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Camelot and King Arthur's Court, Knights of the Round Table, Guinevere, Sir Lancelot, Sir Galahad, and the search for the Holy Grail ... (The Holy Grail was Jesus' cup at the Last Supper.) Our imaginations soar with history and legend immortalized in "Idylls of the King," written 1859-85 by poet Alfred Lord Tennyson. Alfred Lord Tennyson embellished the medieval legend of the Lady of the Lake who gave the sword Excalibur to the courageous young King Arthur. Scenes of this were portrayed in Disney's 1963 animated musical fantasy movie, The Sword in the Stone. Born AUGUST 6, 1809, Alfred Lord...

Settlers in New England highlighted the conflict between self-preservation and the selfless sharing of the Gospel. Gospel-motivated settlers wanted to bless the native inhabitants, both physically and spiritually. Unfortunately, other settlers viewed natives as an unpredictable danger, as sometimes they would kidnap women and children, or steal from farms. In a larger sense, what both sides were experiencing was a colliding of civilizations. Europe, Asia, China, India, North Africa, and the Middle East, all had centuries of written languages, metal tools, scientific advancements, agricultural technologies, and powerful weapons. By comparison, natives of North America had a subsistence lifestyle. This was...

In June of 1775, citizens acting as merchant mariners captured the British schooner HMS Margaretta around Machias, Massachusetts (present-day Maine). That same month, General George Washington, with the help of merchant ship owner Colonel John Glover of Marblehead, Massachusetts, chartered and outfitted several ships to interrupt the British supplies. The marker at the base of John Glover's statue in Boston states: "John Glover of Marblehead - A Soldier of the Revolution. He commanded a regiment of one thousand men raised in that town known as the marine regiment, and enlisted to serve throughout the war. He joined the camp at...

Columbus set sail on his first voyage AUGUST 3, 1492, with the Nina, Pinta and the Santa Maria. He explained how the Spanish monarchs approved his plan: "... And ordained that I should not go by land (the usual way) to the Orient (East), but by the route of the Occident (West), by which no one to this day knows for sure that anyone has gone." Why did he seek to find a sea route to India and China? Because 40 years earlier Islamic Ottoman Turks closed off the land routes. The background to Columbus' voyage goes back to the...

The South Pacific had many major battles during World War II: Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941, Wake Island, Dec. 7-23, 1941, Doolittle Raid, April 18, 1942, Coral Sea, May 4-8, 1942, Midway, June 4-7, 1942, Guadalcanal campaign, Aug. 7, 1942-Feb. 9, 1943, Gilbert & Marshall Islands campaign, 1943–44: Makin Island, Aug. 17-18, 1942, Tarawa, Nov. 20, 1943, Makin, Nov. 20-23, 1943, Kwajalein, Feb. 14, 1944, Eniwetok, Feb. 17, 1944, Truk Island, Feb. 17-18, 1944,  Mariana & Palau Islands campaign 1944: Saipan, June 16, 1944, Philippine Sea, June 19-20, 1944, Guam, July 21, 1944, Tinian, July 24, 1944, Peleliu, Sept....

"There she blows!" cried the lookout, sighting the great white whale, Moby Dick. The classic book, Moby Dick, was written by New England author Herman Melville, published in 1851. In the novel, Captain Ahab, driven by revenge, sailed the seas to capture this great white whale who had bitten off his leg in a previous encounter. The crew of Captain Ahab's ship, the Pequod, included: Ishmael, the teller of the tale, which begins the line: "Call me Ishmael"-the name of Abraham's son who was sent away; Chief Mate Starbuck, a Quaker from Nantucket, for whom the Seattle-based coffee franchise took...

On the third of his four voyages, Columbus sailed south along the west coast of Africa before heading west across the Atlantic Ocean . There he was caught in the "doldrums," a dangerous condition near the equator, called the "horse latitudes," where there is intense heat and no wind. The origin of the term "horse latitudes" came later, when ships sailing to the New World were stranded in the "doldrums" for weeks. As they baked in the sun, they ran out of fresh drinking water. Sailors reportedly pushed overboard the horses they were transporting as the ocean salt water they...

King Charles II and the British passed the Conventicle Act of 1664, making it illegal to hold church meetings of over five people. It prohibited "... more than five persons in addition to members of the family, for any religious purpose not according to the rules of the Church of England." The word "conventicle" is derived from the word "convenant" and referred to gatherings of church members according to Jesus' promise in Matthew 18:20, "Where two or three are met together in my name." The English Book of Canon Law, Article 11, stated: "All conventicles and secret meetings ... have...

Alexis de Tocqueville was born JULY 29, 1805. A French social scientist, he traveled the United States in 1831, and wrote a two-part work, Democracy in America (1835; 1840), which has been described as: "the most comprehensive and penetrating analysis of the relationship between character and society in America that has ever been written." In it, Tocqueville wrote: "Upon my arrival in the United States the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention; and the longer I stayed there, the more I perceived the great political consequences resulting from this new state of things,...

In 1857, the Supreme Court, with 7 of the 9 Justices being Democrat, decided that Dred Scott was not a citizen, but property. Chief Justice Roger Taney was appointed by the first Democrat President, Andrew Jackson. Taney wrote in his Dred Scott decision that slaves were "so far inferior ... that the Negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for their own benefit." Abraham Lincoln rejected this. He did not believe in "stare decisis" - that he had to honor the precedent of the Dred Scott decision, stating June 28, 1857: "We think the Dred Scott decision is...

"FREEDOM IS NOT FREE" is the inscription on the Korean War Memoria l in Washington, D.C. The Korean War started June 25, 1950. Communist North Korea invaded South Korea, killing thousands. Outnumbered South Korean and American troops, as part of a U.N. police action, fought courageously against the Communist Chinese and North Korean troops, who were supplied with arms and MIG fighters from the Soviet Union. Five-star General Douglas MacArthur was Supreme U.N. Commander, leading the United Nations Command from 1950 to 1951. MacArthur made a daring landing of troops at Inchon, deep behind North Korean lines, and recaptured the...

Spanish Explorers Hernando de Soto, in 1540, and Juan Pardo, in 1567, traveled inland from North America's eastern coast and passed through a Native American village named "Tanasqui." A century and a half later, British traders encountered a Cherokee town named Tanasi. After the Revolutionary War, attempts were made to turn the area into the "State of Franklin" in honor of Ben Franklin. At the State's Constitutional Convention, it is said General Andrew Jackson suggested the Indian name "Tennessee." So far, citizens of Tennessee have resisted the "deconstruction" movement's attempt to erase acknowledgements of native American Indian history, including the...

He was the only person to sign all four of these America's founding documents: Articles of Association, 1774; Declaration of Independence, 1776; Articles of Confederation, 1777; U.S. Constitution, 1787. Who was he? Roger Sherman. At age 19, Roger Sherman's father died and he supported his family as a shoe cobbler, helping his two younger brothers to attend college and become clergymen. Roger Sherman was a surveyor and merchant, but when a neighbor needed legal advice, he studied to help, only to be inspired to become a lawyer. Sherman was elected a state senator, a judge and a delegate to the...

"I see America, not in the setting sun of a black night of despair ahead of us, I see America in the crimson light of a rising sun fresh from the burning, creative hand of God. I see great days ahead, great days possible to men and women of will and vision," stated poet Carl Sandburg in an interview with Frederick Van Ryn of This Week Magazine (January 4, 1953, p. 11.) Carl Sandburg was born on January 6, 1878, to Swedish immigrants who worked on the railroad. After 8th grade, Carl Sandburg left school, borrowed his father's railroad pass,...

The Scopes Monkey Trial in 1925 pitted EVOLUTION against CREATION. Clarence Darrow was the attorney who defended EVOLUTION. Darrow had previously defended Leopold and Loeb, the teenage homosexual thrill killers who murdered 14-year-old Robert "Bobby" Franks in 1924 just for the excitement. Darrow obtained a pardon for antifa-type anarchists in 1886 who blew up a pipe bomb in Chicago's Haymarket, Square, killing 7 policemen and injured 60 others. A Haymarket Statue was dedicated to the fallen policemen. The policemen's Haymarket Statue was blown up by the socialist anarchist group Weather Underground on October 6, 1969, prior to the "Days of...

"One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind," stated Astronaut Neil Armstrong, JULY 20, 1969, as he became the f irst man to walk on the moon, almost 238,900 miles away from the Earth. The second man on the moon was Colonel Buzz Aldrin, who described it as "magnificent desolation." Aldrin earned a Ph.D. from M.I.T. and helped develop the technology necessary for the mission, especially the complicated lunar module rendezvous with the command module. Buzz Aldrin's popularity was the inspiration for the character "Buzz Lightyear" in Pixar's animated movie Toy Story (1995). Buzz Aldrin shared a...

Winston Churchill became Prime Minister of Britain on May 10, 1940. World War II would rage another year and a half before the entrance of Unite States. The situation in Europe was desperate, as two massive Nazi armies were driving back British, French, Dutch, Polish and Belgian troops to the English Channel, bottling them up in the port of Dunkirk. The Belgian army surrendered. If the British forces were destroyed, Britain would be forced to negotiate a surrender. For reasons still debated, Hitler approved an order on May 24 to halt for three days the advance of 800,000 Nazi troop,...

In the decades prior to the Revolutionary War, tensions arose between the two largest global powers: BRITAIN, led by King George II, and FRANCE, led by King Louis XV. Because of their alliances with other nations, fighting escalated into the first global war -- the Seven Years War, or as it was called in America, the French and Indian War. The conflict included every major power in Europe as well as their colonies from the Caribbean, to India, to the Philippines, and to Africa. Over a million died. It was sparked by the ambush in 1754 of a French detachment...

Robert Goddard, the father of American rocketry, is credited with developing the first liquid fueled rockets, with gyroscope three-axis control providing steerable thrust. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center is named for him. After World War II, Werner von Braun , and 1,600 German scientists, surrendered to the United States in Operation Paperclip, stating: "I myself, and everybody you see here, have decided to go West ... We knew that we had created a new means of warfare ... We felt that only by surrendering such a weapon to people who are guided by the Bible could such an assurance to...

In 1781, 27-year-old King Louis XVI of France sent his navy and troops to help America gain independence from Britain. In return, France gained very little, except an enormous amount of debt. On the verge of financial collapse, France then experienced a terrible famine in 1788. The people blamed the King. Anti-monarchists referred to Queen Marie Antoinette as Madame Déficit. According to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, when she was told the people did not have bread, her reply was: "Let them eat cake." On July 14, 1789, an anarchist mob went through the streets of Paris and stormed the the Bastille Fortress...