The oldest continuously operating international sporting event with the oldest international sporting trophy may not be the one most people think of. It’s not soccer’s World Cup, or the Olympics, or baseball, or cricket—it’s the America’s Cup of yacht racing. The origins of the America’s Cup date back to 1851, when a group of yachting
HISTORY OF YACHT RACING’S AMERICA’S CUP Read More »
Amelia Earhart was an early pioneer in American aviation having become the first female passenger to cross the Atlantic Ocean, and later the first female to fly solo across the Atlantic. She was an early promoter of commercial air travel writing best-selling books about her flying activities and experiences. In May, 1937, she attempted to
WAS AMELIA EARHART’S FINAL FLIGHT DOOMED TO FAILURE? Read More »
Homer, the ancient Greek poet, is praised as one of the first scholars in the history of Western culture. His major works, the Iliad and the Odyssey, were widely used in schools in ancient Greek and Hellenistic cultures and were often the first literary works taught to all students. They helped the later generations learn
DID HOMER ACTUALLY WRITE THE ILIAD AND THE ODYSSEY? Read More »
Baseball’s World Series in 1919 between the Chicago White Sox and the Cincinnati Reds was tainted by a scandal that involved eight players of the White Sox team agreeing to fix the outcome of the Series for a large sum of money from professional gamblers. The White Sox were the favorites to win the series,
THE BLACK SOX SCANDAL Read More »
The origins of the Declaration of Independence in America date back over 200 years before Columbus even discovered land in the Western Hemisphere and brought the news back to Europe. The Declaration is not only the culmination of a long series of major complaints sent back to King George III, but also a continuation of
HOW THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE CAME ABOUT Read More »
Late in World War II in the Pacific an Associated Press photographer happened into capturing a photograph that became famous world-wide. The story of the picture is interesting by itself, but it includes a major shift in battle tactics used by the Japanese Military in their defense of Iwo Jima, one of the bloodiest battles
RAISING THE FLAG IN THE BATTLE FOR IWO JIMA Read More »
The tendency in America is to look at the Islamic Revolution in Iran through a lens that focuses only on the Hostage Crisis in 1979. As bad as that was, there’s a whole history of what transpired before and after that event that dates back over 130 years to 1891. To understand where they are
A TIMELINE OF THE ISLAMIC REVOLUTION IN IRAN Read More »
When Julius Caesar became Dictator for Life in Ancient Rome, it was a relatively short time before he was assassinated. His fate was sealed by someone he would never have thought of as an enemy—Marcus Junius Brutus. This raises the question as to whether Brutus was Caesar’s friend or his foe. To see how it
BRUTUS AND THE DEATH OF JULIUS CAESAR Read More »
The Enron scandal in 2001 became the largest corporate bankruptcy in U.S. history. It featured a loophole in the accounting principles that allowed corporations to maintain entities off their consolidated books as long as the parent company owned less than 50% of the entity and the entity was adequately capitalized. A clever but crooked financial
THE ENRON SCANDAL Read More »
The First Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees all persons the right to free speech, among other things. At various times in our history this right has come under fire by actions taken by the government itself. One such time existed at a point in our history when you may not have expected it—the
THE ASSAULT ON FREE SPEECH IN AMERICA Read More »