In the early dawn hours of November 9th, 1979, just a month and a half after the inexplicable Vela Incident, crews manning the underground missile silos along the American Great Plains received an urgent alert. Early warning satellites had detected that Soviet nuclear missiles were in flight, soon to rain apocalyptic fire and death upon [...]

This article was written by Dan Gillis, one of our shiny new Damn Interesting writers! On October 8th, 1871, the small Wisconsin logging town of Peshtigo was consumed by one of the most severe and woefully under-reported fires in human history. After a hot and dry year, with a mere two inches of rain falling [...]