Did you buy a Powerball ticket? I didn’t, because the odds were not in my favor, and I hate to wait in line anyway. The last time I bought a lottery ticket, I was bored at Kmart, so I decided to educate my neighbor’s children on the evils of gambling. I bought a dollar ticket
If you like obscure anniversaries, on January 5, 1914, Henry Ford announced he would start paying his workers $5 for an eight-hour workday, an increase from an average of $2.34 for a nine-hour workday. The resulting reaction was not what you might expect. Some thought he was crazy. The Wall Street Journal editorialized that he
January 4th is the birthday of Jacob Grimm of Grimm Fairy Tales fame, Jacob being the elder. He was born in Hanau, Germany in 1785. According to The Writers”Almanac, He and his brother volunteered to help some friends gather oral folktales for a research project. The Grimms did such a great job that one of their friends suggested
What if the Confederate army had moved on Washington, DC after their victory at the first battle of Bull Run? I could give many examples of how history turned on a snap decision, a quirk, a timely death, a misunderstanding, or just dumb luck. One of my favorite history books is appropriately entitled What If?
Yesterday I mentioned some obsolete words associated with slavery. Today I have another one. It didn’t used to be easy to travel through a segregated country when you were a minority. So in 1936 an enterprising postal worker named Victor Hugo Green began publishing a guide for black travelers. Originally called the Negro Motorist Green Book,
What is a coffle? It’s an obsolete (I hope) word that means a group of enslaved people chained together in a line. It was commonly used by slavers in the 18th and 19th centuries when they moved slaves long distances. Coffle, like slavepen and overseer (person on a plantation paid a wage to organize the work
I’ve been catching up on my reading, and I realized we’ve just passed another interesting anniversary. Ellis Island formally closed on November 12, 1954. I visited the island while chaperoning a middle-school educational trip to New York City about 15 years ago and got to see the museum. More than 12 million immigrants passed through its gates in
When we think of the Holocaust, we tend to focus on the number dead. But there were a surprising number of resisters. They were brave individuals who normally get forgotten by the history books. It’s our duty to make sure they’re remembered. I’m sure you’ve heard of Oskar Schlindler and Raoul Wallenberg. Their cases have been
Did anyone miss me? I have been traveling for two weeks — to Berlin, Germany to run a marathon and on the Los Angeles for a Disneyana Fan Club special event. I didn’t mention this beforehand because I don’t like to publicize my travel plans. I’m going to share most of my travel stories on
Many times in history, it’s the little things that are critical. You may know about how at the Battle of Gettysburg, Union General G. K. Warren found a critical spot in the Union line that was unoccupied and organized its defense on his own initiative. Otherwise, the battle could’ve been lost. Also in that battle,