Tax Day quotes, cartoons, history and links, including the 1967 cartoon version of The Beatles’ “Taxman”

A Look Back at Franklin, America’s lost state.

How computational power — or its absence — shaped World War I and II naval battles.

Abraham Lincoln was shot on April 14, 1865 and died the morning of the 15th — here’s history, contemporaneous articles and illustrations, and an eyewitness report from 1956.


Stopping the spread of disease during and after the American Revolution — fumigating people with smoke was thought to neutralize smallpox: “a judicious and proper application of fire and smoke is the true means appropriated for the destruction and utter extinction of the most malignant sources of disease.”


A History of Pizza — Samuel Morse, inventor of the telegraph, described pizza in 1831: “It altogether looks like a piece of bread that has been taken reeking out of the sewer.”

And in the animals are just like humans category: “Elephants Console One Another By Genital Touching and Sympathetic Noises.”