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Author Seeks To Solve Mysteries Of Lesser Known Events

By John Ostapkovich

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - They say history is written by the winners, but it may also be written by people who miss a lot of good stories.

Booth shot Lincoln -- we all know that, but did you know Booth also saved Lincoln?

All right, it was Edwin Booth, the assassin's brother, and Robert Lincoln, the President's son, from being crushed by a train in Jersey City's Exchange Place station. That's just the first story Andrew Carrol relates in "Here is Where (Discovering America's Great Forgotten History)," with a focus on some of this country's less-known successes.

"The common wisdom is that Alexander Fleming invented penicillin in 1928 in Great Britain. The Brits really couldn't do anything with it. They couldn't grow it out of little petri dishes and it was useless, essentially. They came to the Americans and right before World War Two a little FDA lab in Peoria Illinois figured out how to mass produce penicillin," Carrol said.

There are also failures, like the Fourier Phalanxes, utopian communes founded in the mid-1800's and quickly folded across the US. The one in Red Bank New Jersey lasted longest, seven years.

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