Kenneth C. Davis's Blog, page 124

TODAY IN HISTORY: Birth of an Anthem

On March 3, 1931, The Star Spangled Banner, with words written in 1814 and set to an old drinking song, became the national anthem.

It was September 13, 1814, American was at war with England for the second time since 1776. Francis Scott Key was an attorney attempting to negotiate the return of a civilian prisoner held by the British who had just burned Washington DC and had set their sights on Baltimore. As the British attacked the city, Key watched the naval bombardment from a ship in...

Seuss Day!

If your book was turned down by more than 40 publishers, "what would you do?"

If you were Theodor S. Geisel, get a friend to publish the book. Thus was born Dr. Seuss. Actually born on this date, March 2, 1904, Theodore Seuss Geisel first turned his knack for words and pictures to advertising and editorial cartoons. But Dr. Seuss influenced entire generations of children with his nonsensical poems that put "See Spot run" on the endangered species list.

So what do you know about Seuss? Heaven ...

Don't Know Much About John Steinbeck

Born on February 27, 1902 in Salinas, California in 1902, was a writer I consider a major personal influence.

John Steinbeck built his reputation writing about the struggles of down-and-out people: Dust Bowl farmers and pearl divers, prostitutes, jobless migrants, and Depression-era hobos. Before his death in 1968, Steinbeck became one of America's most popular storytellers and among his many works are the epic classic The Grapes of Wrath and the brief but memorable Of Mice and Men.

In later y...

Washington's "Confession"

Today is George Washington "real" birthday.

By now, I hope we all know that the cherry tree story is a legend, made up by a pseudobiographer but chiseled into American folklore.

But there is a true story about a young George Washington that most of us never hear. It is the story of his first actual military experience and his signing of a "murder confession." It is not only more interesting than the cherry tree story but a lot more revealing.

The incident began in late May 1754, with...

"He told the truth, mainly." –Huck Finn

Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.

–Notice at the opening of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

America doesn't have a national holiday to honor a writer. But if we did, maybe it should be one devoted to Samuel Langhorne Clemens, born in Missouri on November 30, 1835. And maybe we could make it today, February 18, in honor of Huck Finn.

Adventures...

A Presidential Library

The recent success of such award-winning and bestselling presidential biographies as American Lion by Jon Meacham, John Adams by David McCullough as well as Doris Kearns Goodwin's portrait of Lincoln's Cabinet, Team of Rivals, are all excellent reminders of our fascination with the Presidency. And a tribute to the value of great historians.

With Presidents Day around the corner, it seems like a good time to think about some other great books about the Presidents and Presidency. Here is a...

Presidents Day Videoblog #2 Lincoln

Honest Abe. The Railsplitter. The Great Emancipator. You know some of the basics and the legends. But check out this video to learn some of things you may not know, but should, about the 16th President.

Here's a link to the Lincoln Birthplace National Park

http://www.nps.gov/ABLI/index.htm

This link is to the Emancipation Proclamation page at the National Archives:

http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured_documents/emancipation_proclamation/

Ordering Coffee Changes the World

Never underestimate the power of four teenagers.

Fifty years ago, a deliberate act of disobedience by four college kids shook America.

On Feb. 1, 1960, four black college students began a sit-in protest at a lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C., where they'd been refused service. Ordering coffee at an all-whites lunch counter was an incredible act of courage. This was a time when young black men were lynched for supposedly looking the wrong way at a white woman.

Here is the original NYTimes

Don't Know Much About Robert Frost

"I had a lover's quarrel with the world."

While contemplating the death of J.D. Salinger, it is worth remembering that another New England transplant, Robert Frost , died on this date January 29 in 1963. He had written his own epitaph, the words above, etched on his headstone in a church cemetery in Bennington, VT.

Apples, birches, hayfields and stone walls; simple features like these make up the landscape of four-time Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Frost's poetry. Known as a poet of New...

"Tea Bagging" through History

A news report that a "Tea Party" convention planned for February shows signs of unraveling reminds me of another group of "tea baggers" from American History. They had also unraveled in late January. But the year was 1778.

[The news story about the Tea party Convention: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/26/us/politics/26teaparty.html?src=tptw]

It began as a populist uprising against –surprise, surprise—the bankers and lawyers who were making the rules back then in Boston, men derided as...