Apr 28, 2022
During the 1950s and ‘60s, a Hoosier from Crawfordsville could not tell people where he worked. His employer was the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which Benjamin Evans only could reveal beginning in 1970 when he was named executive secretary of the agency and no longer undercover.
Before that, his assignments...
Apr 28, 2022
“I traveled from the time I was 14 until I was 18. The moment the idea hit to go somewhere, and it always did in the spring, I was off. St. Louis, Denver, Chicago, Dodge City, Cincinnati . . . anywhere the next freight train happened to be going.”
So said perhaps the most unlikely Hoosier to become an international...
Apr 28, 2022
Bears at Riverside Park in Indianapolis? Not for the last century. But for nearly two decades beginning in 1899, a bear pit was among the most popular attractions at the park near the White River.
Consisting of a fenced, circular pen with two arched doorways that allowed the bears to enter a sheltered den, the bear pit...
Apr 7, 2022
After decades of being mostly forgotten, there have been recent rediscoveries, thanks to history detective work, of a symphonic music composer from Carmel and a painter from the Noblesville area who became the patriarch of a group of Hamilton County artists. No photos, not even head shots of either composer Frederick...
Apr 7, 2022
This show will follow up previous Hoosier History Live programs in two ways. We showcased the founding and evolution of the legendary Indianapolis-based department store L.S. Ayres & Co. during a show in 2013. And just last week, we focused on Jewish immigration to Indiana from 1840 through the 1920s.
Our follow-up show...