A Brief History On July 15, 1838, while delivering a speech at Harvard Divinity School, Ralph Waldo Emerson described Jesus as a “great man,” but not “God.”  He further caused a furor by discounting the miracles attributed to Jesus in the Bible as not true. Digging Deeper One of the guiding lights of the 19th Century philosophical Transcendentalist Movement, Emerson was a prolific writer of essays and a speech maker, and was a friend and mentor to Henry David Thoreau. In 1836, his essay, Nature, became the foundation of Transcendentalism, and his 1837 speech he called The American Scholar was called by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.…

A Brief History On July 15, 1815, Emperor Napoleon I of the French surrendered to the British aboard the HMS Bellerophon.  If you are unfamiliar with the name of the ship, it comes from the greatest Greek hero of ancient times (until Hercules).  Naming a ship after a mighty hero sure sounds better than naming one after some pencil necked politician.  The British have always found some pretty nifty names for their warships and so have the US Navy, at least sometimes.  Here we list 10 of the impressive, intimidating, just plain cool names for ships, and for each we…

A Brief History On the evening of 14 July 2016, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, an African-born Islamist immigrant to France, deliberately drove a 19-tonne cargo truck into crowds celebrating Bastille Day on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, France killing 84 people and injuring more than 300.  Bouhlel was then shot and killed by hero police.  Due to his high number of victims, Bouhlel is unquestionably the most despicable scumbag of the year so far. Digging Deeper This loser was a Tunisian living in Nice, France and at age 31 was divorced with 3 kids.  According to his father, Mohamed was not religious, but had been…

A Brief History On July 14, 2004, Robert Novak of the Washington Post exercised irresponsible journalistic ethics by publishing an article outing Valerie Plame as a CIA operative. Digging Deeper Plame was the wife of Ambassador Joseph Wilson, a career diplomat that had been the US Ambassador to a few minor countries and had served other diplomatic roles.  Plame, who was already a CIA agent when she married Wilson, was used to good advantage by the CIA with her husband providing diplomatic cover. All that changed when Wilson angered the administration of George W. Bush by publicly opposing the expected invasion of…

A Brief History On July 14, 1933, the Nazi Party that had just taken power in Germany began a program of eugenics with their institution of The Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring.  This law demanded the sterilization of any person deemed to have a genetic disorder. Digging Deeper The alleged goal of the this program was a purification of the gene pool, with allowing genetically “fit” people to reproduce abundantly without their children having to compete for valuable resources with genetically inferior children.  Achieving this goal would theoretically make the German people and thus the German state…