Founding Father Benjamin Franklin came from humble beginnings to take his place in the annals of history as one of the most celebrated Americans ever to stand on the world stage. The Boston apprentice who ran away because of his brother’s ill-treatment found his destiny in Philadelphia, where he became a printer, a scientist, an […]
Everyone knows who Christopher Columbus is, and everyone knows what he discovered and what he is famous for. Who, really, is this man, so shrouded in mystery? Columbus would tell you he was inspired by God to make his voyages, and it takes a brave soul indeed to sail out into the ocean blue where
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One of the most controversial figures in British History, Oliver Cromwell entered the world as an insignificant member of the English gentry and left it as the all-powerful Lord Protector of the entirety of England, Scotland and Ireland. A radical Puritan, Cromwell believed that his meteoric rise through the ranks of the English military and
The Battle of Antietam was a turning point in the Civil War. In the span of several hours, there would be more loss of American life than in any other battle before or since, leaving one in four of the soldiers who took part either dead or wounded by the end of the day. Inside
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In 1642, King Charles I and the elected Parliament of England went to war over the future of the Stuart kingdom. Over the next nine years three Civil Wars would be fought, devastating the populations of England, Scotland and Ireland and claiming a death toll of an estimated 800,000 people, including King Charles I himself.
Mary Stuart was born into a powerful royal dynasty that was at war with the rest of Europe and with itself. Mary’s ascent to the throne was disarmingly easy and she reached adulthood completely unprepared for the plots and betrayals she would be subject to. As the head of a resolutely unstable country, Mary struggled
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The gifted W.B. Yeats wrote of his own people “even a newspaperman, if you entice him into a cemetery at midnight, will believe in phantoms, for everyone is a visionary if you scratch him deep enough. But the Celt, unlike any other, is a visionary without scratching.” This introduction to Celtic Mythology will serve the
The Marquis de Lafayette may be a name that sounds vaguely familiar. If you’ve studied even a little American history, you’ll recall Lafayette as George Washington’s right-hand man during the American Revolution. This remarkable man was just a teenager when he ventured across the seas from France to fight in a conflict that he was
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Charles Darwin thought he would be a clergyman after an uneventful childhood, where he hated school but loved the natural world. All that would change when he was allowed to be a part of a worldwide expedition to faraway lands. He was able to collect specimens and keep notes on all he experienced. Inside you
“A splendid little war “- that’s how one contemporary observer described the Spanish-American War, a war that is arguably one of the most important wars ever fought. The duration was short and the victory decisive, thus little and splendid, the latter, at least, from the victor’s point of view. The impacts of the war, however,
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