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Superman Sketch; Lost Musical Treasure; Rebel Whiskey Flask
Superman Sketch - An Ohio woman has a drawing that she
discovered in the attic of her home. It is an undated sketch of the
cartoon hero Superman with a note that reads, "With Best Wishes to
Randall, from Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster." Jerry Siegel and Joe
Shuster were the creators of Superman, but the contributor has no
idea how her late father, Randall, obtained this apparently
original piece of artwork. A plausible connection is Randall's army
service during World War II - a time when the man of steel, along
with other popular American cartoon characters, was featured as a
hero in action against German and Japanese forces. HISTORY
DETECTIVES journeys to Ohio, New York and New Jersey to investigate
the early days of Superman and how this comic icon was used to
inspire American GIs during wartime.
Lost Musical Treasure - A man in Port Washington, Wisconsin, who
owns a pair of metal "masters" that were used to press shellac
records in the 1920s and 30s, has a hunch they could represent
surviving fragments of a lost moment in American musical history.
The contributor's great uncle was the master sound engineer for one
of the more peculiar recording enterprises in the United States,
Paramount Records. He worked for the Wisconsin Chair Company,
which, among other things, manufactured phonograph cabinets. The
company's salesmen were savvy about the broad spectrum of musical
talent at the time and established a tandem recording label,
ultimately bringing some of the best blues artists from the
Mississippi Delta to Wisconsin to record in the factory. HISTORY
DETECTIVES travels to Wisconsin and New York to determine the
significance of these metal masters and to explore how one company
captured the regionally and culturally diverse music played around
the nation in the 20s and 30s.
Rebel Whiskey Flask - It's the fall of 1794 and trouble is
brewing in western Pennsylvania. Thousands of protestors are daring
to fight back against the newly established U.S. government,
protesting a tax on whiskey. President George Washington responds,
marching 13,000 soldiers into Pennsylvania to quash the rebellion -
the first time the federal government has turned its troops on its
own people. Fast-forward to the present day: a woman in New Jersey
has uncovered a glass whiskey flask that she believes may be a
relic from this historic uprising. HISTORY DETECTIVES ventures to
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Corning, New York, to determine the
flask's relevance and to dig deeper for clues surrounding the
so-called "Whiskey Rebellion."