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Last week, Democrats held their first true presidential debate. With the field winnowed down to 10 candidates -- three of them actual contenders for the nomination -- only one moment truly stood out. That moment came not from Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders but from a candidate desperate for attention: Beto O'Rourke. O'Rourke ran in 2018 for a Senate seat in Texas and lost in shockingly narrow fashion to incumbent Republican Sen. Ted Cruz. But his persona at the time was more Biden than Bernie: He ran as a unifying quasi-moderate, an Obama-esque figure determined to bring Americans...

Close-up of palace walls. Credit: University of Missouri-St.Louis Pylos drain. Credit: University of Missouri-St Louis Clearing thick brush from a mound at his archaeological dig site in Pylos, Greece, Michael Cosmopoulos found a real-life palace dating back to the mythical Trojan War. The palace is from the Mycenaean period (1600-1100 B.C.), famous for such mythical sagas as the Trojan War. It is thought to sit within one of the capital cities of King Nestor, a personality featured in the legends of the war. "We are thrilled, excited and fascinated at the prospect of continuing its excavation," said Cosmopoulos, the Hellenic...

Samson the Greek? 3,000-year-old archaeological finds at Tel Dan suggest that the Danites were Aegean soldiers hired by Canaan's Egyptian overlords to keep order. The Tribe of Dan, one of the 12 "Israelite tribes," may have started as no such thing. New archaeological evidence suggests that the Danites originated with mercenaries hired from the Aegean and Syria by the Egyptian overlords of Canaan to keep order. According to the Bible, after the Israelites conquered Canaan, the land was split between the tribes – with the exception of the tribe of Dan. Bitter at their lot, the tribe went northward, conquered...

Scientific studies indicate that a tomb that, according to legend, held Jesus Christ’s body dates back nearly 1,700 years. It is unknown whether the tomb ever really kept Jesus ‘ body. The limestone bed dates back to nearly 300 years after Jesus ‘ death. In addition, several other sites claim to hold the “tomb of Jesus.”

A group of Chinese scholars has suggested that many contemporary Western languages, including English, were derived from Mandarin Chinese. According to their research, the French, German, and Russian languages were also strongly influenced by Chinese culture. According to a report at the Inquirer on Tuesday, the claim by Chinese scholars at the World Civilization Research Association was first presented at a summit in Beijing last July, but has not been widely discussed with international media until now. The claim came with a hearty dose of Chinese nationalism, as the group asserted everything Europeans believe about the influence of ancient Egypt,...

But the black rectangle, which measures about 7 inches (18 centimeters) long and around 4 inches (9 cm) wide, is no electronics accessory; it's an ancient belt buckle made of jet — a gemstone made from pressurized wood — inlaid with small beads of mother-of-pearl, carnelian and turquoise, The Siberian Times reported. Scientists with the Institute for the History of Material Culture at the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) found the object in a woman's grave, where it lay upon the skeleton's pelvis. The researchers nicknamed the woman "Natasha" and dubbed the artifact "Natasha's iPhone," according to The Siberian Times....

All, I will be doing a Texas speaking tour in late October/early November. Oct. 29, Tomball (Houston), Tomball Tea Party, Tomball Community Center, 7:00, "Reagan: The American President" Nov. 2, Cypress, Cypress Tea Party, Springcreek BBQ, noon, "Reagan" Nov. 5, Austin, Republican Club of Austin luncheon (location TBD) "Reagan" Nov. 7, Dallas, North Dallas Tea Party, 7:00, location TBD (watch their website) "Reagan" I have some holes in the schedule and am happy to discuss speaking to ANY group on Oct. 30-32 in DALLAS, Nov. 1, 3, 4 in Houston, Austin, or Dallas, and Nov. 7 during the day in...

September 13th and 14th mark the anniversary of the Battle of Baltimore during the War of 1812, remembered primarily for the unsuccessful British bombardment of Fort McHenry and Francis Scott Key's penning the words of "The Star-Spangled Banner" while interned on a British warship. President James Madison had declared war on Great Britain in June 1812 in response to interference with American shipping and the impressment of U.S. merchant seamen during the Napoleonic wars, as well as the British stirring up the Indians of the Ohio Valley to resist American settlement. Following an abortive American invasion of southern Canada, the...

JERUSALEM, Israel – Archaeologists in Israel say they may have discovered the true location of Emmaus, the Biblical town where Jesus first appeared to two of his followers after being crucified and resurrected. Haaretz reports that researchers found the massive 2,200-year-old walls of a Hellenistic fortification believed to have been built by the Seleucid general who defeated Judah the Maccabee, the Jewish leader spoken of in the Hanukkah story. Since 2017, a Franco-Israeli team has been excavating a hill overlooking Jerusalem known as Kiriath Yearim, an area believed to be where the Ark of the Covenant was kept for 20...

Posted on September 9, 2019 by J. Kb A little history for David Hogg and the Democrats on Wounded Knee I saw Miguel’s post about David Hogg claiming that mass shootings today are somehow related to Wounded Knee and some Harvard level deep thinking like that.David Hogg is part of the chorus of voices calling for civilian disarmament, which has metastasized thought the Democrats and is now part of every Presidential primary candidate’s platform.From History.com:On December 29, the U.S. Army’s 7th Cavalry surrounded a band of Ghost Dancers under Big Foot, a Lakota Sioux chief, near Wounded Knee Creek...

Although the Bible is not an ancient history textbook, it does report events that have been confirmed by other historical works. Consider the following examples: Archeological digs and ancient Assyrian records confirm the Bible’s portrayal of King Sennacherib’s invasion of Judah (2 Kings 18:13–19:37). Until recent excavations at Tell Mardikh uncovered tablets mentioning Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19:1–29), scholars dismissed the existence of both cities as a biblical legend. The Hittites were also considered a biblical legend until their capital and records were discovered in modern-day Turkey. The palace of King Sargon, an Assyrian ruler mentioned in Isaiah, was uncovered...

This Saturday teachers will gather at the Smithsonian (specifically the National Museum of the American Indian) for a continuing education class about Christopher Columbus. They will get lessons using Howard Zinn’s Marxist A People’s History of the United States, and produced by the Zinn Education Project. Breaking publishing records, Zinn’s book has sold over 2.6 million copies since it was first published in 1980. Sales grow each year.ZEP was started by one of Zinn’s adoring Boston University students-turned-wealthy-capitalist. By 2018, 84,000 teachers had downloaded their lessons. School districts pay for ZEP organizers to give workshops to teachers and librarians on such things...

September 7 is the anniversary of the battle of Borodino in 1812, at which Napoleon's Grande Armée grappled bitterly with massed Russian forces defending Moscow under Marshal Mikhail Kutusov during Napoleon's invasion of Russia. Kutusov suffered significant losses, and the French occupied Moscow a week later, but in a month, Napoleon's disastrous retreat toward the west had begun. As Tolstoy noted in War and Peace, "The cudgel of the people's war was lifted with all its menacing and majestic might, and caring nothing for good taste and procedure, with dull-witted simplicity but sound judgment, it rose and fell, making no...

When I was a First Lieutenant of Marines in 1977, I was assigned to the 3rd FSSG in Okinawa and at the middle of my one-year deployment there, was given the job of embarking 225 Marines and huge amounts of equipment aboard an amphibious transport ship, the USS Mobile LKA-115. My mission was to take part in a large training exercise in the Philippines on the island of Mindoro, establishing a Landing Support Element (LSE) on the beach for a couple of weeks. Any of you have had experience with sort of thing know that it took many, many hours,...

Two vessels named “H. M.S. Terror” and “Erebus” were left in the Northwest Passage in 1845 but not before the crews suffered lead poison and botulism — and they cannibalized each other before the freezing to death. Now, a closer look is on one of those vessels. Parks Canada archaeologists recently used underwater drones to explore the wreck of the aptly named H.M.S. Terror. according to National Geographic. Discovered in 2016 off King William Island in the Canadian north, the ship and its contents have not yet been properly studied until now, 174 years after it sank.

Lewis and Clark Stop celebrating. They don't matter. By David Plotz Posted Friday, August 16, 2002, at 7:40 AM PT The American infatuation with Lewis and Clark grows more fervent with every passing year. The adventurers have become our Extreme Founding Fathers, as essential to American history as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson but a lot more fun. Last month, President Bush announced the Lewis and Clark bicentennial celebration, a three-year, 15-state pageant that begins Jan. 18 in Virginia and could draw as many as 25 million tourists to the Lewis and Clark trail by the time it wraps up...

My fellow Americans and my friends: Tonight my single duty is to speak to the whole of America. Until four-thirty this morning I had hoped against hope that some miracle would prevent a devastating war in Europe and bring to an end the invasion of Poland by Germany. For four long years a succession of actual wars and constant crises have shaken the entire world and have threatened in each case to bring on the gigantic conflict which is today unhappily a fact. ...I myself cannot and do not prophesy the course of events abroad -- ...I cannot prophesy the...

The New York Times has begun a major initiative, the "1619 Project," to observe the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe American history so that slavery and the contributions of black Americans explain who we are as a nation. Nikole Hannah-Jones, staff writer for The New York Times Magazine wrote the lead article, "America Wasn't a Democracy, Until Black Americans Made It One." She writes, "Without the idealistic, strenuous and patriotic efforts of black Americans, our democracy today would most likely look very different -- it might not be a democracy at all." There...

Victor Hugo on Gutenberg's Press, "The Invention of Printing ... is the Mother of Revolution." HISTORY OF WRITING The invention of "writing" was around 3300 BC. Richard Overy, editor of The Times Complete History of the World, stated in "The 50 Key Dates of World History" (October 19, 2007): "No date appears before the start of human civilizations about 5,500 years ago and the beginning of a written or pictorial history." Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson stated in the Cosmos TV series (2014, natgeotv.com, episode 10, "The Immortals"): "It was the people who once lived here, around 5,000 years ago, who...

1918: When enemy fighters shoot down Ensign George M. Ludlow’s Machhi M.5 seaplane (featured image) off the Austria-Hungary coast, Charles H. Hammann lands beside him and rescues the downed aviator. Hamman’s fighter is also damaged, and the winds high and seas choppy, but he manages to take off with Ludlow holding the struts behind him (the plane wasn’t designed to carry two pilots) and flies 65 miles across the Adriatic Sea to the air station at Porto Cassini, Italy. The plane sinks from the weight of the extra passenger after landing but both aviators are safe. Hammann, an enlisted pilot...