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The Town That Got Away With Murder and Other Largely Forgotten Historic Events

Khalid Elhassan November 23, 2019 33 min

1. Tragedy Serves Archaeology

Modern tourists wandering the ruins of Pompeii. Reuters

About 1500 bodies were found in Pompeii and Herculaneum when they were unearthed centuries later, from just a small area impacted by the volcano’s eruption. Extrapolating to the surrounding regions, total casualties are estimated to have been in the tens of thousands. The towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum, whose populations at the time numbered about 20,000, were buried beneath up to 20 feet of volcanic ash and pumice.

Tragic and terrifying as that was, the ash deposits did a remarkably effective job of preserving those towns. In 1738, laborers digging foundations for a palace rediscovered Herculaneum, and further excavations unearthed Pompeii in 1748. The archaeological finds afforded historians an unrivaled snapshot of 1st-century AD Roman architecture, city planning, urban infrastructure, and town life in general.

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

Ancient History Encyclopedia – Varangian Guard

BBC Future, September 11^th, 2015 – The Cold War Nuke That Fried Satellites

Conversation, The, February 1^st, 2017 – Fornication, Fluids, and Faeces: The Intimate Life of the French Court

Daily Beast, October 23^rd, 2016 – The Rhino Who Won an Election by a Landslide

Encyclopedia Britannica – Heinrich Schliemann

First Battalion, 24^th Marines – The Case For Thomas Underwood

Governing – Why Are Salt Lake City’s Blocks So Long?

Jacobin, August 28^th, 2012 – Lincoln and Marx

KFOR, November 11^th, 2013 – Great State: WWII Veteran Recalls Strange Incident During Coral Sea Battle

Live Science – Mount Vesuvius & Pompeii: Facts & History

Livius – Pyrrhus of Epirus

Morbidology – The Town That Got Away With Murder

National Security Archive – Pentagon Estimated 18,500 US Casualties in Cuba Invasion 1962, But if Nukes Launched, “Heavy Losses” Expected

NY Daily News, December 15^th, 2015 – Paul Castellano Hit, 30 Years Later

Patch – Who Killed Ken Rex McElroy: Town Keeps Its Secret For 38 Years

Smithsonian Magazine, October 10^th, 2018 – Mount Vesuvius Boiled its Victims’ Blood and Caused Their Skulls to Explode

Soldiers of Misfortune – The Varangian Guard: The Vikings in Byzantium

ThoughtCo – Was Abraham Lincoln Really a Wrestler?

War History Online – Once the Greatest Army in Europe: The Black Army of Hungary

Wikipedia – Charles Carpenter (Lieutenant Colonel)

Wikipedia – Flight of the Wild Geese

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.