Category: History

Erasmus of Rotterdam: Acquiring Nobility Through Manners

No one is short on advice, though advisers may be short on listeners. Advice’s effective motif: Be brief. Desiderius Erasmus understood this. As one of the greatest scholars of the Renaissance, he had a profound effect on Europe’s shifting educational values. He retranslated the New Testament from the original Greek for the first time in…


The Early Germans Who Shaped Virginia

When the first settlers of Virginia arrived in 1607, a bountiful land extending west through rolling hills, forested mountains, and fertile river valleys lay before them. It might have seemed like Eden until the colonists faced the droughts of summer and the long deprivation of winter. Though the first colonists barely survived, the land proved…


The Push to Berlin | WWII Liberation of Europe Ep6 | Documentary

In the spring of 1945, battle-weary GIs moved east, crossing the River Rhine to reconvene with paratroopers of one of the largest airborne assaults in history. Witness the Allied forces push east to Berlin and conquer it in the spring of 1945. …


Profiles in History: Clare Boothe Luce: Charm, Wit, and Political Wisdom

At the age of 10, the father of Clare Boothe Luce (1903–1987), William Boothe, left her and her mother, Anna Clara Snyder, and brother, David, to fend for themselves. The family moved back to New York City, where for two years Luce worked stage plays to help her mother pay the bills. At 12, the…


Book Review: ‘The Girl With the White Flag’: A Child’s Account of America’s Invasion of Okinawa

“The Girl with the White Flag: A Spellbinding Account of Love and Courage in Wartime Okinawa” is the inspiring story of 7-year-old Tomiko Higa’s bravery during the American invasion of Okinawa in 1945 at the close of World War II. The memoir describes the traumatic experience of young Tomiko as she and her family are…


La Fontaine: The Virtue of Absentmindedness

It’s often forgotten that being memorized is the best way to be remembered. For centuries, British schoolchildren had to learn to recite the first 20 lines of Geoffrey Chaucer’s general prologue from the “Canterbury Tales.” Then that got thrown out. Now, Chaucer has, for most people, joined that long list of vague names inhabiting a…


From East and West Two Magnificent Rulers Change the World

Europe’s long fascination with ancient Chinese art and culture isn’t new as it was even mythologized in the Middle Ages. However, it was during the reign Louis XIV that a new era began that brought the East and West closer than ever before. Inspired by the richness of ancient Chinese philosophy and art, King Louis…


Air War Over Europe | WWII Liberation of Europe Ep2 | Documentary

Watch the complete history of airborne combat over Europe in World War II unfold in this action-packed program. Witness the early days of Allied bombers and devastating Luftwaffe gunfire to the winning airborne strategies the Allies used to end World War II. …


‘The Greatest Enterprise of Its Kind:’ The Oxford English Dictionary

On June 6, 1928, 150 men gathered for a formal dinner in London’s magnificent Goldsmiths’ Hall. In this glittering assembly of intellectuals were bishops, peers of the realm, publishers, writers, and professors, including one J.R.R. Tolkien, who had not yet attained world fame as the creator of “Lord of the Rings.” In his Prologue to…


Profiles in History: George Moses Horton: The Slave Poet

Approximately 67 years before the end of the American Civil War, George Moses Horton was born. He grew up a slave to the Horton family in North Carolina. While working the tobacco plantation, his mind freely traversed the world of verse and rhyme. Using old hymnals, he taught himself to read, while also learning the…