Includes Index

Ziryab : the slave who changed society (ninth century) -- Cahokia : the forgotten Rome of the Americas (twelfth century) -- Gil Eanes : conquering the point of no return (1434) -- Joseph Warren : architect of a revolution (1741-75) -- Outdoing Revere : history's forgotten riders (1777) -- Elisha Kent Kane : America's greatest hero (1847-57) -- The sultana : death on the Great River (1865) -- America's first subway : secrets under Broadway (1870) -- Peshtigo : great fire in the forest (1871) -- Gustave Whitehead : the first to fly? (1901) -- Exercise Tiger : a rehearsal for D-day (1944).

In this fascinating collection of historical vignettes, author Martin W. Sandler restores to memory important events, people, and developments that have been lost to time. Though barely known today, these are major historical stories, from Ziryab, an eighth-century black slave whose influence on music, cuisine, fashion, and manners still reverberates, to Cahokia, a 12th century city north of the Rio Grande, which at its zenith contained a population greater than any contemporary European city, to the worst peacetime maritime disaster ever, the explosion and sinking of the Sultana on the Mississippi in 1865, and the deadliest fire in U.S. history, in Peshtigo, Wis. These tales are far from trivia; they illuminate little-known American and foreign achievements, ingenuity, heroics, blunders, and tragedies that changed the course of history and resonate today.--From publisher description.