A Brief History “The Vampyre” is a short work of prose fiction written in 1819 by John William Polidori (1795–1821).  The work is often viewed as the progenitor of the romantic vampire genre of fantasy fiction.  The work is described by British educationalist Christopher Frayling (born 1946) as “the first story successfully to fuse the disparate elements of vampirism into a coherent literary genre.”  This work was published before January 1, 1923 and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago. Digging Deeper: The Story Extract of a Letter from Geneva “I breathe…

A Brief History On July 7, 1947, a mysterious object fell from the sky near Roswell, New Mexico, and was reported the next day in the local newspaper as a “Flying Saucer” captured by RAAF (Roswell Army Airfield) personnel.  One could hardly blame the newspaper, because the official Air Force press release said authorities had recovered a “flying disc.” Digging Deeper Thus, the most celebrated UFO incident of them all began, supposedly because of a typical government lie.  The Air Force later claimed the object recovered had been a weather balloon, while in reality it was a balloon carrying instruments…

A Brief History On July 6, 1947, the aptly named AK-47 assault rifle went into production.  After undergoing military trials in the Soviet Union, it was accepted for general use by the Red Army in 1949.  Today, the AK-47 is still in production in many nations, and about 1 out of every 5 firearms in the world is an AK-47 or a closely related weapon.  Production is 75 million rifles and counting, with AK family of related weapons accounting for another 25 million rifles, carbines, pistols and machine guns, including semi-automatic civilian models. Digging Deeper To put the enormous impact…

A Brief History On July 4th, Americans celebrate their Independence Day, a holiday that signifies their freedom.  During the month of June 2015, Americans experienced a host of developments in the expansion of this freedom.  In any case, to paraphrase Bob Dylan, the times sure were a-changin’ in June 2015! Digging Deeper June 2015 included events, incidents and policy changes that the older generation among us probably did not expect to see take place in their lifetime. To begin, early in the month, Olympic medalist Bruce Jenner, a father of six, changed his name to “Caitlyn” and began referring to himself with feminine pronouns.  While he cross…

A Brief History “Dracula’s Guest” is a short story by Irish author Bram Stoker (1847-1912) first published in 1914, two years after Stoker’s death, and now in the public domain.  It is widely believed that “Dracula’s Guest” is actually the deleted first chapter from the original Dracula manuscript, which the publisher thought was superfluous to the story. Digging Deeper: The Story When we started for our drive the sun was shining brightly on Munich, and the air was full of the joyousness of early summer. Just as we were about to depart, Herr Delbruck (the maitre d’hotel of the Quatre Saisons,…