Today, November 11, 2018, marks one hundred years since the guns fell silent on the Western Front and World War I came to an end. I have strong opinions on the war, and I won’t air them here, not today. Instead, I will share a selection of World War I poetry. Dreamers Soldiers are citizens … Continue reading Veteran’s Day
Category: History
In 1918, a troop ship carrying American soldiers to Europe was torpedoed off the coast of Scotland. Though many were saved from the waters by other ships in the troop convoy, the bodies of nearly 200 soldiers washed ashore on the island of Islay. What ensued was a recovery of the bodies by the island’s … Continue reading An American Flag, Sewn in Scotland, Returns Home
Perhaps I’d still be a Christian had there been more dragons. Many elements of the traditional Nativity scene — in particular, any animals whatsoever — aren’t Biblically canonical. They all derive from apocryphal scriptures, essentially early Church fanfic, such as this passage from Pseudo Matthew about the infant Jesus and the dragons during the flight … Continue reading The Dragons of Christmas
Has a forgotten photo in the archives of Naval Intelligence answered the mystery of Amelia Earhart’s disappearance? I have no idea. Maybe it does. Maybe it doesn’t. But that’s the claim of an upcoming special on the History Channel. The reporting on the photo hasn’t made a case for believing that the photo does what … Continue reading Did Amelia Earhart Survive?
The potential discovery of another Viking settlement in Newfoundland is thrilling, especially because the site was found from space. It also doesn’t surprise me. The Vinland Sagas end around the year 1000. However, from other sources, such as the writings of Adam of Bremen, we know the Vikings’ activities in Vinland continued into the 13th-century … Continue reading A New Viking Discovery in Canada
My next-door neighbor has affixed a Gadsden Flag to his minivan. It could be worse, I suppose. Ten years ago I’d have looked at the Gadsden Flag or the Pine Tree Flag (a white flag with a pine tree and the words “An Appeal to Heaven”) and thought the person was a history junkie. Today … Continue reading The Symbolism of Old Flags
As Garrison Keillor might say on The Writer’s Almanac, a poem for today, Veteran’s Day. In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below. We are the Dead. Short days ago We … Continue reading Veteran’s Day
Today’s episode of Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac begins thusly: “It was on this day in 1938 that a cylindrical Martian spaceship landed in Grover’s Mill, New Jersey, and began incinerating onlookers with an alien heat ray, an event that was covered by the Columbia Broadcasting System and its affiliated stations, and that caused widespread … Continue reading Remembering Grover’s Mill
Yesterday at work, when writing catalog copy and assembling order forms and organizing name badges for the Retailer Summit, I listened to a several hours’ worth of BBC Radio dramas. Besides the first two episodes of “A Place of Greater Safety,” an adaptation of the novel about the French Revolution by Wolf Hall‘s Hilary Mantel, … Continue reading The Death of Christopher Marlowe
Putting on my historian hat for the moment. In Birmingham, fragments of a Qur’an dating to the 7th century have been discovered in a collection at the university there, making this one of the oldest known Qur’ans in existence. (The headline says “oldest,” but the article is not as definitive.) The Carbon-14 dating may put … Continue reading An Ancient Qur’an and Early Islam
In the wake of the Charleston shootings, the Baltimore Sun has an article today about removing Confederate symbols from Maryland’s license plates (which is now possible thanks to a Supreme Court ruling last week that allowed Texas to ban it) and renaming Robert E. Lee Park in Baltimore. The article doesn’t address the most prominent … Continue reading The Confederacy and Maryland’s State Flag
There’s a website (and Twitter feed) that I like to follow called Ghosts of DC. It posts articles and pictures of Washington, DC as it was decades ago, from the wood etchings era of the early 1800s to the dawn of photography a few decades later to color photography in the 1950s. It’s fascinating to … Continue reading Uncovering the Story of a Lost Church