Jan 8, 2024

The River Queen had a storied history even before she arrived in St. Louis in 1964, including having been featured in several movies, most famously in Gone With The Wind. She was built in 1923 and named The Cape Girardeau, and after several name changes over the years, she was brought to St. Louis as a tourist...

Dec 18, 2023

Back in the 1880s, one super-fan of baseball named Henry Lucas decided there should be more sporting options in St. Louis, and so he started his own team. In fact, he started his own baseball league to compete with the National League and the American Association. Thus was born the Union Association League and The...

Dec 11, 2023

There was a time when, if a steamboat sank or exploded, as they often did on the Mississippi, nothing could be done to recover the wreckage. But in 1842, an industrious man named James Eads found a way to change all of that and to build his fortune in the process by inventing a diving bell. Just press play to hear the...

Nov 27, 2023

In the later part of the nineteenth century, shipping was very much a nightmare. Samuel Cupples and his business partner Robert Brookings were tired of moving their goods to far away rail yards before they could even be put on trains. In 1894, they came up with the revolutionary idea of building warehouses right above...

Nov 20, 2023

This episode of Here's History explores an idea that never quite caught on, namely prefabricated houses made entirely out of steel. The idea seemed enticing, creating maintenance free homes that cost much less than a standard home, which could be built quickly. But, The Lustron Corporation of Columbus, Ohio went broke...