Category Archives: History

The Four Pests Campaign

After decades of war, civil and otherwise, in the 1950s the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was eager to create the communist utopia promised by Marx and Engels a century before. Among the many Five Year Plans and campaigns undertaken to achieve that goal was the spectacular failure known as the Four Pests Campaign. Great Leap Forward After a decade […]

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When Lincoln Was Almost Assassinated Nine Months Before He was Assassinated

In August 1864, the Sixteenth President of the United States of America was nearly assassinated about nine months before he was actually assassinated. This is the story. The Soldier’s Home Throughout the Civil War (1861-1865), President Abraham Lincoln and his family spent the summer and fall in a cottage on the grounds of the Soldiers’ Home in the country outside […]

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The Origin of the Republican Party

Pro civil rights, environmental legislation, peace, universal health care and progressive policies (including raising taxes)- your granddaddy wouldn’t recognize the GOP of today. Birth of a Party By the mid-19th century, the fabric of the United States was being torn apart by slavery. The famous 1820 agreement, the Missouri Compromise, which had prohibited the spread of slavery in much of […]

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The Intriguing Ancient Underground City of Derinkuyu

Long ago, in the region surrounding Nevsehir and Kayseri, in central Turkey, an ancient people built, or rather dug, over 200 underground cities. The deepest of these, under the present day town of Derinkuyu, delves over 250 feet below the Earth’s surface, and boasts numerous tunnels, halls, meeting rooms, wells and passages. Because the city was carved from existing caves […]

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When People Started Wearing Clothes

M. Schane asks: When did humans start wearing clothing? Determining exactly when humans began wearing clothes is a challenge, largely because early clothes would have been things like animal hides, which degrade rapidly. Therefore, there’s very little archaeological evidence that can be used to determine the date that clothing started being worn. There have been several different theories based on […]

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The Origin of the English Alphabet

Often considered one of the more difficult languages to master thanks to the incredible amount of inconsistencies in the language, it should come as no surprise that the development of the modern English alphabet involved several languages, hundreds of years and a variety of conquers, missionaries and scholars. Origins of Alphabetic Writing Dating back nearly four thousand years, early alphabetic […]

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The First Slave

Anthony Johnson first came over to America as an indentured servant, arriving in 1620 in the Colony of Virginia.  He did not come over willingly, as many did, agreeing to become indentured servants in exchange for passage to the New World. Rather, Johnson was captured in Angola by neighboring tribesmen and eventually sold to a merchant who transported him to […]

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The Slightly Sordid History of Twister

Twister has been a sure fire way to break the ice at parties for decades now. Earlier centuries had waltzes and minuets as socially sanctioned ways to get physically closer to the opposite sex. In the 20th century, for a time this popularly switched to the game of Twister; a very different activity, but the same underlying concept. Before we […]

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The First Car Accident

Car accidents are a sad fact of life. Every day thousands lose their lives in collisions, crashes and accidents. Though the car itself is a fairly recent invention, the first recorded accident involving them could have happened almost 300 years ago, depending on what your definition of a car is. Though it looked nothing like the modern cars you see […]

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