MOZART BY A NOSE

                Mozart once bet fellow composer Haydn that he could not play a piano composition that Mozart had written that day.  Haydn accepted the bet and sat down at the piano with the music in front of him.  He started out well, but then reached a part of the composition Read more…

Sub at Sea

The painting is called “Sub at Sea” by Adolf Bock.  It is a u-boat in the Atlantic in WWII.  U-boats like this one sank 175 warships and 2,825 merchant ships in the Battle of the Atlantic.  The most successful u-boat commander was Otto Kretschmer who sank 47 ships in 15 Read more…

BURNING THE CAPITOL

In 1814, during the War of 1812, British Admiral Cockburn (yes, that was his name) was determined to embarrass the Americans by attacking their capital.  He was also interested in revenge for the sack of York in Canada.  He brushed aside a force of militiamen (with President Madison witnessing in Read more…

BUT IT STILL MOVES

In 1632, Galileo published his Dialogue on Two Chief World Systems which supported the Copernican theory that the sun was the center of the Universe and the Earth moved around it.  The book caught the attention of the Inquisition which summoned Galileo to Rome for trial.  Under threat of torture, Read more…