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Walt Disney gets all the credit for creating Mickey Mouse, but it was actually his best friend Ub Iwerks who first brought the iconic character to life in 1928.
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The state of Missouri is celebrating its 200th birthday. But few people today know about the Missouria, the Native American tribe behind the state’s name.
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Sarah Lloyd Green, a fierce women's rights activist, stood up for waitresses, Black and white laundry workers, women trolley conductors, soap manufacturers, and meat packers. Yet her story is not well known.
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In 1866, Cathay Williams, a newly freed Black woman from Independence, Missouri, made a historic decision: She switched her name to William Cathay, disguising herself as a man so she could become a legendary Buffalo Soldier.
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Two of the most famous Kansas City barbecue restaurants — Gates and Arthur Bryant’s — trace their style of barbecue directly back to Henry Perry, Kansas City's original barbecue king.
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John McCoy, who operated the outpost known as Westport, bought the land that became Kansas City in 1838. As the rumor goes, when it came time to name the town, "Possum Trot" only lost out by a single vote.
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Jim the Wonder Dog earned his name from his ability to predict the future, and answer questions that should be otherwise unanswerable for a dog (or even a person in some cases): from allegedly predicting the winner of the Kentucky Derby and the World Series to knowing the gender of unborn babies.
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Since 1956, Leila Cohoon has collected and preserved hair art and jewelry — not art or jewelry that goes in a person's hair, but art and jewelry made of the hair itself. "Her interest in these objects helped actually literally save them from being destroyed," one historian says.
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Known as the "Lawman of the State," Kansas Attorney General Vern Miller was infamous for popping out of trunks, inciting gunfights on buses, and going toe-to-toe with other lawmen and politicians.
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The Guadalupe Center was formed in 1919 to give Kansas City's new, Spanish-speaking immigrants a place to come for resources and support, but over the next century, the Mexican American community transformed it into a place that celebrates Latino culture.
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Some researchers say the 1918 flu outbreak, the deadliest pandemic in history, may have started in Kansas. How a corrupt political system and the end of World War I led to such a bungled response and an overwhelming loss of life.
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In the 1830s, a wave of immigrants from northern Germany settled in the area of Cole Camp, Missouri, bringing with them their farming skills and the dialect of Plattdüütsch. Now residents are working to keep this language alive.