Billy Dean Anderson was born in Fentress County, Tennessee, and, by all accounts, lived a normal law-abiding life as he grew up, even becoming a volunteer preacher in his church.
In November 1966 a man on his way home from work literally drove into Appalachian history when he encountered a UFO blocking his way on I-77 outside Parkersburg, West Virginia.
From the 1930s to the 1980s an itinerant preacher from Georgia traveled throughout Appalachia and beyond in a ramshackle wagon pulled by a herd of goats. It was his way
In 1820 French orphan Martin Fugate and his wife Elizabeth arrived as new settlers in eastern Kentucky. Unknown to them, they carried genetic traits that would pass on to their
Doris Payne was born in 1930 to a coal miner in Slab Fork, West Virginia. She didn’t stay there. In fact, she ended up traveling the world for decades pursuing
Earlier this summer we took our YouTube viewers to the area around Fontana Lake to show them a road that was promised but never fully built. On today’s podcast episode,
On October 4, 1960, there was a massive explosion at the Eastman Chemical Company plant in Kingsport, Tennessee. Several workers were injured or killed in an event the residents of
On November 20, 1968, there was a massive explosion at the Consol number 9 mine near Farmington, West Virginia. This explosion resulted in the death of scores of miners, including
In 1965 a Kentucky widow managed to drive the coal company from her land with what was called a “sit-in,” an early use of peaceful civil disobedience in Appalachia. Today
On this day fifty-one years ago James Earl Ray made his first attempt to escape from Brushy Mountain State Prison in Petros, Tennessee. On May 3, 1971, Ray managed to