Revolutionary: NYC's Fraunces Tavern, where Washington toasted and the cabinet met
The Sons of Liberty, the activists who helped start the American Revolution, liked to frequent a watering hole on the tip of Manhattan Islan...
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Off the Path from New York to Boston
Follow reporter Davis Dunavin as he travels the road from New York to Boston, looking for unusual stories and fascinating histories.
Episodes
20 of 136 episodes
Revolutionary: The only intersection that predates 1776 and survived a British burning
There’s only one known intersection in America where the buildings on all four corners were built before the American Revolution. The place...
Revolutionary: the war heroine who disguised herself as a man to fight
The first woman in American history to get an honorable discharge or a military pension served almost 250 years ago. Her name was Deborah Sa...
Revolutionary: 250 years later, the 'Liberty Tree' blooms again
Long before the first shots of the American Revolution were fired, there was -- a tree. An elm tree in a grove in Boston, where some say the...
Brave Little State: The case of the missing Tinmouth apple
Today, a mystery rooted in Vermont history: the case of the missing Tinmouth Apple. Once thought to be lost, the search for this rare apple...
The Twice-Lost City of Dura-Europos
It’s believed that some of the oldest preserved depictions of Jesus Christ are from a town in Syria, abandoned nearly 2000 years ago. The pa...
Vampires! On a Boat! In New York City!
Every Halloween, WSHU’s Off the Path gets a little .... spooky. Visits to Lizzie Borden’s house, a haunted pirate cave, and Sleepy Hollow, t...
Looking for the Original "Podunk Town"... In Connecticut
The origins of the word "podunk" are shrouded in history. In the Algonquin language, it most likely meant a boggy place, a swamp or a juncti...
Off the Path Revisited: Where the Appalachian Trail Began
The Appalachian Trail stretches more than 2,000 miles from Maine to Georgia. It was the brainchild of an idealistic forester who drew inspir...
The Making of Theodore Roosevelt
We like to picture Theodore Roosevelt as this vigorous, energetic, hyper-manly guy. And he was. But he didn’t start that way. He began as a...
Andre the Giant Has A Posse
Back in the summer of 1989, a lot of weird little stickers appeared on the streets of Providence, Rhode Island. They were on walls, trash ca...
A Trip to Tuxedo Park, the Cradle of American Etiquette
It began with one of America's richest men jumping out of a moving train to trudge through the mud and scope out the property. It was the cu...
Did a German immigrant in CT fly before the Wright Brothers?
Everyone knows the story of the first manned airplane flight, right? The Ohio-based Wright Brothers flew a biplane more than 850 feet across...
Spacewar! Or, the Rise of the Computer Bums
The first widely-played video game wasn’t Pong, or Donkey Kong, or Space Invaders. It wasn’t made by Nintendo or Atari. Instead, imagine a b...
Trailer: Where It All Began
This season on Off The Path, Davis Dunavin digs deep to explore the origins of things that are ubiquitous, Teddy Roosevelt, the tuxedo, the...
The Ghost Pirate of Dungeon Rock (A Halloween Bonus Episode)
In the mid-1800s, a father and son spent years digging a long, winding tunnel into solid rock on a hill in Lynn, Massachusetts. They said th...
Off the Plank: A National Special
It's here! The hour-long Off the Plank special aired this fall on stations nationwide, distributed by American Public Media. Hear about sea...
Off the Plank: The Great Gloucester Sea Serpent
Over two centuries ago, a sea serpent showed up in Gloucester Harbor, swimming and playing and splashing in full view of the townsfolk. It’s...
Off the Plank: Pirate City USA
Pirates terrorized the Atlantic coast in colonial times during what was called the Golden Age of piracy. But there was one place where pirat...
Off the Plank: The Ranzo Boys are Young, Queer and Here to Sing Sea Shanties
This season of "Off the Path" has featured music from the Ranzo Boys, a New York City-based traditional folk music trio. In this episode, Da...