Archive for 2019
Veterans Day: How it Differs from Memorial Day
What is the difference between Veterans Day and Memorial Day?
Read MoreHistory of Veterans Day: Lest We Forget
HISTORY OF VETERANS DAY A professor once commented, “We write things down so we can forget them.” Now, of course, this is true in the limited sense of writing down appointments so we don’t have to worry about missing meetings. But that’s just it; we do forget things. As individuals, we forget things that are…
Read MoreHistory of Guy Fawkes Night: How gunpowder mixed with Parliament
HISTORY OF GUY FAWKES NIGHT For our friends across the Pond November 5th is known as “Bonfire Night” or “Guy Fawkes Night,” and all over Britain people fire off fireworks, light bonfires, and burn effigies of Guy Fawkes. Guido Fawkes was an Englishman who, in popular legend, tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament…
Read MoreHistory of Election Day: Why we vote on a Tuesday in November
Why do we vote on the first Tuesday following the first Monday in November?
Read MoreHistory of Daylight Saving Time – Fall Back
HISTORY OF DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME – ENDING Daylight Saving Time, or DST, is a brilliant campaign to convince us that we’re getting more daylight each day when in reality we’ve simply changed our clocks and then forgotten about it within two weeks. DST begins each year at 2:00 a.m. on the second Sunday in March…
Read MoreHistory of November: That In-between Month
HISTORY OF NOVEMBER November is the penultimate month of the year, meaning next to the last. It used to be the ninth month (Latin: novem) until January and February were shoehorned in by the ancient Romans. November enjoys the distinction of being situated between the two biggest holidays in the American calendar… at least revenue-wise.…
Read MoreInformation Reformation
Historical parallels between the what Martin Luther did with the moveable type printing price that was the spark that ignited the Reformation and the advent of modern technologies that similarly transformed the Internet into the World Wide Web.
Read MoreHistory of October 31: What’s Martin Luther got to do with it?
HISTORY OF OCTOBER 31 See my mini-series here on the life of Martin Luther. On October 31, 1517, the story goes, an Augustinian monk named Martin Luther nailed to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany 95 propositions or theses and marked the beginning of the Reformation. Of course, the Reformation began long…
Read MoreHistory of Halloween
HISTORY OF HALLOWEEN Halloween (Allhallows Even) is the evening of October 31. In its strictly religious aspect, this occasion is known as the vigil of Hallowmas or All Saints’ Day, November 1, observed by the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches. In the fourth decade of the 8th century, Pope Gregory III moved this holiday to the…
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