Free Republic

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...

The current narrative of the Bush Presidency is that it is a failure (believed by 107 of 109 historians surveyed) and that George W. Bush is the worst President in history (believed by 61% of those surveyed historians). Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said, "The president already has the mark of the American people -- he's the worst president we ever had." That's one narrative. I have another.

Thirty years ago Saigon fell. I was a company commander in the 2 nd Battalion, 508 th Airborne Infantry Regiment, 82 nd Airborne Division. When our Vietnam veterans cursed the war, I remembered one of the greatest speeches I ever heard - the day the Vietnam peace was announced to my Winter Ranger class in ’73. The senior Ranger Sergeant cursed everything about the Vietnam War and everyone involved, friend or foe, in a poetic rant of imaginative, sincere, foul-mouthed hatred. He swore most passionately about the waste of his buddies’ lives. He blamed everyone and everything he knew to...

Some time ago, in my eternal quest to set the record straight, I suggested that the true hero of the motion picture industry wasn’t Thomas Edison or D.W. Griffith, not Chaplin or Keaton, not Jack Warner or Louis B. Mayer, but the anonymous fellow who first came up with the notion of putting salt on popcorn, thus turning packing material into a concession stand bonanza that costs more per-pound than lox and caviar put together. But there are others who, more often than not, get overlooked while far too much praise is lavished on actors and directors. I refer to...

History Channel is showing the following specials tonight: "ST.PETER:THE ROCK" and "APOSTLE PAUL:THE MAN WHO TURNED THE WORLD UPSIDE DOWN."Check your local listing for times.