Posted in: Historic Miscellania Bacteria, Blood & Bad Dreams: The Unsolved Murder of Helen Knabe

How did one of Indiana’s pioneer investigators into STDs and rabies come to a gory end?  The mystery of Dr. Helen Knabe’s death remains one of the great cold cases in Indianapolis murder history.  So,...

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Posted in: Historic Miscellania Rufus Cantrell, Intruder in the Dust

In 1935, the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges weighed in on what mathematicians later called chaos theory: the results of some phenomena are simply impossible to predict, control, or even explain.  Take the freak reasoning of...

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Posted in: Historic Miscellania “Escaped Nuns are Myths”: The Roots of a Forgotten Riot

Did you ever hear about the riot sparked by horror tales, a Holiness preacher, and a renegade nun? On October 12, 1924, a man named Lindley wrote this postcard home to his aunt and uncle. ...

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Posted in: Historic Miscellania A Ku Klux Quaker?

Daisy Douglass Barr, Imperial Empress of the Women of the Ku Klux Klan, circa 1923. Women are often the most fascinating characters in Hoosier history. Their lives continue to be relevant to pressing issues today. ...

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Posted in: Historic Miscellania A Chinese Gravestone and a Murder Mystery at 207 Indiana Avenue

Crown Hill — America’s third-largest public cemetery — has a few hundred thousand stories to tell.  One of its more extraordinary burials took place in 1902, when a Confucian ceremony officially ushered Doc Lung, a...

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Posted in: Misc Mondays Misc Monday: The Russian Connection

Dos Equis might have “The Most Interesting Man in the World” doing beer ads today.  But in 1904, a colorful contender for that title came to the U.S. from Russia.  Are you ready for a...

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Posted in: Misc Mondays Misc Monday: Burning Joan of Arc: The 1927 Indianapolis Arson Scare

John F. Hagel’s Mission-style church in the mid-1920s. (Source: “25th Anniversary, St. Joan of Arc Parish, Indianapolis, Indiana, 1921-1946.”) On May 13, 1920, Pope Benedict XV canonized Joan of Arc, the 19-year-old French soldier and...

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