The Discovery Age
Western historians refer to the period from the late 15th century through the 17th century as "The Age of Exploration" or "The Age of Discovery". These terms are obviously ethnocentric as they refer to the discoveries made by western Europeans primarily on the seas during the "A...
This is a subject that I like to research from time to time. Occassionally, as I run across a resource I may update this list. If you wish to contribute information, please include source and email nate at this domain.
Electronic mail was first "invented" in 1965 by Tom Van Vleck, and implemente...
When the Constitution was written a well trained militiaman could load and fire his musket 2 or 3 times per minute. Obviously unsuitable for personal protection beyond a single shot before an attacker could close with a knife, its main use was in a battle line where many other similarly armed men w...
The remains of a man who died 10,000 years ago were found in a cave in England in 1903 and a tooth from the skull was recently DNA sequenced to reveal the individual's dark skin and blue eye colour. The man, known as Cheddar Man was a member of Haplogroup U5. While other older skeletons found in...
I was first introduced to D&D in 1979 by some friends in school and was soon addicted. I spent inumerable hours creating maps and dungeons for my buddies to explore, and rolling up characters to populate my own worlds or to play in another kid's campaign. I played straight through high school bu...
This is a pet peeve of mine so I hope you'll forgive this rant. I found the following image in my G+ stream, and was digesting the quote and noticed it was attributed to Plato. I subscribe to the idea that quotations should be properly sourced, and there wasn't any mention of what book this was f...
It was just an image with an interesting quotation on it, an internet meme like any other but the author was purportedly Cicero. Being interested in ancient history, I knew there would likely be a better story around the quotation than the sugary sweet sentiment of the sentence taken out of cont...
To your request of my opinion of the manner in which a newspaper should be conducted so as to be most useful, I should answer, "by restraining it to true facts and sound principles only." Yet I fear such a paper would find few subscribers. It is a melancholy truth that a suppression of the press c...
If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of ever...
The attacks of September 11, 2001 were horrible, nearly 3,000 people perished in the planes and on the ground. The memorials made yesterday on the 10th anniversary of the tragedy to the familys' loss and the individual's untimely passing were both heart breaking and moving. While the attacks on th...
Oh Joy, O rapture! Today is the day that Harold Camping claimed the world will end!
I have but one thing to say on this topic: Matthew 24:36.
Topographical and magnetometry surveys are being completed today at a site in Sherwood Forest which a 200 year old document identified several years ago to be the ancient Thyng assembly site known as Thynghowe. References to Thynghowe go back to the 1200s in Nottinghamshire but its location was unce...
I kept my promise to bring everyone in to see King Tut at the Discovery Center on 44th street today. We had a fantastic time carefully investigating all the artifacts. One of my favorites included the Ostrich feather fan (which depicts a tiny animated Ankh with legs running behind King Tut's...
My more entrepreneurial friends shout that the Bush tax cuts must be extended so that business owners will feel comfortable enough to expand and hire! My more socially progressive friends shout that only the tax cuts for the rich should sunset on Dec 31 since they are less likely to spend money (th...
I enjoyed watching Lawrence Olivier in Shakespeare's As You Like It tonight. Certainly not Olivier's best work (filmed in 1936 it was actually his first on-screen performance of Shakespeare) but having never read the play or seen it performed before I have to say that at the least it held my at...
Soon after the 1993 bombing of the trade center, and for years after its subsequent total destruction in 2001 the issue of illegal immigration by members of Islamic militant groups was a frequent topic in the news. It became obvious that there were "sleeper cells" of anti-American activists who wer...
update Nov 22, 2024 - I have been using gramps for many years as an open source locally installed application to read Gedcom files. If you use Linux its probably in the standard repos. I'm on version 5.1.5-1 on my debian laptop.
Original story from 2010 follows:
The other night I was hav...
Since I haven't been moved to write very much of late, I have promoted last year's Memorial Day article to first post for this year instead.
Memorial Day commemorates those US men and women who have DIED while in military service. It is not a day to honor those who served and lived (Veteran's Day...
I think its an amazing coincidence that both of the candidates for president in the last election had serious questions raised about their American citizenship. To be president, the Constitution requires that a candidate be a "natural born citizen", but doesn't strictly define what it means to be...
I've been interested in Pompeii from an early age, ever since I first read about how the Roman town had been buried by an eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD and that archaeologists were revealing it bit by bit just as it had been thousands of years ago. Images of the macabre body casts of the eruption...
Great article in the NY Times magazine today examining the question of Christianity in education as the Texas State Board of Education weighs various petitions for modifying the curriculum. On the one hand arguments are made that the 'separation' clause has been misused to totally remove any discu...
Chaucer wrote The Parliament of Fowls in 1382 to honor the first anniversary of the engagement of King Richard II to Anne of Bohemia (they were both 15 years old when they were married shortly thereafter), but it has become associated with the present day celebrated as Valentines Day over the centur...
I've never been an avid reader of poetry, though I have read some and I've had some friends who were published poets. I see poetry as the very heart and soul of any good song. I like songs that tell a story, and while I find I really enjoy prose stories, the craft of condensing a tale into a few s...
Fans of JRR Tolkien already know that his love of language led him to seek the roots of his native English in Anglo Saxon verse and Norse saga. Many of his scholarly investigations were published. As someone who loves ancient history, works like Tolkien's 'Beowulf and the Finnesburg Fragment' 1...
Better known as 'The Fragment', what follows is a translation of all that is left of an (apparently) 5th century anglo-saxon lay that describes a saxon hero, Hengest. This may very well be the same Hengest who led the first Germanic invasion of Britain, and if so probably did so shortly after the...
