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Kunte Kinte, Alex Haley, and Leonard Blackshear - three lives that have forever changed the face of Annapolis.Last night, more than a hundred people joined the bronze children around the statue of Alex Haley as if they were listening to stories from the book that forever lay open in his lap during the annual commemoration of the arrival of Kunte Kinte in America in 1767.Snip"Would we be here today if Alex Haley and Leonard Blackshear had not decided to explore their rich heritage?" asked Anne Jenkins, a poet and long-time Annapolis resident.Snip"History is a powerful source and a shining light,"...

ANNAPOLIS – For Chris Haley, yesterday was the culmination of a storynearly 230 years in the making, as the third and last phase of the Kunta Kinte-Alex Haley Memorial was dedicated at the foot of the City Dock here. About 150 people sweltered during the dedication ceremony along the concrete wall of the dock, where elected leaders unveiled 10 plaques on pedestals telling the story of the late Alex Haley’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, “Roots,” and his quest to document his family’s history from its African origins to present day. “It is unbelievable that it has grown into an almost national...

I vividly recall the original iteration of the TV miniseries Roots. It was January 1977, and I was 17. Like most young people that age, my life was rapidly growing independent of my parents, who were increasingly consumed by the vagaries of their workplaces. Yet, when the series debuted, it was must-see TV in the Johnson household. We stopped what we were doing and watched it together and enthusiastically each night. We even cheered during the show, notable since we were often too darned middle class to cheer while watching football games on TV. The miniseries cleaned up during awards...

The remake of Roots has gained widespread critical acclaim – but not from Snoop Dogg, who posted a short video on Instagram on Monday criticising the show, and suggesting that African Americans should not watch it. In the video, the rapper said that he was fed up with watching films and TV shows that depicted the abuse of black Americans. “12 Years a Slave, Roots, Underground, I can’t watch none of that shit,” Snoop Dogg said, also taking aim at the Steve McQueen-directed Oscar-winning film and the WGN TV series about slaves in Georgia escaping via an underground railroad, which...

Rapper Snoop Dogg will not be watching the remake of the miniseries “Roots,” and is calling on others to follow his lead. In a profanity-filled video on Instagram, the 44-year-old rap star and actor slammed the History Channel’s remake of the landmark 1977 miniseries about slavery, which began airing Monday. “I’m sick of this s—. How the f— are they going to put ‘Roots’ on, on Memorial Day?” he said in the video posted Monday. “They going to just to keep beating that s— into our heads about how they did us, huh?” Starting the video by saying “No disrespect,”...

HISTORY® premieres "Roots" on Memorial Day 2016, airing over four consecutive nights at 9 p.m. beginning Monday, May 30, it was announced today by Paul Buccieri, President of A&E and HISTORY. The four-night, eight-hour event series developed by HISTORY, from A+E Studios, is a historical portrait of American slavery recounting the journey of one family and their will to survive and ultimately carry on their legacy despite hardship.

The new Viceland cable channel takes to the air Monday with the ultimate in user-generated programming. The network set up a phone number a few weeks ago and invited callers. They reached a recording with simple instructions -- talk about what kept them up at night, or what they would do as president. Much of the network's first day on the air will be footage of executives listening to these messages... There's a "let's put on a show" vibe to Viceland, a partnership between Vice Media and the A&E Networks. It replaces the H2 network on cable and satellite systems,...

The first episode of the BBC's new costume drama War and Peace was watched by more than six million viewers. The drama, which stars Paul Dano, Lily James and James Norton, has also won rave reviews. The adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's novel averaged 6.3 million viewers, peaking at 6.7 million. It was up against ITV's Endeavour and spy drama Deutschland 83 on Channel 4, which averaged 4.4 million and 1.2 million viewers respectively. snip - Downton Abbey star James plays Natasha Rostov in the drama, with Dano - who starred in 12 Years a Slave - as Pierre Bezukhov and...

In 1976, Alex Haley authored the nearly 1,000 page, Roots: The Saga of An American Family. The following year, ABC aired a mini-series that was based upon it. Both book and television show proved to be tremendous successes. Now, the History Channel has officially announced that it will remake Root There’s only one problem: Roots is a fake and Haley is a fraud—and a fraud on multiple levels.

History channel, January 25-27, 2015. Directed by Kari Skogland; written by Stephen David and David C. White. The History channel’s new miniseries, Sons of Liberty, will anger the purists and the prudes. But it will delight the swashbuckler in the rest of us. It is a big, bodacious screening with superb production values that covers the lead-up years to the American Revolution, 1765-1775. Yes, certain liberties are taken with some of the facts and events. The main characters are glamorized. But the essential theme of America’s birth is kept intact: we as a nation were spawned by a band of...

Okay, it wasn't quite as bad as "Sam Adams: Vampire Hunter" but it was close. I am referring to the History channel's series "The Sons of Liberty" in which the real life Sam Adams, who was a middle-aged portly guy by the time of the opening scene in 1765, comes off as a young athletic urban ninja hopping up to the rooftops of Boston to evade arrest by British troops. And that was just one of the many laughable inaccuracies of the History channel's presentation of the era leading up to the American Revolution. Although one can easily get the...

The title of this thread is why I can't watch any more episodes of the History Channel's "Sons of Liberty." In their need to appeal to modern young audiences, they turned Sam Adams into a sort of modern urban Ninja warrior. After watching that scene of Sam Adams doing fancy gymnastics flipping around and hopping from rooftop to rooftop pretty much soured me on this series. The only possible good result from "Sons of Liberty" would be a TV parody of it. Hey, why not flash an "S" signal into the clouds to signal that the services of Sam Adams,...

History Channel's magical miniseries Houdini begins tonight, starring Adrien Brody as the death-defying escape artist in a TV event that traces the arc of Houdini's life from desperate poverty to worldwide fame. The Lionsgate/A&E Studios four-hour event also stars Kristen Connolly (House of Cards) as Bess, Harry Houdini's stage assistant and wife. Oscar nominee Uli Edel directed the project, adapted by Nicholas Meyer from the 1976 book Houdini: A Mind in Chains — A Psychoanalytic Portrait (written by his father, Bernard C. Meyer).Read what top critics are saying about Houdini:

Did you know that the Communists stormed the Winter Palace and overthrew the Czar? If you are right now screaming at your computer screen in anger, congratulations. That means you are more informed on the subject of history than the entire History channel. The error cited above is but one of the many that the History Channel included in their three part series, "The World Wars," this week. The amazing thing is that not only a particular History Channel writer made these errors but that nobody at the History Channel spotted them. Are they so involved in the "history" of...

And if so what did everyone think?

Your humble correspondent is a fan of the History Channel show, "Vikings." However, its historical accuracy leaves something to be desired to the extent that a week ago I posted a thread at IMDB, Things I Learned While Watching 'Vikings', which humorously mocked such inaccuracies as well as anachronisms on the show. Along with noticing that Rollo wore L.A. Ink type tattoos, I also took note of a completely unhistorical type of punishment meted out to the apostate monk Athelstan: "The Church punished apostate monks by crucifying them and doing their best to make them appear like Jesus including a...

1. Bjorn Lodbrok has a worse haircut than Kim Jong Un. 2. Beware the Duke of Earl...Haraldson. 3. In Viking vs Viking battles, those wearing plain brown hoodies are doomed to die. 4. Viking trophy wives are high maintenance. 5. Ragnar Lodbrok is a secret humanitarian. 6. Although the Vikings had extensive contacts with North German Saxons, they were unaware of the existence of England until they arrived there. 7. Eighth century Viking women had the sensibilities of 21st century feminists. 8. No-Fault Viking divorce is quick and easy. No lawyers! 9. The Church punished apostate monks by crucifying them...

Star Trek: Secrets of the Universe Tonight, May 15, 10/9c, History Channel

Anyone catch this show last night? It is definetely for a small market of viewers. Like me. I loved it. The content interests me. Of course, this coming from someone who's favorite TV program is Duck Dynasty. This show will never take off like Duck Dynasty, but I thought it was fairly entertaining. One reason I like it is because, as I was watching, I was thinking that the left is going to have a fit about these hunters are 'killing defensless deer". I say they are not killing defensless deer... they are killing delicious meat. Besides, the deer have...

What do "Big Rig Bounty Hunters" and "Swamp People" on History Channel have in common? They both pummeled CNN and MSNBC's brand new shows' debuts last week in the ratings. CNN's attempt to mimic Fox News' hugely successful "The Five" with a five person panel show called (get to) The Point" seems to have crashed and burned in spectacular fashion. The week-long tryout at 10:00 PM ET, in place of an Anderson Cooper repeat, was dead last in cable news ratings, finishing behind CNNHLN and CNBC.