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Time To Put Down The Pen And Await The Historical Verdict
When Kish and I saw that Jimmy Carter had another book out, we wondered aloud whether he possibly could have anything new to say. Today I stumbled across this article, which notes that the former...
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Reagan At 100
Today is the 100th anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s birth. Lots of people are commemorating the occasion, and the celebration will include a tribute video aired before the Super Bowl. I never met Reagan...
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The Last Doughboy
Frank Buckles died on Sunday, at age 110. Buckles was America’s last surviving World War I veteran. He enlisted at age 16, after lying to a recruiting officer about his age, and served as a clerk and...
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Predicting The Extinction Of Religion
The BBC has an interesting article on the efforts of scientists to predict the extinction of religion in certain countries. The scientific study considers the number of people who indicate no...
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Fort Sumter, April 12, 1861
It was a time of terrible fear and tension. Even before 1860 had ended, South Carolina had announced that it had seceded from the Union. Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas...
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Reading From George’s Notes
A few days ago the annotated version of George Washington’s copy of the Constitution sole for nearly $10 million — $9,826,000, to be precise. That price was paid by the very genteel sounding Mt....
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When Churchill And Stalin Hit The Bottle
The BBC has an interesting story about a World War II summit meeting that tells us a bit about how the world has changed, and also, perhaps, about how it hasn’t. The story took place in 1942, when...
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Gettysburg, July 1, 1863
One hundred and fifty years ago, in a small town in southern Pennsylvania, two armies began the battle that became a defining moment of the Civil War. The Confederate forces were led by General Robert...
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Gettysburg, July 2, 1863
As the second day of the battle dawned, the Army of the Potomac held the high ground south of the little Pennsylvania town — but its hold was precarious, and Confederate General Robert E. Lee was...
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The Mission Trail
The church at the Mission San Jose San Antonio and its environs are home to four of the early Spanish missions — or at least, what remains of them. From an historical preservation standpoint, the...
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Naked In The Ivy League
For decades, thousands of male and female students at some of America’s most prestigious institutions, in the Ivy League and among the Seven Sisters, were routinely required to strip down and have...
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Better Late Than Never
On November 19, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln delivered his address at the commemoration of the National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where a decisive battle of the American Civil War had...
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On That Dallas Day
President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed 50 years ago today. Fifty years is a long time, but in some ways the Kennedy assassination seems even more distant and remote. So much has happened...
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Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela died today, at age 95, after a long illness. He was one of the most extraordinary figures of our time — a selfless man in an increasingly selfish world, a man whose example was so...
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Musee National du Moyen Age
We’ve had a number of special experiences during our trip to Paris, but one of my favorites was a visit to the Musee National du Moyen Age — the National Museum of the Middle Ages. Formerly known as...
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Cabinet War Rooms
In the late 1930s, when war with Nazi Germany became increasingly certain, an employee of the British government was tasked with developing a safe underground complex from which the British government...
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R.I.P. Louis Zamperini
We all hope to live lives that are full and interesting. Louis Zamperini, who died last week at the ripe age of 97, sets a standard to which the rest of us can only aspire. If you’ve read the...
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America Then, America Now
Yesterday morning in Washington, D.C., I walked past Ford’s Theater. A small, quaint red brick building among the modern concrete structures of downtown Washington, the theater looks as it did 150...
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At The LBJ Ranch
Kish is down in San Antonio to visit Richard. Today they visited the nearby LBJ Ranch as well as Lyndon Johnson’s boyhood home. While at the ranch Kish snapped this picture — proving that Johnson was...
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History Nerds
Most people don’t know who raised the American flag in that famous World War II photo from the battle of Iwo Jima. Most of those who do simply accept that information and move on with their lives....
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