So here’s a doozy I tripped over while wandering through the rabbit burrows of history the other day. On this day in 1971 a man, whose identity is still unknown, hijacked a Boeing 727, demanded $200,000 in ransom, then jumped out of the plane and skydived to the ground. He has never been found. No […]
The Only Unsolved Case Of Air Piracy In American History Read More »
The Norse didn’t do things the easy way. Their Norse mythology features a world called Hel, and it seems to be mildly correlative to the Christian Hell…but there aren’t just sinners in Hel. Oh, no, not at all. Hel seems to be a dumping ground for a whole lot of species that had nowhere else
Hel…More Crowded than Hell Read More »
As I write this, they’re still mopping up in Ottawa after the gunman opened fire on a reservist at the War Memorial, and again in the central hall of the parliament building, where he was finally shot down. It’s still very unclear whether the gunman was is an official terrorist or working on his own
I think it’s fair to say that I have grown to love Katharine Hepburn and that she ranks up there as one of my favourite actors. I watched a lot of old, classic movies over the summer, including one that has been a favourite of mine for a very long time: The Philedelphia Story. It’s
Happy Birthday, Katharine Read More »
Everything I know about Harvard is from stories. Frazier, from Cheers and Frazier, studied there, as did his brother Niles. So did Charles Emerson Winchester III from M.A.S.H. But I think the most fascinating thing about Harvard is the freshman dining hall, which looks almost identical to the main hall at Hogwarts, in the Harry
Hogwarts Here on Earth is 378 Today Read More »
552 years ago today, in 1492, Columbus arrived in the Bahamas. Exactly three hundred years later, in 1792, America celebrated the first Columbus Day, in New York City. It’s been a public holiday ever since. However, there’s an interesting anomaly in the dates. Columbus spotted the islands of the Bahamas before the new calendar was
Columbus and His Day Read More »
In 1752, the British Empire adopted the Gregorian calendar. In the British Empire that year, September 2 was immediately followed by September 14. The Gregorian calendar is also known as the Western Calendar or the Christian Calendar. They don’t use it in Russia, for example, so what we call the October revolution actually happened in
The Year September Lost Two Weeks Read More »
Stonehenge is probably the most famous monolith in the western world, although it appears that every culture across the planet stood stones on their ends somewhere in history. There are monoliths even in the deepest parts of the jungle in Brazil! No one knows why Stonehenge in particular was built, nor can they agree on
Stonehenge – More Important Than We Thought Read More »
Historians disagree over what, exactly, is the last day of the Roman Empire. Today, September 4, is one of the two most popular choices. If you think of the Roman Empire with its epicenter as the city of Rome, then on this day in 476 is when the last Western Roman emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was
The Last Day of the Roman Empire…or is it? Read More »