If, as I've done many times, you walk up the wide paved path from the Park Street MBTA station to the Massachusetts State House, you will pass a great work of art: "The Memorial to Robert Gould Shaw and the Massachusetts Fifty-Fourth Regiment," a bronze relief sculpture by Augustus Saint-Gaudens. And if you are like me, …
Topic: Historical Figures & Events
Delving into the people and events that shaped history
The third wave of the great 1918-1919 influenza pandemic peaked early in March of 1919. Although the third wave wasn't as deadly as the apocalyptic second wave in mid 1918, it was much deadlier than the first wave, and hit particularly hard in several major cities, including Los Angeles, New York, Memphis, Nashville, San Francisco …
What, exactly, are we remembering when we "Remember the Alamo." I used to know the answer to that seemingly simple question. We remembered a heroic stand by a vastly outnumbered group of men, all of them white, who fought for freedom against Mexican oppressors. The men who died in that fight were a "Hall of Fame" …
As the great gospel song says, I "woke up this morning with my mind stayed on freedom." I didn't realize that was the case until late in the day but looking back at the day, it's clear it was there all day long. Freedom was a clear theme when, over my morning coffee, I read "This Day …
Last fall, after Judge Am Amy Coney Barrett promised to "apply the law as it is written" and leave policy decisions to the other branches of government, Stephen Budiansky wrote a letter that was published in the New York Times. "If that's all judges need to do, we'd have no need for judges." Budiansky, author of …
Believe it or not, an overweight general known as "Old Fuss and Feathers" who was pushed aside at the start of the Civil War and who also was in the word's of one reviewer, "a lousy writer," whose "memoir disappoints in a number of ways," is the focus of today's #stampoftheday. Winfield Scott, who was a …
"Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you," may be the one of the most famous lines in American history. These are the words, of course, that Alexander Graham Bell supposedly said on the first time he successfully used his newly invented telephone on March 10, 1876. Thinking about the call and Bell - who is …
For me, and many other people, today is the one-year anniversary of when I not only started working from home but also began to actively avoid as many face-to-face interactions as possible. Reflecting on this anniversary this evening, I've been thinking about what I've needed to get through the year. That, in turn, made me …
How would you feel, if a web page on your "impact and legacy" read something like this: "Coffee-table history books depict [your name here] as a lightweight puppet of political party bosses. S/he is often viewed as little more than a 'human iceberg' who sleepwalked through [insert your job here]. We are told that while …