PA Books: “Gettysburg Eddie”

Born in Gettysburg, PA only a dozen years after the bloody Civil War battle, Eddie Plank grew up on a farm and was a late-bloomer. By his early twenties, he was a local star on the town ball team and enrolled in the Gettysburg Academy in order to pitch for the Gettysburg College team. Soon […]

It’s History!: Gettysburg Dime Museum

Join It’s History! as we tour the strange and unusual exhibits of the Gettysburg Dime Museum. Modeled after old circus sideshows, the museum features animal anomalies, sideshow gaffes, crime and serial killer memorabilia, and life-size representations of human oddities. Watch It’s History! and more PA History and Culture on cable and the PCN Select Streaming Service.

It’s History!: National Watch & Clock Museum

With more than 12,000 items, the National Watch & Clock Museum in Columbia, PA showcases timekeeping devices from around the world. The museum tells the story of timekeeping from the earliest non-mechanical devices to today’s atomic clocks. Exhibits include 19th Century American clocks and watches, timepieces from China and Japan, old English tallcase clocks, and […]

PA Books: “Butterflies of Pennsylvania”

Featuring over 900 color illustrations, Butterflies of Pennsylvania is the most comprehensive, user-friendly field guide to date of all of the species of butterflies and skippers ever recorded in Pennsylvania. Information on distinguishing marks, traits, wingspan, habitat, larval host plants, and handy facts offer assistance for field identification. County-by-county maps show where each species has […]

It’s History!: The J. Howard Wert Collection

In this episode of It’s History!, we feature artifacts from the J. Howard Wert Collection. Wert was a native of the Gettysburg area and after the Civil War he was the first principle at Harrisburg High School. As Union and Confederate troops converged on the town, Wert served as a guide to the local area […]

PA Books: Road to Rust

As the twentieth century dawned on western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio, the region’s steel industry faced a struggle for unionism. Unionists like Philip Murray, John L. Lewis, Samuel Gompers and Gus Hall battled for fair wages, hours and working conditions. Strong managers like Judge Elbert Gary and Tom Girdler opposed their every move. Tensions from […]

PA Books: The Loyal Son: The War in Ben Franklin’s House

In The Loyal Son, award-winning historian Daniel Mark Epstein throws the spotlight on one of the more enigmatic aspects of Franklin’s biography: his complex and confounding relationship with his illegitimate son William. When he was twenty-four, Franklin fathered a child with a woman who was not his wife. He adopted the boy, raised him, and […]

PA Books: “Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right”

Talk show host and columnist Michael Smerconish has been chronicling local, state, and national events for the Philadelphia Daily News and the Philadelphia Inquirer for more than 15 years. He has sounded off on topics as diverse as the hunt for Osama bin Laden and what the color of your Christmas lights says about you. […]