WFAA – The mystery of the stolen de Kooning painting worth $165M
An evening pause: There are some mysteries that will always remain unsolved. And this one is one of the strangest.
Hat tip Cotour.
Tag: history
The American Revolution, as seen from across the Atlantic
As this year is the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, it seems fitting to review a history about the Revolutionary War. In fact, I intend to do a few more such reviews in the coming months.
Let’s start however with a book that looks at that Revolution from a very different perspective.
Historian Barbara Tuchman is most well known for her early classic, The Guns of August, a book that was made famous when John Kennedy repeatedly referred to it during the Cuban missile crisis. Kennedy’s recommendation not only brought the book to the attention of the general public, it made Tuchman’s career. From that day forth, her work has always been received with accolades and enthusiasm and uncritical respect.
I am here however to break that bubble, though only partly. I just finished reading The First Salute, Tuchman’s 1988 history of the Revolutionary War. Rather than tell the tale from the point of view of the Americans, as done by most historians, Tuchman’s work looks at the war from the point of view of Europe, and thus gives us a much larger and very worthwhile context.
For this I compliment Tuchman highly. Though it is well known that the arrival of the French fleet off the coast of Virginia was crucial in forcing the British army to surrender to Washington at Yorktown, the background behind that arrival has generally been given short shrift by historians. Tuchman does not, describing in detail the political maneuvering necessary between the American envoys in France and France’s government to make that fleet happen. She also describes the attitudes of the Dutch and Spain to the war, and how and why they eventually moved to support America, even though there were many reasons for them to stay out.
Her book also gives us the British perspective, revealing the amazing and continuous failures of its government and generals to wage the war with any enthusiasm or skill. It appears almost from the start that the British had no great desire to win, and that malaise and overconfidence more than anything resulted in their eventual defeat.
For example, the British never took Washington or his army seriously. » Read more
MIT – Quicker than a Wink
An evening pause: This 1940 short film won an Academy Award for best one-reel short. It provides a nice and witty demonstration of the first technology that allowed very high speed slow motion movies to be made.
Hat tip Wayne DeVette.
Family Tree Nuts – Annie Moore, Ellis Island’s first immigrant
Early notes of Galileo discovered in margins of Ptolemy’s most famous book
A researcher reviewing the text of a 16th century printing of Claudius Ptolemy’s most famous book, The Almagest (in which he outlined his theory that the Earth stood at the center of the universe), was astonished this January to discover previously unidentified notes in the handwriting of Galileo in the book’s margins.
As [historian Ivan Malara flipped through the pages, he spotted something out of place. Someone had transcribed Psalm 145 on an otherwise blank page—in handwriting reminiscent of a very, very famous Tuscan astronomer.
That book, Malara came to realize, had been extensively annotated by none other than Galileo Galilei. Malara’s discovery, described in a paper now under review at the Journal for the History of Astronomy, promises new insights into one of the most famous ideological transitions in the history of science: the moment when Earth was thrust from the center of our universe.
The article at the link tries to makes the absurd and false claim that “many historians’ typical portrayal of Galileo as being motivated by philosophy or even political savvy, not careful math. ‘He has been presented as a big-picture sort of guy—not interested in the nitty-gritty technical details of astronomy,’ says James Evans, a historian of astronomy at the University of Puget Sound.” The article does this to suggest these newly discovered notes will profoundly change that interpretation.
That interpretation is wrong however. Anyone who has read any histories or biographies of Galileo (as I have) knows this portrayal is false. It is very clear from all his work that Galileo was very evidence-based, focused on the data and facts — the nitty-gritty technical details — to determine the larger picture. And these newly discovered notes confirm this:
Galileo’s notes, perhaps written around 1590, or roughly 2 decades before his groundbreaking telescope observations of the Moon and Jupiter, reveal someone who both revered and critically dissected Ptolemy’s work. And they imply, Malara argues, that Galileo ultimately broke with Ptolemy’s cosmos because his mastery of the traditional paradigm’s reasoning convinced him that a heliocentric system would better fulfill Ptolemy’s own mathematical logic.
Fascinating stuff. I can’t wait to read the final paper.
A researcher reviewing the text of a 16th century printing of Claudius Ptolemy’s most famous book, The Almagest (in which he outlined his theory that the Earth stood at the center of the universe), was astonished this January to discover previously unidentified notes in the handwriting of Galileo in the book’s margins.
As [historian Ivan Malara flipped through the pages, he spotted something out of place. Someone had transcribed Psalm 145 on an otherwise blank page—in handwriting reminiscent of a very, very famous Tuscan astronomer.
That book, Malara came to realize, had been extensively annotated by none other than Galileo Galilei. Malara’s discovery, described in a paper now under review at the Journal for the History of Astronomy, promises new insights into one of the most famous ideological transitions in the history of science: the moment when Earth was thrust from the center of our universe.
The article at the link tries to makes the absurd and false claim that “many historians’ typical portrayal of Galileo as being motivated by philosophy or even political savvy, not careful math. ‘He has been presented as a big-picture sort of guy—not interested in the nitty-gritty technical details of astronomy,’ says James Evans, a historian of astronomy at the University of Puget Sound.” The article does this to suggest these newly discovered notes will profoundly change that interpretation.
That interpretation is wrong however. Anyone who has read any histories or biographies of Galileo (as I have) knows this portrayal is false. It is very clear from all his work that Galileo was very evidence-based, focused on the data and facts — the nitty-gritty technical details — to determine the larger picture. And these newly discovered notes confirm this:
Galileo’s notes, perhaps written around 1590, or roughly 2 decades before his groundbreaking telescope observations of the Moon and Jupiter, reveal someone who both revered and critically dissected Ptolemy’s work. And they imply, Malara argues, that Galileo ultimately broke with Ptolemy’s cosmos because his mastery of the traditional paradigm’s reasoning convinced him that a heliocentric system would better fulfill Ptolemy’s own mathematical logic.
Fascinating stuff. I can’t wait to read the final paper.
New analysis suggests Moon’s magnetic field shifted multiple times from weak to strong to weak
The uncertainty of science: A new analysis of Apollo lunar samples suggests that the Moon’s magnetic field actually shifted back and forth from strong to weak, with it being weak most of the time.
The problem scientists have had since the Apollo missions is that the Apollo samples, which all came from the relatively flat mare regions, tended to exhibit evidence of a strong past magnetic field, even though the Moon’s size and make-up suggested its field should have always been weak. This new research offers a solution:
The research team analysed the chemical makeup of a type of lunar rock – known as the Mare basalts – and found a new correlation between their titanium content and how strongly magnetised they are. Every lunar sample which had recorded a strong magnetic field also contained large amounts of titanium – and the samples containing less than 6 wt.% titanium were all associated with a weak magnetic field.
This suggests that the formation of high-titanium rocks and the generation of a strong lunar magnetic field are linked. The researchers believe that both were caused by melting of titanium-rich material deep inside the Moon, temporarily generating a very strong magnetic field.
Because the Mare basalts were an ideal landing site for the Apollo missions, due to being relatively flat, the astronauts brought back far more of the titanium-rich basalts (containing evidence for a strong magnetic field) than are representative of the lunar surface. As a result, large numbers of these rocks have been analysed by scientists back on Earth, and this was previously interpreted to mean that the lunar magnetic field was strong for long periods of its history.
Instead, the limited number of samples, all from the same regions, biased the conclusions. The scientists predict that future missions to more places on the Moon will confirm their findings.
The uncertainty of science: A new analysis of Apollo lunar samples suggests that the Moon’s magnetic field actually shifted back and forth from strong to weak, with it being weak most of the time.
The problem scientists have had since the Apollo missions is that the Apollo samples, which all came from the relatively flat mare regions, tended to exhibit evidence of a strong past magnetic field, even though the Moon’s size and make-up suggested its field should have always been weak. This new research offers a solution:
The research team analysed the chemical makeup of a type of lunar rock – known as the Mare basalts – and found a new correlation between their titanium content and how strongly magnetised they are. Every lunar sample which had recorded a strong magnetic field also contained large amounts of titanium – and the samples containing less than 6 wt.% titanium were all associated with a weak magnetic field.
This suggests that the formation of high-titanium rocks and the generation of a strong lunar magnetic field are linked. The researchers believe that both were caused by melting of titanium-rich material deep inside the Moon, temporarily generating a very strong magnetic field.
Because the Mare basalts were an ideal landing site for the Apollo missions, due to being relatively flat, the astronauts brought back far more of the titanium-rich basalts (containing evidence for a strong magnetic field) than are representative of the lunar surface. As a result, large numbers of these rocks have been analysed by scientists back on Earth, and this was previously interpreted to mean that the lunar magnetic field was strong for long periods of its history.
Instead, the limited number of samples, all from the same regions, biased the conclusions. The scientists predict that future missions to more places on the Moon will confirm their findings.
Abraham Lincoln – a tragic and heroic life
An evening pause: To celebrate the birthday today one of America’s greatest man, a short biography.
The video below does a really fine job in a very short time. Lincoln’s life was filled with heart-breaking tragedy, far more than most Americans today realize. Yet the man endured, so that he ended up changing his nation so that it finally honored fully its founding documents. As he said so eloquently in 1863:
It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion – that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Tom Goes Nomad – How Victorians Built This Lighthouse at Sea
An evening pause: Built fast and cheaply, despite real cutting edge engineering challenges, at the turn of the 19th century.
Hat tip Cotour.
What life was really like in the American wild west
Though I read a lot of good, detailed, and well-researched histories, I repeatedly find that if I really want to get a sense of the reality of times past, it is necessary to read something that was written by a person who lived at the time, and was an actual witness to great events.
When you do this you instantly cut through the political narratives that color all histories, whether sincere or not. Historians writing generations later bring their own viewpoint to the subject, colored by subsequent history shaped by what the original players did. So, to really understand those original players fairly, you really need to hear their side of the story, from their own lips.
Thus, I was thrilled recently when I came across a used copy of Vanished Arizona: Recollections of the Army life of a New England Woman by Martha Summerhayes. The book covers her memories from 1870 to 1900 as the wife of Jack Summerhayes, an officer in the American military stationed in the western United States, with the bulk of the story centered in Arizona.
This is an amazingly readable book. More important, it tells this story of army life from the perspective of the women who lived it. Most histories cover the battles and important events that Summerhayes’s husband Jack participated in, from defeating the Apaches and Geronimo to establishing the first settlements in early Arizona. Martha Summerhayes instead tells the story from her perspective as a woman living in an isolated fort in the hot desert wilderness of Arizona. The story is riveting, and revealing as well.
In reading her work now, 150 years later during the first half of the 21st century, I noted two important things.
» Read more
FAKE Chandrayaan-2 images of the Apollo 11 and 12 landing sites
The pictures to the right are fake, as are the two stories I had linked to in the now crossed-out post below. Both stories included pictures of the Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 landing sites that were fake and did not match the actual pictures taken earlier by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
I seem to remember that Chandrayaan-2 had taken pictures of these Apollo landing sites, but I have not been able to find those originals. Either way, the stories below as well as the pictures to the right are fake, and for that reason I have deleted the links to both.
For reasons I don’t understand, two different news outlets in the past two days decided to highlight the 2021 images taken by India’s Chandrayaan-2 lunar orbiter of the Apollo 11 and 12 landing sites, with both outlets claiming these pictures provided third-party verification that those manned lunar landings actually happened.
Those pictures are to the right. They aren’t new, but they are so good I decided they were cool enough to post again.
As for proving the lunar landing happened, that is pure anti-American silliness, sadly too often pushed by ignorant Americans. They should be ashamed. The Apollo landings were possibly the greatest single achievement Americans have ever accomplished. And if not the greatest, the landings rank near the top, and above all they certainly were among our noblest achievement.
The pictures to the right are fake, as are the two stories I had linked to in the now crossed-out post below. Both stories included pictures of the Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 landing sites that were fake and did not match the actual pictures taken earlier by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
I seem to remember that Chandrayaan-2 had taken pictures of these Apollo landing sites, but I have not been able to find those originals. Either way, the stories below as well as the pictures to the right are fake, and for that reason I have deleted the links to both.
For reasons I don’t understand, two different news outlets in the past two days decided to highlight the 2021 images taken by India’s Chandrayaan-2 lunar orbiter of the Apollo 11 and 12 landing sites, with both outlets claiming these pictures provided third-party verification that those manned lunar landings actually happened.
Those pictures are to the right. They aren’t new, but they are so good I decided they were cool enough to post again.
As for proving the lunar landing happened, that is pure anti-American silliness, sadly too often pushed by ignorant Americans. They should be ashamed. The Apollo landings were possibly the greatest single achievement Americans have ever accomplished. And if not the greatest, the landings rank near the top, and above all they certainly were among our noblest achievement.
DW News – Mining the world’s most precious marble
Stephen Sondheim – Someone in a Tree
An evening pause: For my birthday, a repost of a 2010 evening pause of one of my favorite Broadway songs, from Stephen Sondheim’s Pacific Overtures, which I only recently learned was his favorite song as well.
It tells the story of a significant moment in history, the moment when Japan’s leaders signed their first international treaty in 1852 with the United States, but from the point of view of outside witnesses. Its point is profound, that history is not just made by the leaders who sign the deals, but by every individual who makes up the whole of human society.
It’s the fragment, not the day
It’s the pebble, not the stream
It’s the ripple, not the sea
That is happening.
Not the building but the beam
Not the garden but the stone
Only cups of tea
And history
And someone in a tree.
Uncovered Past – Traditional charcoal making
An evening pause: It always amazes me the level of engineering sophistication that one finds in all human endeavor, even from centuries past.
Hat tip Cotour.
Lawrence of Arabia: Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction
One of the 20th century’s greatest movies is David Lean’s 1962 epic Lawrence of Arabia. The story it tells — of the clash of cultures, of war, and of colonization — combined with the personal story of T.E. Lawrence during World War I, is one of high drama that is unforgettable to anyone who has ever seen it.
Yet, the events it tells seem too dramatic to be believed. Did Lawrence actually rescue a man in the desert, by himself and against the advice of his Arab allies who knew better? Did he actually later execute that man coldly to prevent a tribal war that would have destroyed the Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire? Did he actually lead those Arab tribes across a deadly desert to take the town of Aqaba from the rear?
And did he actually lead that Arab revolt so successfully that it took Damascus ahead of the British, only to lose it because that medieval tribal culture knew nothing about modern technology?
For years I wondered about these questions and tried to find out. I read T.E. Lawrence’s own memoir of his time there, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, and found it to be unclear and obscure, answering none of my questions. Other histories about World War I merely touched upon these events, treating them as a minor side show. And histories about the Middle East during that time seemed uninterested in telling this part of the story.
So, the questions remained: Did these events really happen? They seemed too good to be true.
I have now discovered that these stories are not only largely true, the reality of T.E. Lawrence’s life and his time in Arabia was even stranger than I could suppose. I learned this from Scott Anderson’s fine biography of Lawrence, Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly, and the Making of the Modern Middle East. Anderson not only unveiled Lawrence in all his inexplicable glory in this book, he made clear the complex political background that shaped the Middle East, and made it as we know it today.
» Read more
General Electric – Conquest of the Cascades
An evening pause: According to this website, this documentary was “made by General Electric between 1928 and 1929 to commemorate the completion of this monumental [8-mile-long] tunnel which took 1800 workers and three years to construct.”
Three years! Today that’s how long it would take just to get the environmental assessment written and approved.
Hat tip Blair Ivey.
An evening pause: According to this website, this documentary was “made by General Electric between 1928 and 1929 to commemorate the completion of this monumental [8-mile-long] tunnel which took 1800 workers and three years to construct.”
Three years! Today that’s how long it would take just to get the environmental assessment written and approved.
Hat tip Blair Ivey.
Restless Viking – When Michigan and Ohio went to war
The profound life’s work of Richard Rodgers
Sometimes in art there are times when culture, timing, talent, and teamwork combine to produce a magic that is eternal and beyond measure. For Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, that time occurred from 1943 to 1959, when these two men created a string of musicals so grand that each
would become not just familiar but universally beloved, played over and over again until the words and melodies had become meshed, it seemed, with one’s very existence. To have one’s complete score memorized by a whole population would, it would seem for a composer, to have been all that life has to offer.
This quote comes from Meryle Secrest’s fine 2001 biography of Richard Rodgers, Somewhere for me: a biography of Richard Rodgers. It tells a story of a man who from childhood was obsessed with writing music, who struggled for decades to write musicals where the music and song flowed naturally from the plot and characters, and who changed with time as time changed him. Outside of his music and his commitment to it, he was however a very normal man, with a marriage that at times was stormy but held together despite those storms.
But it is Rodgers’ best music — written for the lovely words of Oscar Hammerstein — for which we most remember him. I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s, so I lived at a time when these Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals were being memorized by a whole population. As a child my parents subscribed to a musical record club, which sent them a new album every month. I would spend hours listening to the songs from Oklahoma, South Pacific, The Sound of Music, the King and I, and Carousel. And on television I got to see Julie Andrews in a live production of Cinderella.
In listening to these songs, I quickly realized, even as a child, that there was something deeply profound in those words and music, touching something deeper than mere beauty, a more fundamental but utterly inexplicable aspect of our existence. As I wrote in 2018 when I posted an evening pause of Juanita Hall singing Bali Ha’i from South Pacific,
» Read more
“A new empire has sprung into existence, and there is a new thing under the sun.”
The words I quote in the headline above were spoken during a sermon by Pastor Manasseh Cutler on August 24, 1788 at the just established settlement of Marietta, Ohio, founded only six months previously by a small group of New England pioneers, with the goal of beginning the settlement of the American west now available following the end of the war of independence against Great Britain.
It may be emphatically said that a new empire has sprung into existence, and there is a new thing under the sun. By the Constitution now established in the United States, religious as well as civil liberty is secured.
Some serious Christians may possibly tremble for the Ark, and think the Christian religion in danger when divested of the patronage of civil power. They may fear inroads from licentiousness and infidelity, on the one hand, and from sectaries and party divisions on the other.
But we can dismiss our fears, when we consider the truth can never be a real hazard, where there is a sufficiency of light and knowledge, and full liberty to vindicate it.
Cutler’s words come from David McCullough’s 2019 history, The Pioneers, describing the effort of Cutler and a small group of New Englanders to re-create a new New England in the wilderness north of the Ohio river.
Not surprisingly, McCullough’s book is quite readable, as are all his works. What made it a revelation to me is that it revealed an aspect of this early American settlement of the west that I had been ignorant of. It wasn’t just any old Americans moving west to found new communities. At the beginning it was specifically the descendants of the Pilgrims and Puritans in New England, actually organizing consciously to repeat the same thing as their ancestors, sending a group of God-fearing religious families west to build a new city on a hill, for the future of America and for their children.
Cutler himself had been crucial in lobbying Congress to establish the laws necessary to allow these first first settlers to buy land and begin settlement. He and a group of former revolutionary soldiers from New England had worked up a plan, and sent Cutler to New York and Philadelphia to convince Congress to pass the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, establishing the legal framework for settling the vast territories now open to American north and west of the Ohio river. Cutler himself wrote much of that bill, making sure it included articles requiring freedom of religion and no slavery.
In the early spring of 1788 the first group of twenty-two settlers arrived, and within a very short time they had established a town and community. By the time Cutler arrived in the late summer, the colony was so well established that families were arriving to build their own farms.
» Read more
Gravity – Rocket Size Comparison as of 2024
A evening pause: The list is not quite complete, but it does give a sense of the comparable sizes of the most important rockets flying today, with a few important historic examples thrown in for context.
Hat tip Edward Thelen.
Jonasquin – If Stayin’ Alive Had Been Written in 16th Century
The global launch industry in 2025: The real space race is between SpaceX and China
In 2025 the worldwide revolution in rocketry that began about a decade ago continued. Across the globe new private commercial rocket companies are forming, not just in the United States. And across the globe, the three-quarters-of-a century domination by government space agencies is receding, though those agencies are right now pushing back with all their might to protect their turf.
Dominating this revolution in 2025 in every way possible however were two entities, one a private American company and the second a communist nation attempting to imitate capitalism. The former is SpaceX, accomplishing more in this single year than whole nations and even the whole globe had managed in any year since the launch of Sputnik. The latter is China, which in 2025 became a true space power, its achievements matching and even exceeding anything done by either the U.S. or the Soviet Union for most of the space age.
» Read more
Archeologists find what they think is evidence of fire-making by early Neanderthals
Archeologists have found a Neanderthal campsite from 400,000 years ago that shows strong evidence of the ability to make fire.
The researchers found two fragments of pyrite, a mineral that can produce sparks when struck against flint, indicating that the early Neanderthals used them as “a fire-making kit.” These ancient deposits mark the earliest known evidence of fire-making, roughly 400,000 years ago.
…The Barnham site lies in a disused clay pit in Suffolk, UK, preserving traces of the period around 427,000 to 415,000 years ago. In this area, the team found a small patch of reddened sediment, about the size of a modest campfire, surrounded by two pyrites, 19 flints, and four broken hand axes, showing clear signs of heating. Pyrites are rare locally, and the early Neanderthals likely carried them in from elsewhere.
Previously, the earliest known evidence of the ability to make fire had been dated from 50,000 years ago, and was done by homo sapiens, not Neanderthals.
Analysis of the sediment said the heat there matched that of a campfire, not a wildfire. The data also said the spot had been used repeatedly.
This one campsite suggests Neanderthals in general had the knowledge and tools to make fire, but it also could simply show the work of one particularly smart Neanderthal.
Archeologists have found a Neanderthal campsite from 400,000 years ago that shows strong evidence of the ability to make fire.
The researchers found two fragments of pyrite, a mineral that can produce sparks when struck against flint, indicating that the early Neanderthals used them as “a fire-making kit.” These ancient deposits mark the earliest known evidence of fire-making, roughly 400,000 years ago.
…The Barnham site lies in a disused clay pit in Suffolk, UK, preserving traces of the period around 427,000 to 415,000 years ago. In this area, the team found a small patch of reddened sediment, about the size of a modest campfire, surrounded by two pyrites, 19 flints, and four broken hand axes, showing clear signs of heating. Pyrites are rare locally, and the early Neanderthals likely carried them in from elsewhere.
Previously, the earliest known evidence of the ability to make fire had been dated from 50,000 years ago, and was done by homo sapiens, not Neanderthals.
Analysis of the sediment said the heat there matched that of a campfire, not a wildfire. The data also said the spot had been used repeatedly.
This one campsite suggests Neanderthals in general had the knowledge and tools to make fire, but it also could simply show the work of one particularly smart Neanderthal.
Hanna-Barbera – Good Will To Men
A morning pause: Apropos of my essay earlier this week on the need for more good will between everyone, here’s a Christmas cartoon from 1955, made by a generation still close to World War II and trapped in the Cold War.
A morning pause: Apropos of my essay earlier this week on the need for more good will between everyone, here’s a Christmas cartoon from 1955, made by a generation still close to World War II and trapped in the Cold War.
Trans-Siberian Orchestra – Christmas Eve/Sarajevo
An evening pause: I posted this Judd Clark suggestion previously in December 2023, but Judd sent it to me again and I agree, it deserves a reprise. It reminds us that despite all the craziness that has happened in the world in the past half century, children still see wonderful things we have forgotten exist.
The war-mongers are always those in power
After Diane and I recently watched Mel Gibson’s movie Braveheart I was intrigued to find out the real history behind William Wallace and the war between Scotland and England in the 1200-1300s. Fortunately, I stumbled upon Ronald McNair Scott’s excellent 1982 history, Robert the Bruce, King of Scots.
Not surprisingly, I learned that William Wallace played a relatively minor role in the effort of the Scots to break free from English rule than implied by the movie. The movie was reasonably accurate overall, but the real leader of that long battle was Robert the Bruce, who was descended from previous rulers and fought a long guerilla war against multiple English kings over more than three decades to establish his nation’s independence and his right to rule as king.
That fight began after the death of Scotland’s previous king, Alexander III in 1286. Alexander had for years maintained a peaceful alliance with England, as two separate nations. The problem was that when he died, his heir was still a child. His regents signed a deal with the English king, Edward I, allowing them to rule an independent Scotland as allies with England, but Edward soon realized the power vacuum in Scotland provided him an opportunity. He repudiated the treaty and began a long violent effort to conquer these northern provinces.
The result was thirty years of endless war, ravaging the countryside both in Scotland and northern England. Eventually Robert the Bruce won, getting England to acknowledge the independence of Scotland. Thus Bruce in many ways is seen as Scotland’s own version of George Washington.
What struck me as I read this book however was the plunder and devastation this long war visited upon the ordinary people in both England and Scotland. Edward would invade Scotland, wrecking havoc on local villages and castles. Bruce would respond with repeated raids into northern England, where he would destroy villages and farms, leaving the surviving inhabitants to starve.
And what was the war about?
» Read more
Little Cars – When Sweden Switched To Driving On The Right
Buffalo Bill: The greatest true boy adventure story that’s never been told
In American popular culture, Buffalo Bill is an icon whose history we all think we know, a western showman who in the latter decades of the 19th century traveled the world with his Wild West show, enchanting heads of states as well as ordinary people with the romantic fantasy of the American west, made up of wagon trains, gunfighters, Indian attacks, and last-minute cavalry rescues.
His name inspired the name of a professional football team. His Wild West show inspired at least one musical and numerous Hollywood movies and television shows.
Yet do we really know who the man was?
I discovered recently that we do not. Our culture knows nothing about the man, whose real name was William Cody. Worse, its cartoon vision of him denigrates his unique American nature. He was not only the greatest scout the U.S. Army ever saw, his knowledge of American Indian made it possible for him to not only help make peace with those Indians who wanted it, it also helped the U.S. put down those Indians willing only to wage terrorist war. And when he shifted into the entertainment world, his show provided employment for both his many cowboy friends as well as for many of those same Indians, both friends and former enemies.
And most astonishing of all, I discovered that Buffalo Bill’s childhood was one of the most amazing boy adventure tales, far more exciting than any kid’s movie made in the last hundred years. That Hollywood has never made a movie of his youth now baffles me. It is the stuff that Hollywood craves, but more significantly, it appears it actually happened!
I discovered these facts in reading Don Russell’s wonderful biography of Bill Cody, The Lives and Legends of Buffalo Bill, published by the University of Oklahoma in 1979. Russell’s focus was to dig into the original source material in order to separate the fact from the fiction, since much of Cody’s life had been exaggerated by himself and others during his showman days, and then overblown and warped by Hollywood’s later interpretations.
In this Russell succeeds brilliantly. He describes what we know in vivid language, but also outlines what we don’t know or can’t trust about each story. In the end he describes a unique man with unique talents who always tried to do the right thing, even in difficult circumstances. In every sense Cody’s life was the epitome of an American western pioneer cowboy, pushing the unknown with courage and pluck.
But to me the most amazing part of Russell’s biography was its first few chapters, when Russell describes Cody’s childhood. The boy’s father, Isaac Cody, was a pioneer in his own right, taking his family farther and farther west until they ended up in Kansas and involved in the violent politics there preceding the Civil War. When Isaac died in 1857, he left behind a widow and three young children, who then had to find a way to survive in that difficult pioneer world.
And so, at the age of eleven Billy Cody went out to find work. And the work the boy found was truly astonishing, when compared to what we expect from kids his age today.
» Read more
Thanksgiving repost: Miracle on 34th Street
An evening pause: This was posted in 2023. Time to repost.
Original text:
—————————
This movie used to be a tradition for television on Thanksgiving. At that time the holiday was well linked with the then joyous and relatively Christian Macy’s Day Parade (now warped into a queer agenda demonstration). [Editor: an agenda that thank god appears to be on the run.]
I think it makes for a good opening to the holiday season.
Josephine Baker – Dance Josie, Dance
A Midnight Repost: Farewell to America
I wrote the essay below the day before the November 2024 election, when it remained very uncertain whether it would be Donald Trump or Kamala Harris as our next president.
The essay itself did not get picked up at very many news aggregates. Nor did it garner as much traffic as would be expected, based on the aggregates that did pick it up. I believe the reason was the depressing title.
No matter, the point I made then still holds. The fundamental American culture — based on freedom, family, and the Judeo-Christian values of Western Civilization — that made this the most prosperous place ever created by humankind in its entire history no longer exists.
What will come remains unknown. We might see a resurgence of that culture, especially based on the public’s response following the murder of Charlie Kirk. Then again, we might not. As I said in the very first line of my history, Leaving Earth, societies change.
I repost this essay now, during Thanksgiving week, because I strongly believe it essential that we understand exactly where we stand, in order to make it possible for us to move forward, in the right direction. The essay is also another example of my never-ending and too often successful effort to look farther into the future than others. I think a year later this essay stands up quite well in this sense.
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Farewell to America
“Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all
the inhabitants thereof.” Photo credit: William Zhang
Despite my headline, this essay is not intended to be entirely pessimistic. Instead it is my effort to accept a reality that I think few people, including myself, have generally been able to process: The country we shall see after tomorrow’s election will not be the America as founded in 1776 and continued to prosper for the next quarter millennium.
The country can certainly be made great again. Elon Musk’s SpaceX proves it, time after time. The talent and creativity of free Americans is truly endless, and if Donald Trump wins it is very likely that energy will be unleashed again, in ways that no one can predict.
The country can certainly become free again. There is no law that prevents the elimination of bureaucracy and regulation, no matter how immortal government agencies appear to be. The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 proves this. Though Russia has sadly retreated back to its top-down government-ruling ways, the country did wipe out almost all its bureaucracy in 1991, resulting in an exuberant restart that even today is nowhere near as oppressive as Soviet rule.
Should Donald Trump win, we should have every expectation that he will do the largest house-cleaning of the federal government ever. The benefits will be immeasurable, and magnificent.
What however will not change, even if Donald Trump wins resoundingly tomorrow, is the modern culture and political ethics that now exist. That modern culture is fundamentally different than the America that existed during the country’ s first 200 years, and it guarantees that America can never be the country it once was.
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