Christmas and class warfare
Three main points about Christmas: As with the history of Christmas trees, there are a lot of things about the history of Christmas that we have trouble remembering, mainly because it's a [...]
#OTD Pearl Harbor Day
Japanese painting of Portuguese bringing Indian cargo to Japan (1500s AD) "A day that shall live in infamy..." When my mother was young, people knew where they had been when [...]
#OTD Mongols invade Russia
Mongols kill Hungarians at the Battle of Mohi (1241 AD) December 6, 1240 AD: The Mongols, under the command of Genghis Khan's grandson Batu Khan, invade Russia and make it [...]
History of Christmas trees
Christmas Tree in Germany (late 1700s, by Joseph Keller) I'm starting to see a lot of trees through living room windows around my neighborhood, so it must be time for [...]
Oriental Institute in Chicago
Well, I've been feeling bad about having trashed the Boston Museum of Fine Arts' Sudan exhibition, so I am very happy to be able to praise the galleries of the Oriental Institute [...]
Classics must move on
Today, instead of writing my own blog post, I can't do better than to recommend this wonderful blog post from #SententiaeAntiquae. Here's a taste to get you started: "The fact is that [...]
Where do Thanksgiving foods come from?
Most of the food we eat for Thanksgiving dinner is Native food, because this is a tradition that goes back to Native harvest feasts a thousand years or more before European settlers [...]
#OTD Gettysburg, Impeachment, and Catiline
On November 19, 1863, in the middle of the Civil War, President Lincoln made a famous speech on the battlefield at Gettysburg, in Pennsylvania. He told us that "Now we are engaged in a great [...]
History of Thanksgiving
We're coming up on Thanksgiving already! There are five parts to the history of Thanksgiving, but we usually choose to remember only one of them. The five parts are 1) Native American [...]
#OTD: Incas meet Europeans: but why?
On November 15, 1532 AD, the Spanish invader Pizarro, under the rule of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, meets the Inca emperor Atahualpa, setting the stage for the Spanish conquest of Peru, colonization, and slavery. [...]
