The Vanderbilts between them owned some twenty thousand miles of railway line and most of what rolled along it, and that provided them with more money than they really knew what to do with.

The unluckiest person in all this was a British customs agent named John Malcolm.

Sawdust, a product previously without any value at all, proved to be an excellent insulator, providing useful extra income for Maine lumber mills.

Facts about Dry Tortugas National Park: seventy miles west of Key West; the cluster of islands was discovered by Ponce de Leon in 1513; named the Tortugas, the Spanish word for sea turtles (the adjective “dry” was tacked on later to alert sailors they would drink no fresh water here)

He owes a lot to President Lincoln, who first appointed him the military governor of Tennessee and then chose him to run on the vice presidential ticket after Lincoln asked Hannibal Hamlin of Maine to step down.

Fred Moore could find no one to come to Sacco and Vanzetti’s rescue. Supreme Court justice Louis D. Brandeis, the most likely savior, had to recuse himself because of “personal relations with some of the people interested.”

At about the same time, a plane called Old Glory, owned by William Randolph Hearst, took off from Old Orchard Beach in Maine…

“Sister, brother Harry, and myself will go to Milwaukee tomorrow, and will go to Old Orchard Beach, Maine, by way of the St. Lawrence River. We’ll visit two weeks in Maine, then on to New York.

He graduated in June 1884 with a lackluster record and set out to find “some favorable location” in which to launch a practice.