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History Tag

Posted by Mary Chastain on December 07, 2016 6 Comments
75 years ago today, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. On December 8, President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered one of the most famous speeches, which the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum will display until December 31:
“Yesterday, December 7, 1941 — a date which will live in infamy — the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.”

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on November 24, 2016 2 Comments
This is my favorite time of year. For a brief while the world is grateful. People are kind and patient; willing to look beyond themselves. There's a collective sense of gratitude. What better place to be than a country who, from her conception, devoted time to thankfulness. Every year I take a few moments to read through the earliest Thanksgiving proclamations. It speaks not only to the priorities of our founders, but the foundations of our cultural heritage. Washington's Thanksgiving Proclamation encouraged prayer, reflection, thanks, and above all, humbleness for the abundance these great states were so fortunately granted.

Posted by Mike LaChance on July 13, 2016 37 Comments
A cafeteria worker at Yale's Calhoun College named Corey Menafee "resigned" from his job last month after using a broom handle to smash a window. The stained glass image in the window depicted slaves working in a cotton field. Menafee, who is black said the image angered him and that "we shouldn't have to see that." The New Haven Independent reported:
An African-American dishwasher lost his job after losing his cool and breaking a stained-glass panel in Yale’s Calhoun residential college dining hall that depicted slaves carrying bales of cotton. The dishwasher, Corey Menafee, said he used a broomstick to knock the panel to the floor. He said he was tired of looking at the “racist, very degrading” image. Yale University Police arrested Menafee, who now faces a felony charge. The university, meanwhile, has cut ties with him....

Posted by Mary Chastain on July 05, 2016 5 Comments
A family found a letter from Thomas Jefferson from 1815 to the U.S. Ambassador to France about the victory in the War of 1812:
“As in the Revolutionary War, [the British] conquests were never more than of the spot on which their army stood, never extended beyond the range of their cannon shot,” Jefferson wrote in the letter, penned at his Monticello home on Valentine's Day, 1815. "We owe to their past follies and wrong the incalculable advantage of being made independent of them. . . ”

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on July 04, 2016 7 Comments
Thomas Jefferson rightly receives the lionshare of credit for writing the Declaration of Independence, though he wasn't the only founder who had a hand in its creation. Following the introduction and debate of Richard Henry Lee's resolution to dissolve ties with Great Britain, the Second Continental Congress appointed a Committee of Five -- John Adams, Roger Sherman, Benjamin Franklin, Robert R. Livingston, and Thomas Jefferson -- to write the Declaration during the Congressional recess. Later, Jefferson wrote of the Committee:
"unanimously pressed on myself alone to undertake the draught [sic]. I consented; I drew it; but before I reported it to the committee I communicated it separately to Dr. Franklin and Mr. Adams requesting their corrections. . . I then wrote a fair copy, reported it to the committee, and from them, unaltered to the Congress."

Posted by Mike LaChance on July 03, 2016 10 Comments
In honor of the passing of Elie Wiesel, I'd like to share a personal story about how I was affected by his work. In the early 1980's I found myself at a new school in the eighth grade. My English teacher required my class to read Wiesel's major work "Night" as an assignment. Despite years of education, I didn't know much about the Holocaust.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on April 20, 2016 12 Comments
Harriet Tubman was a badass. And if things go as planned, she'll be gracing the front of our $20 bills in about ten years or so. In honor of Tubman's accension to currency, I present to you Drunk History's recounting of Harriet Tubman, Union spy. If you're not familiar with Drunk History, it's a show where the hosts du jour get plastered, tell a very particular historical tale, and then that tale is acted out by comedians and other well known Hollywood types. Politically correct it is not, because really, who's PC when plastered?

Posted by Mike LaChance on January 21, 2016 11 Comments
Fifteen years ago when the Taliban controlled Afghanistan, they destroyed ancient Buddhist statues. Today, ISIS is following their lead in other parts of the region, most recently by destroying a Christian monastery in Iraq. Jonah Bennett reports at The Daily Caller:
ISIS Just Bulldozed The Oldest Christian Monastery In Iraq The Islamic State just bulldozed St. Elijah’s Monastery, the oldest Christian monastery in Iraq, which has survived every other assault for 1,400 years until now. ISIS took out the location with bulldozers, sledgehammers and perhaps even explosives.

Posted by Amy Miller on August 02, 2015 21 Comments
On August 15, 1945, Japanese Emperor Hirohito ordered Japan's unconditional surrender, bringing about a formal end to World War II. His speech announcing the ceasing of hostilities was recorded secretly, for fear that violent protests would break out once the army and the people realized that their leader was, indeed, surrendering. Yesterday, the Imperial Household Agency released a digital version of the original recording of Hirohito's address ahead of the 70th anniversary of the end of the war. More from the Daily Mail:
Speaking in unique intonation that drops at the end of sentences, Hirohito opens his 1945 address with Japan's decision to accept the condition of surrender. He also expresses 'the deepest sense of regret' to Asian countries that co-operated with Japan to gain 'emancipation' from Western colonisation. Hirohito also laments devastation caused by 'a new and most cruel bomb' dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and asks everyone to stay calm while helping to reconstruct the country.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on July 07, 2015 6 Comments
During my family’s visit of Berlin, Germany yesterday, an American president was prominently featured as part of the tour we took. Our guide spoke glowingly of a speech that he heard, and one which still resonates with him to this day. As we passed the Bradenburg Gate, he quoted Ronald Reagan's 1987 speech by saying, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" Our guide lived 3 blocks away from the infamous Berlin Wall, the remnants of which are covered in art and graffiti or which are boxed up as souvenirs of a seemingly distant era. While the entire speech is iconic, reviewing Reagan's words again, I was struck by this passage:

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on June 25, 2015 43 Comments
And the derpfest rages on. Apple has joined other retailers in boycotting the Confederate flag by removing Civil War games from the App Store. Apple’s Tim Cook spearheaded the move. "In a tweet, Cook called to honor the lives of the victims in last week’s tragic South Carolina shooting by “eradicating racism & removing the symbols & words that feed it.” An Alabama native like myself, Cook has been a strong proponent for equality during his tenure as CEO, often speaking out against the South’s tarnished history and the changes we still need to address," writes 9 to 5 Mac. According to Touch Arcade, "the reasoning Apple is sending developers is "...because it includes images of the confederate flag used in offensive and mean-spirited ways." Right, because all history should be polite, unoffensive, and politically correct. Nevermind the fact that in each of these scenarios the Confederacy is ultimately defeated... Some of the games in exile look super offensivey, don't they? Ultimate General: Gettysburg AAA American Civil War Cannon Shooter Civil War: Hidden Mysteries Civil War The Battle Game Civil War Defense Civil War Battle Defense 1861 A Civil War Rebellion Civil War: 1862 Civil War: 1863

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on April 17, 2015 13 Comments
Tomorrow evening marks 240 years since Paul Revere made his famous midnight ride. Made famous by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem, Revere's ride has become an iconic piece of American revolutionary history. Longfellow's poem was riddled with inaccuracies, but made for an entertaining rhyme.
LISTEN, my children, and you shall hear Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five; Hardly a man is now alive Who remembers that famous day and year. He said to his friend, ‘If the British march By land or sea from the town to-night, Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch Of the North Church tower as a signal light,— One, if by land, and two, if by sea; And I on the opposite shore will be, Ready to ride and spread the alarm Through every Middlesex village and farm, For the country folk to be up and to arm...’
Revere was a Boston-based artisan, early propaganda artists, and original Tea Partier:
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