Recently in History Category
This California Marsh Once Spied on the Soviet Navy - @mareislandfoundation on Tumblr
Skaggs Island, north of San Francisco Bay, was home to a base that intercepted Soviet radio signals from across the Pacific and decrypted them.
How far back in time can you understand English?
A travel blog of a trip to the English village of Wulfleet becomes a linguistic time machine, illustrating changes in the alphabet, spelling, and vocabulary from AD 2000 back to AD 1000, before the Norman Conquest.
"But as his post goes on, his language gets older. A hundred years older with each jump. The spelling changes. The grammar changes. Words you know are replaced by unfamiliar words, and his attitude gets older too, as the blogger's voice is replaced by that of a Georgian diarist, an Elizabethan pamphleteer, a medieval chronicler. By the middle of his post, he's writing in what might as well be a foreign language. But it's not a foreign language. It's all English."
RELATED: The history of the letter yogh.
Sounds of the NBC Chimes | The NBC Chimes Museum
History of the network's three-note signature with clips of its use over the years and its predecessors. The first clip on this page is of an announcer in 1924 reading a long list of network affiliates, like KSD St. Louis, WGY Schenectady, and WFAA Dallas. The page includes the use of the "fourth chime" -- the final note, repeated -- as an alarm to summon news staff to headquarters and to alert affiliates to imminent breaking news.
If you're going to have a shot at understanding the newly released JFK assassination files, you will need a glossary of the code names (cryptonyms) used in the memos.
A Memory Keeper of New Orleans
Much respect to the biographer of John Kennedy Toole for his marathon, week-long, one-man digitizing effort in Tulane's Special Collections. I have had similar (but not as lengthy) sessions of photographing court files, newspaper articles, city directories, and microfilm for later reading and research.
"I spent five full days at the archive, from opening to closing, hunched over a table with my camera, capturing every page of the twenty-six boxes of the collection. At the end of the week, I had not read a single word from the archive. I flew home exhausted and sore. But I had gained something invaluable--a digitized version of the Toole Papers. And that became the backbone to Butterfly in the Typewriter."
The Bible and the American Founders, by Daniel Dreisbach
Prof. Dreisbach's 2017 talk on the influence of the Bible on government in America's founding era bolsters the case for Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters's push to include the Bible in public education. American history can't be comprehended apart from the Bible.
"How did the Bible inform the founders' political and legal pursuits? I want to get a little bit more specific here. As I've already said, the founders held diverse views, including diverse theological views. Some doubted Christianity's transcendent claims. Some doubted the Bible's divine origins. But I'm going to suggest to you that many in this generation looked to the Scriptures for insights into things like human nature, civic virtue, social order, political authority, and other concepts essential to the establishment of a political society. Perhaps more important, there was broad agreement that the Bible was essential for nurturing the kind of civic virtues that give citizens the capacity for self-government. In various conventions and representative assemblies of the age as well as in pamphlets, political sermons, and private papers, founding figures appealed to the Bible for principles, precedents, models, normative standards, and cultural motifs, to define their community and to order their great political experiments. The Bible, some thought, offered guidance on how to select righteous leaders. They thought the Bible offered guidance on the rights and responsibilities of citizenship, including the right to resist a tyrannical government....
"I don't think you can understand the most basic, fundamental features of the American constitutional design -- and by that I have in mind things like limited government, separation of powers, checks and balances, federalism, rule of law, due process of law and representative government -- without understanding this biblical anthropology, this idea that man is a fallen creature, and where power is given, that power must be checked."
Full article: Thomas Denton's Perambulation: Two Counties, Three Kingdoms, and Four Nations History?
Full article: Thomas Denton's Perambulation: Two Counties, Three Kingdoms, and Four Nations History?
"Thomas Denton's Perambulation of Cumberland, with additions on Westmorland, the Isle of Man, and Ireland, contains a wealth of evidence as to how a Cumbrian, English, and British subject integrated these elements [of county, national, and international identity] in this period. In addition to showing the assimilation of subjects within and across these boundaries, it equally reveals their differentiation and exclusion."
The Idyllic Culture Columbus Ended
"Even if we take the leftists accusations seriously, they are senseless. Did the Spanish practice slavery? Yes: so did the natives. Did the Spanish murder their enemies? Yes: and many of the natives killed their own people as well. Did the Spanish raid and conquer? The natives did little else.
"Thus the question becomes whether one group did anything more praiseworthy than the other. And of course one did: one ended most of the other's barbarity. And one expanded the bounds of human civilization forever.
"Columbus had little to do with the former, but everything to do with the latter: it was his vision and his personal courage that ended the Middle Ages and created the modern world. Any 'indigenous people' who enjoys human rights, modern medicine, a regular food supply and indoor plumbing should thank him daily."
The Transatlantic Tracks of Columbus by Keith A. Pickering
Using a model of magnetic variation circa 1500, based on dating and magnetic alignment of lake sediments, hearthstones, and lava flows, combined with an analysis of Columbus's inter-island track, Pickering has concluded that Plana Cays is where Christopher Columbus first made landfall in the New World. Pickering confirmed the model by applying it to Columbus's first return voyage and second voyage, where endpoints are known.
Norfolk County, Massachusetts, Map, 1858: David Rumsey collection
Before Dorchester, Roxbury, and West Roxbury were annexed by Boston and Suffolk County, making Brookline an exclave of the county.
