Cicero wrote that “Not to know what happened before one was born is to remain a child.”But, hey, who was Cicero, anyway? Don’t ask too many college students these days, they probably won’t know. Why would they? Instruction in history is dying out. In the vernacular, “It’s history.” No wonder a Hearst Corporation study showed that 45% of those surveyed Read More ›
When you get a copy of the Seattle Arts Commission’s Directory of Public Art, you will see listings of statues to Christopher Columbus, Leif Erikson and Dr. Jose Rizal, the hero of the Philippines. But we barely manage one statue and a copper bust of Chief Seattle and a mere artistic “silhouette” for the local pioneers Arthur Denny and David Read More ›
Test yourself: who was he? In most ways he was a self-made man, a well-to-do farmer from Missouri who assisted other frontiersmen on the Oregon Trail. Most noteworthy, he was the determinative leader of the first pioneer settlement in Puget Sound country in 1845. His homesteading helped the United States establish the future national identity of this whole region. One Read More ›
Neither Christopher Columbus nor his contemporaries thought the earth was flat. Yet this curious illusion persists today, firmly established with the help of the media, textbooks, teachers ― even noted historians. Inventing the Flat Earthis Russell’s attempt to set the record straight. He begins with a discussion of geographical knowledge in the Middle Ages, examining what Columbus and his contemporaries actually Read More ›