AwesomeStories.com is your guide to fascinating links scanned on-line by the world's great institutions: The Library of Congress, National Archives, the British Museum, the BNF in Paris, and hundreds of universities, libraries, historical societies and museums world-wide.

Our stories behind famous events, legends, people, heroes and movies will help you to examine primary source material yourself. After weighing the available evidence, you can reach your own conclusions. Never before in the history of the world have so many primary sources been available for everyone to see. No longer just the province of scholars, fantastic materials (like drawings, pictures, woodcuts, manuscripts and other such source documents) are now available for everyone. Before now, however, there has been no effective on-line guide to help people wade through millions of Internet "pages."

Our site is divided into "channels." If you are interested in the "back" story behind movies, visit our Flicks channel. If you want to know more about fascinating trials from antiquity to the present, FamousTrials is the place. Each of the other channels will provide you with different link-laden stories on interesting topics, while our Inspiration channel will help you find some respite from busy days filled with constant challenges.

Each story can be read on the screen or printed for later viewing. (But read our terms and conditions for information about what can, and cannot, be distributed to others).

Each story is made up of chapters. You can read each chapter in the order listed, or skip around. When you get to the bottom of the page, click on the relevant button to continue or go back.

Each story contains links (words highlighted in blue) to the source material used by the author to write the story. This is the "evidence" for each story. The links may be to documents, photographs or other web sites of interest on the same subject matter.

You may wish to read the story completely before you explore the links. Or, you may wish to visit each off-site link as you go through the story. Whenever you visit the links, your web browser will open a new window each time you click on a blue highlight. When you are ready to return to the main story, simply close the browser window of the off-site link.

KEEP IN MIND that many of the links are direct pathways to source material like manuscripts, maps or pictures. Such links take awhile to load. If you are in a hurry, and do not have the time to look at all the supporting links, bookmark those that take time to load and come back to them later.

What if the links are broken? We have given you lots of links, so a few broken ones should not disrupt the flow of the story. Because we mostly link to institutions, not to "dot com" sites, the vast majority of our links should not lead you to off-line material. However, if there are many broken links, please tell us.

Some of the links that SEEM broken may NOT be broken at all. Sometimes websites are down for upgrades or servicing. Most institutions have hundreds of thousands of pages on-line. The Library of Congress, for example, upgrades its site on Saturdays. Sometimes the servers are down for a period of time and then come back on-line later. The SMU links, in the Joan of Arc story, are often down. But when they are on-line and available for your review they are more than worth the visit.

If links remain broken, please send us an e-mail about them so we can replace them with active sites. If you know of other links that would enhance a story, please let us know about them.

Any way you choose to use our site, we hope you enjoy your visit to AwesomeStories.com. Please bookmark the site for return visits and recommend it to your friends and relatives.