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Benjamin Franklin’s Electrical Kite
We have all heard the story about Franklin flying a kite in a thunderstorm and proving that lightening is electric and the charge it creates can be collected in a Leyden jar. History purports that this experiment by Franklin took place on June 10, 1752, but there are those who question if Franklin actually ever said that he did the experiment and that instead it may have been more of a thought experiment than a practical test he enacted in reality. To learn more and decide for yourself read the 2003 New Yorker book review American Electric Did Franklin fly that kite?
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Reign of Terror
What is the history behind the Reign of Terror or simply the Terror? The time period was from Sept. 5, 1793, to July 27, 1794. The Terror took place in France during the revolution, when democratic reform turned into executions by guillotine. The former ruling royals King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette met their death via Madame Guillotine in 1793. “Let them eat cake!” words alleged to have left the lips of Marie Antoinette upon being told that starving French peasants lacked bread to eat has never been proven. Maxime de la Rocheterie wrote of her: ‘She was not a guilty woman, neither was she a saint; she was an…
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150 years since Abraham Lincoln’s death
The gunshot that killed Lincoln came from John Wilkes Booth’s .44-caliber derringer as the president and his wife watched “Our American Cousin” at Ford’s Theatre. At 7:22 the following morning, April 15, 1865, in the Petersen boarding house across from the theatre, the 16th president of the United States took his last breath, but not before making his mark in history. Who the Secretary of State Edwin M. Stanton called “the most perfect ruler of men the world has ever seen.” Ford’s Theatre is hosting a comprehensive series of Lincoln memorials, which it calls Ford’s 150: Remembering the Lincoln Assassination. The commemorations will be on Tuesday and Wednesday in Washington, D.C.…
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One Term Presidents Voted Out
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Napoleon’s Failed War: Factors and Foes
Recent News: What killed Napoleon’s army? Scientists find clues in DNA from fallen soldiers’ teeth OCTOBER 24, 202511:00 AM ET https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/10/24/nx-s1-5582719/napoleon-war-russia-pathogens-disease-1812 Logistics In Lynch Bennett’s article The Grand Failure: How Logistics of Supply Defeated Napoleon in 1812, he points to logistical errors as a primary and often overlooked reason for Napoleon’s “Grand Failure” to invade Russia in 1812. As the popular idiom states “the devil is in the detail”; devilish details grew large and unruly, details that Napoleon neglected to anticipate. He was blinded by ambition and hubris, fed by his past accomplishments of conquest; he had by 1812 conquered the whole of continental Europe. The logistical difficulties involved in supplying his…
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History of the Personal Computer
Alan Kay considers the LINC (1962) the first Personal Computer. But most people think of Gates and Jobs when associations are made to the personal computer. This association is well deserved. Gates and Jobs developed major innovations that literally put the PC on the everyday person’s desk and made it mobile from there. Bill Gates had the goal to put the personal computer into every home. It was at the young age of 13 that Gates began programming in Basic. Fifty Years of BASIC, the Programming Language That Made Computers Personal The computer programming language acronym BASIC stands for “Beginner’s All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code” The combination of Gates and BASIC started…
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Brooklyn Bridge History: The first crossing of the East River
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The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956
The first volume of The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956, a history and memoir of life in a Soviet Union prison camp, written by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, was first published in Paris in the original Russian on Dec 28, 1973. “… authorized for Western publication only after the Soviet secret police seized a copy of the manuscript last August, …” The Soviets arrested Solzhenitsyn on February 12, 1974 taking away his citizenship and deporting him. Solzhenitsyn warned the Russian people, citizens of a severely, censorial, 1973 Russia, in the preface of his book The Gulag Archipelago (a three-volume work), that they must consider the reading of his writings as a “very dangerous” act. Learn more about life in Stalin’s Gulag.
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Woodstock Music & Art Fair Music Festival Performers
Bethel, New York from August 15 to August 18, 1969 Musicians: Richie Havens – 5:07pm – 7:00pm “The Minstrel from Gault” “From the Prison/Get Together/From the Prison” “I’m a Stranger Here” “High Flying Bird” “I Can’t Make It Anymore” “With a Little Help from My Friends” “Handsome Johnny” “Strawberry Fields Forever / Hey Jude” “Freedom (Motherless Child)” Swami Satchidananda – gave the invocation for the festival – 7:10pm – 7:20pm Sweetwater – 7:30pm – 8:10pm “Motherless Child” “Look Out” “For Pete’s Sake” “What’s Wrong” “Crystal Spider” “Two Worlds” “Why Oh Why” “Let the Sunshine In” “Oh Happy Day” “Day Song” Bert Sommer – 8:20pm – 9:15pm “Jennifer” “The Road to…
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Paleolithic History
The popular conception of what constituted the Paleo diet of our ancestors from between 10,000 and 2.5 million years ago may be incorrect. The contemporary notion in question claims a subsistence of high amounts of meat, fish and vegetables and not on a grain based diet. Anthropologists at the Georgia State University in Atlanta have released a paper challenging that idea and going further to say that nothing in the findings indicate that our early ancestors’ meals where limited to any one specific food group. Anthropologist Ken Sayers explained it as an “opportunistic buffet”, also saying, “They lived short, tough lives that were focused on survival and reproduction”. Find the article…
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73rd Anniversary of Pearl Harbor
It was Dec. 7, 1941 when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Eye Witness Account from 91 years old Aaron Chabin. The Intrepid museum is honoring the anniversary with a special ceremony. Pearl Harbor attack facts: Time was 7:48 a.m. Hawaii time ; place was U.S. Naval base on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, west of Honolulu; The Battleships: Arizona exploded; total loss. 1,177 dead. Oklahoma: five torpedoes, capsized; total loss. 429 dead. Refloated November 1943;capsized and lost while under tow to the mainland May 1947. West Virginia: hit by two bombs, seven torpedoes, sunk; returned to service July 1944. 106 dead. California: hit by two bombs, two torpedoes, sunk; returned to service January 1944.…
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Understanding the Iron Curtain: Origins and Impact
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History of Lysergic-Acid-Diethylamide
There are numerous names on the street for lysergic-acid-diethylamide: acid, trips, cid, blotter, doses, dots and many others. It was in 1938 that the Swiss scientist Albert Hofmann discovered this potent psychoactive agent LSD-25 (a hallucinogen) . It was not until 1948 however that he ingested the compound, which had been sitting in a jar on the shelf for five years. Hofmann lived to the ripe old age of 102 when he died of a heart attack in April of 2008. He did not realize LSD’s psycho-pharmacological effects until five years after its synthesis. What a surprise it must have been when he accidentally ingested the drug and was sent on a potent mind altering trip. Apparently…
