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A West Virginia Town Applied For Soviet Foreign Aid, and Other Lesser Known American History Facts

Khalid Elhassan February 21, 2020 33 min

Vulcan - McDowell County — Vulcan miners in 1919. The Sangha Kommune

1. Solving the Casino Bombing

Much of the Harvey Casino extortion plan – particularly the bomb design – was genius. However, Birges was no criminal mastermind, and sloppiness proved his undoing. Among other things, he used his own van to deliver the bomb. An alert clerk at a nearby hotel had jotted down the license plate, and that put investigators on to Birges.

His choice of accomplices was even worse: one of his own sons blabbed to a girlfriend that his father had placed a bomb at Harvey’s. He then broke up with her, and she contacted the FBI after learning of a reward for information about the bombing. When confronted, Birges’ sons snitched on their father and agreed to testify against him. Birges was arrested, convicted, and got life in prison without parole. He died behind bars in 1996.

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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading

American Heritage Magazine, February/ March 1985 – The Battle of Athens

Bad Fads Museum – Telephone Booth Stuffing

Big Think – Project 100,000: The Vietnam War’s Cruel Experiment on American Soldiers

Caselaw Access Project – Fain v. The Commonwealth, 78 Ky. 183 (1879)

Daily Beast – The Most Useless Veep in American History (It’s Not Mike Pence)

Encyclopedia Britannica – Johnny Torrio

FBI Archives – A Byte Out of History: The Case of the Harvey’s Casino Bomb

Juris Magazine, March 9^th, 2016 – Sleeping Killer: An Analysis of Voluntary Acts

Los Angeles Times, June 4^th, 2018 – Zoot Suit Riots: After 75 Years, LA Looks Back on a Violent Summer

Lucas, Jack – Indestructible: The Unforgettable Story of a Marine Hero at the Battle of Iwo Jima (2006)

New York Times, June 6^th, 2008 – Jack Lucas Dies at 80; Earned Medal of Honor at 17

Ripley’s Believe It Or Not – Phone Booth Stuffing: A 1950s Pop Culture Challenge

Salon – McNamara’s “Moron Corps”

Wikipedia – Battle of Athens (1946)

Wikipedia – Zoot Suit Riots

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.