Today is the anniversary of an event that will live in infamy. On Jan. 1, 1889, the Pauite prophet Wovoka claimed to have a dream brought on by a solar eclipse. He dreamed that Jesus would return as an Indian and bring back the good old days. The dead Indian Read more…
Everyone knows the Ancient Egyptians loved their cats. There are thousands of cat statues and mummified cats left from that time. Heck, there were so many mummified cats, that later Egyptian farmers would crush them and use them to fertilize their fields. Modern archeologists have challenged this belief in Read more…
Ancient Egyptians felt they had a sure-fire way of determining the sex of a baby. The mother-to-be was told to pee on a pile of wheat and barley for several days. If the wheat grew, it was going to be a girl. If the barley grew, it would be Read more…
If I may get personal here, the Battle of Trenton occurred 244 years ago today. It is one of my favorite battles. Hell, I named my son after it. It is an example of what drew me to History and the teaching of it. The tale is stranger than fiction. Read more…
The famous painting was by German-American artist Emanuel Leutze in his Dusseldorf, Germany studio in 1850-51. Leutze grew up in America and then returned to his homeland. He painted it after the failed Revolution of 1848 in the hope that it would inspire liberal reforms. It was first displayed in Read more…
St. Nicholas was born around 280 in present-day Turkey. According to legend, he gave away his inherited fortune to the poor. In the most famous story, he kept three sisters out of slavery or prostitution by dropping bags of gold down their chimney for their dowries. He was depicted Read more…
Sarah Breedlove was born on Dec. 23, 1867 on a Louisiana cotton plantation. She started as the child of poor sharecroppers and ended up as one of the richest women in America. She was the first of her parent’s kids to be born in freedom, but other than that Read more…
The idea of Christmas trees goes way back in time. Before the first Christmas, people in the Northern Hemisphere associated evergreen trees with perpetual life. They knew that the winter solstice was the shortest day of the year and from that point on you could look forward to spring Read more…
A few months ago, I got into an argument coinciding with the push to remove Confederate monuments. The argument was over historical revisionism. While not usually a historical revisionist, I do see the need to adjust history to new historical research. As a high school American History teacher, it Read more…
The Ancient Romans were very serious about discouraging patricide, murder of a father. If a son (or daughter) killed his pater familias, he was subject to poena cullei – “punishment of the sack”. First, the murderer was beaten with blood-colored clubs while their head was covered by a wolf-hide Read more…