Free Republic

One of my more memorable exchanges with a student came in a principles of economics class. Part of the assignment for that week was chapters from Matt Ridley’s The Rational Optimist. Ridley compared the living standards of an average worker today with those of The Sun King, Louis XIV, in 1700. Some of my more ahistorical students were incredulous at Ridley’s description of the grinding poverty of the average person just a few centuries ago. The King had an opulent lifestyle compared to others. Louis had an astonishing 498 workers preparing each of his meals. Yet his standard of living...

New evidence unearthed in France's National Museum of Natural History shows beyond reasonable doubt that the Hope Diamond is the same steely-blue stone once sported by the Sun King, they said. Mineralogist Francois Farges, heading an investigation published in a peer-reviewed French journal, told AFP he was now "99 percent sure" that the Hope and the mythical Blue Diamond of the Crown were one and the same. "The evidence corroborates a scenario under which the diamond, after being stolen in Paris in 1792, was swiftly smuggled to London, where it was recut," he said. The Blue Diamond came from a...