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Meet the Past features Library Director Crosby Kemper III interviewing prominent historical figures (as portrayed by v...

Faith healer? Fraud? Or both? The enigma that was Francis Schlatter emerged in the American West in the late 1800s. In looks, he resemble...

There are times in life that alter a person’s view of the world. For Ed FitzGerald, it was the summer of 1950 when, as a Catholic boy g...

Built in 1942 in Johnson County, Kansas, the Sunflower Ordnance Works quickly became the world’s largest producer of rocket propellant, an essentia...

West Bottoms Whiskey Co. founder Alex Lindsey examines...

Mark Twain said there are “bad actresses, fair actresses, good actresses, great actresses – and then there is Sarah Bernhardt.” The legendary F...

In 1838, Missouri Governor Lilburn Boggs issued the "Order of Extermination" that ordered the killing or removal of Mormons residing in Missouri&...

America’s longest war began with an Apache raid and kidnapping of an Arizona rancher’s 12-year-old stepson in 1861. It would last more than a quart...

Bordered by rugged cliffs and the Missouri and Kansas rivers, the West Bottoms provided the spark for a rugged cowtown to become an urban metropoli...

As Kansas City grew in the 19th century, so did the business of sin. Noting the pervasiveness of vice and debauchery, a visitor in 1888 described i...