Hill. During the publicly broadcast session, Undersecretary ...
M — played by Dame Judi Dench — tells Pierce Brosnan’s James Bond in their first scene together, “I think you’re a sexist, misogynist dinosaur. A relic of the Cold War.” She maintains steely eye contact with 007 and tells him in her signature quiet, ...
“Strength through discipline! Strength through community! Strength through action! Strength through pride! Strength through insight!” students at Cubberley High School chanted at a rally led by history teacher Ron Jones in April 1967. It was the last ...
On the sweltering afternoon of Aug. 20, 1940, Jacques Mornard walked up to the gates of an imposing walled compound in Coyoacan, a verdant neighborhood in Mexico City. Despite increased security from an attack three months earlier, the guards allowed ...
In the early years of World War II, Nazi Germany secured a swift victory over Poland, and by June 14, 1940, the Nazi swastika waved over Paris. Just over a week later, France effectively surrendered to the Nazis in an armistice agreement. Hermann ...
Hundreds of letters from supportive and opposing constituents get sent to the president of the United States each year, and many of them ultimately end up in the National Archives. Regardless of politics, the White House encourages children and ...
On Aug. 8, 1925, droves of white supremacists filled the streets of Pennsylvania Avenue. Marching past monuments dedicated to the American ideals of justice, liberty, and equality, members of the Ku Klux Klan advocated for a "white Americans first" ...
For almost 80 years, the body of pilot Lt. Col. Addison Earl Baker lay in a mass grave in Romania; he'd been killed in a doomed air raid in an overlooked corner of World War II. In a bomber called Hell’s Wench, he led a flight of B-24 Liberators in ...
“The name’s Bond. James Bond.” Sitting on a tropical beach in the early 1950s, smoking cigarettes and drunkenly watching birds, Ian Fleming — English author of Casino Royale — wove his love of Jamaica into his novels, using the tropical paradise ...
Harry Houdini — the magician best known for his death-defying escapes underwater, underground, and in the air — played a significant yet little-known role in the American war effort during World War I. During his time as a magician, Houdini’s ...
As head of the US Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM) in 1983, Maj. Gen. Albert Stubblebine III commanded 16,000 service members. A veteran of the Vietnam War, Stubblebine ran full speed into the wall of his office on purpose. Greeted ...
During Gary Gauger's 1993 interrogation over his parents' murders, police officers tried to convince him of his guilt. In their narrative, Gauger had bludgeoned his parents to death and slit their throats in a drunken blackout. When Gauger refuted ...
Twenty days after the successful Navy SEAL raid on Usama Bin Laden's Abbottabad compound, Dr. Shakil Afridi waited on the Pakistan side of the Torkham border crossing. He needed to leave the country as soon as possible. The CIA had used him to gather ...
Mike Glover knows about survival. As a Special Forces soldier, Glover completed at least 10 combat tours and every special tactics training school the US Army could offer him before he left military service and turned his expansive training and ...
Brittney Griner, the superstar American basketball player who was arrested and detained by customs agents at a Moscow airport a week before Russia invaded Ukraine, could face up to 10 years in prison if a Russian court convicts her of drug smuggling ...
In a video circulated on social media, a Ukrainian fighter jet displays unmatched aerial skill as it weaves around unending salvos of bullets and anti-aircraft fire. The pilot banks against the wind as tracer rounds narrowly miss. The jet pulls a ...
RT America, a US cable news channel controlled by the Russian government, is ceasing production and laying off all its employees in a move that appears to be tied to operational struggles exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. DirecTV — RT ...
After trumpeting the delivery of Starlink satellite internet terminals to Ukraine Saturday, Feb. 26, Elon Musk appeared to have a sudden realization Thursday of the dangers that several electronic warfare experts have been warning about all week: His ...
On Thursday, Feb. 24, a video posted to Twitter showed a Vermont bartender pouring Stolichnaya vodka down the drip tray, joining other US citizens, state governors, and countries who have initiated a boycott of imported Russian liquors. “We ...
After Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the biggest attack on a European state since World War II, the US and dozens of other countries imposed an unprecedented package of sanctions that are devastating the Russian economy. But government ...
Jonna Mendez spent more than 25 years with the CIA through some of the most intense years of the Cold War. Since she retired in 1993, Mendez and her husband, Tony Mendez (portrayed by Ben Affleck in Argo), have written several books about their ...
Charles Manson and his murderous cult made their mark on American pop culture, even inspiring the 2019 Quentin Tarantino film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Decades after the cult gained notoriety, however, new evidence emerged suggesting that a ...
After Australian maritime researchers announced recently that they believe they have found a famous British ship that sank off the coast of Rhode Island during the American Revolution, US researchers said the claim was premature and illegal. For ...
At the Sundance Film Festival last month, Meg Smaker debuted her film Jihad Rehab, a documentary about Saudi Arabia’s yearlong rehabilitation program for jihadis captured and imprisoned by the US in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Since 2002, the US has ...
For 50 years, the Central Intelligence Agency and its German counterpart held the keys to a backdoor method of monitoring the secure communications of at least 120 governments all over the world. The CIA called the effort, which was code-named ...
As news of Blitz deaths hit the front pages of London newspapers in early April 1944, so did an odd story about a witch that clenched Winston Churchill’s jaw and almost sent cigar smoke pouring out of his ears. Authorities in London arrested ...
Lying 3 miles deep on the seafloor of the Pacific Ocean, Soviet submarine K-129 and its 98-man crew rested forever, or so the Russians believed. When the K-129 disappeared approximately 1,500 miles northwest of Hawaii in March 1968, the technology to ...
As thousands of Beatles fans sang impromptu choruses of “Give Peace a Chance” at political protests across the United States, the Nixon administration fumed at the effect singer John Lennon had on the younger generation. The 1972 election would be ...
Santa’s sleigh won’t be the only thing soaring through the sky this Christmas. NASA plans to launch the James Webb Space Telescope Christmas morning from French Guiana in northeast South America. Astronomers and astrophysicists hope the ...
