A Brief History On October 12, 1492, Christopher Columbus, the Italian adventurer sailing into the unknown in the name of the Spanish Crown, landed in the Bahamas, the landing that became known as the “discovery” of America (or, “The New World” if you prefer). In New York City, 300 years later, the first “Columbus Day” was celebrated, an event that became a regular holiday in the United States, a day especially treasured by Italian-Americans, and Italians everywhere. (Note: Columbus Day 2017 is celebrated on Monday, October 9th.) Digging Deeper Christopher Columbus is ranked among the greatest explorers and discoverers of…
Read More
A Brief History “Winter Dreams” is a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) that first appeared in Metropolitan Magazine in December 1922, and was collected in All the Sad Young Men in 1926. “Winter Dreams” is considered one of Fitzgerald’s finest stories and is frequently anthologized. In the Fitzgerald canon, it is considered to be in the “Gatsby-cluster,” as many of its themes were later expanded upon in his famous novel The Great Gatsby in 1925. Digging Deeper: Background The short story was based upon Fitzgerald’s unsuccessful romantic pursuit of socialite Ginevra King (1898–1980). A wealthy heiress from a Chicago banking family,…
A Brief History On October 9, 2012, 15 year old Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani Muslim girl, was shot in the face by Taliban Islamic extremist terrorists for the “crime” of being a girl that wanted to go to school to learn to read and write. Digging Deeper Despite being well educated for her area in Pakistan, as her parents ran a chain of schools, Malala was smart enough to write under a pseudonym when blogging for the BBC, as Taliban insurgents deemed it un-Islamic for girls to get an education. The Taliban (same religious extremists that ran Afghanistan until the…
A Brief History On October 8, 1918, 2nd Lt. Ralph Talbot of Massachusetts earned the coveted Medal of Honor, the highest American military honor. Talbot was the first US Marine Corps aviator to be so honored. Digging Deeper Born in 1897 in South Weymouth, Massachusetts, Talbot was both an excellent student and a natural athlete. After high school he attended Mercersburg Academy (Pennsylvania), a college preparatory school, and then went on to Yale University. While at Yale, Talbot attended flying school in Delaware, and served in the Artillery Training Corps at Yale, somewhat similar to today’s ROTC. A Patriotic American,…
A Brief History On October 7, 1925, baseball great and Hall of Fame pitcher Christy Mathewson died of tuberculosis brought on by a weakening of his respiratory system due to accidental exposure to poison gas during World War I. Digging Deeper Born in 1880 in Factoryville, Pennsylvania, Mathewson grew up playing baseball, becoming a semi-pro player at only 14 years old. He went on to college at Bucknell University, where he was class president as well as playing on the football and baseball teams. At the age of 19, Mathewson won 21 games and lost only 2 in minor league…
