CHRISTOPHER KLEIN

What happens when Cold War politics collide with the cola wars? In the 1989, it produced one of the strangest deals in business history when  PepsiCo signed an agreement with the Soviet Union to trade its cola syrup for Russian vodka—and a decommissioned fleet of rusting warships, including 17 attack submarines. It’s a wild tale,…

Never have National Football League fans and players shivered as much as they did on January 10, 1982, when the Cincinnati Bengals hosted the San Diego Chargers in the AFC Championship Game. With a kickoff temperature of nine degrees below zero and a minus 59-degree wind chill, what would be dubbed the “Freezer Bowl” was…

When globetrotter and travel writer Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore returned home to Washington, D.C., from a trip to Japan in 1885, she was smitten. Everything about the mysterious land in the Far East had enchanted the young woman, but the country’s flowering cherry trees had cast a particular spell on her. “The blooming cherry tree is…

On April 15, 1865, a shroud of grief descended upon Boston as the city awoke to learn of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. The bells of Boston’s churches tolled for an hour at the news of the president’s murder, and the assassin’s older brother heard every peal of anguish as he stared at his cold breakfast. For…

Boston’s Fort Warren housed Confederate POWs during the Civil War, but it was no Andersonville. Only 13 Confederate prisoners out of the more than 2,000 rebels who were imprisoned within its walls died during the Civil War — or just over half of 1 percent, compared to the 12 percent mortality rate for Confederates in…

The National Trust for Historic Preservation today named the Boston Harbor Islands among the 11 most endangered historic places in the U.S. As I write about in my book The Boston Harbor Islands: Discovering the City’s Hidden Shores, these 34 islands have had a front-row seat to some of the seminal moments in American history:…

Donald Trump is not the first American president to fail to attend the formal swearing-in of a successor. In 1801, there was no tradition for a president who lost re-election appearing at the inauguration of the winner. And John Adams wasn’t about to set it. Adams, the second president of the United States, departed the…

I had the pleasure of speaking about the strange history of the Biosphere 2 with the Late Night Live program in Australia on Tuesday morning. Well, Tuesday night there. Or maybe it was Wednesday? Who knows. Maybe it was garbage day. Can’t tell anymore. Maybe like the Biospherians who spent two years inside a glass…

It was great to take a break from our “new normal” last week and talk about more fun subjects, like say, Irish immigrants attacking Canada 150 years ago with BYU Radio’s Constant Wonder program. Kudos for the Canadian Bacon and South Park clips in the intro! Listen here: https://bit.ly/3awaa4q

This St. Patrick’s Day, hoist a book with that Guinness! Happy to announce that When the Irish Invaded Canada is now available in paperback from Anchor Books. When the Irish Invaded Canada tells the incredible true story of the Irish-American Civil War veterans who undertook one of the most fantastical missions in military history—to seize…