Kenneth C. Davis's Blog, page 127

The 12 Myths of Christmas (1)

Were there really Three Kings? Which pagan festival was a time for gift-giving and candle lighting? Why is mistletoe hung at Christmas?
I'll try not to be the Grinch here. But the truth is that almost everything we cherish about Christmas traditions –lights, trees, gifts, jolly old men– has some interesting background –much of it from a time long before there was a Christmas. In fact, advent is really a time to bring out your inner pagan. In the next few weeks, I will be posting some blogs...

Today In History: Don't Ride the Bus

A black seamstress would not budge on December 1, 1955. And all America shook.

History is taught as the record of presidents, kings and generals. But sometimes it is the extraordinary story of an "ordinary" person that history must tell. On December 1, 1955, one woman's act of defiance changed history. But it wouldn't be fair to call Rosa Parks , who as born in 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama and died October 24, 2005 at age 92, an ordinary person. What do you know about this courageous woman who ...

Don't Know Much About Minute: More Pilgrims 101

In my previous videoblog, I told you that there were no black hats with buckles, half of the "pilgrims" weren't Pilgrims and that the first Thanksgiving was in October. Here are a few more pieces of the picture.
And here is a link to a story Iwrote for the New York Times about America's real first Pilgrims, a group of French settlers in Florida who arrived 50 years before the Mayflower sailed.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/26/opinion/26davis.html?scp=1&sq=Kenneth%20C%20Davis%20Pilgrims&st=cse

T...

TODAY IN HISTORY: The Gettysburg Address

The opening lines are among the most familiar words in our history.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Today is Dedication Day, the date on which Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address at a ceremony to dedicate the opening of the cemetery at the Gettysburg Battlefield in 1863. On that day, Lincoln was not the featured speaker. The "few...

Thanksgiving Myths- A Videoblog

With Thanksgiving around the corner, cutouts of Pilgrims in black clothes and clunky shoes are sprouting all over the place. You may know that the Pilgrims sailed aboard the Mayflower and arrived in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1620. But did you know their first Thanksgiving celebration lasted three whole days? What else do you know about these early settlers of America? Don't be a turkey. Try this True-False quiz.

True or False? (Answers below)
1. Pilgrims always wore stiff black clothes and...

The Power of the Press: Seymour Hersh and My Lai

On November 12, 1969, journalist Seymour Hersh broke the story of the massacre in My Lai during the Vietnam War. Hersh won a Pulitzer Prize for the story. It was a story that changed history.

On March 16, 1968, in a small Vietnamese village, "something dark and bloody" took place.
Dropped into the village by helicopter, the men of Charlie Company found only the old men, women, and children of My Lai. There were no Vietcong, and nothing to suggest that My Lai was a staging base for guerrilla...

A Soldier is a Terrible Thing to Waste

"The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month." That was the moment in 1918 at which they put a stop to the mindless killing of World War I with an Armistice. Back then, it was called the "Great War" or the "War to End All Wars" – because they didn't know a WWII was right around the corner.
The November 11 date was first celebrated in 1919 as Armistice Day, becoming a legal holiday in 1938. After World War II and the Korean War, Congress changed "Armistice" to "Veterans...

A Lady and a Penguin — Not a "Dirty Story"

Generally, we don't associate the iconic Penguin Books with "dirty books." And neither did a British jury. On November 2, 1960, Penguin won a landmark British publishing case when Lady Chatterly's Lover was deemed "not obscene" by a jury of three women and nine men. Penguin had published the novel, written in 1928, to mark the 30th anniversary of Lawrence's death. During the six-day trial, many British literary lights including E.M. Forster, took the stand to defend the book. In the end...

The NYC Subway

Most of us New Yorkers have a love-hate relationship with the Subway. We love to hate it.

Speaking for myself, I love the subway. So Happy Birthday, NYC subway. The first New York City underground line, the IRT, opened on October 27, 1904. Here is the triumphal New York Times coverage of the epochal day.

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/1027.html#article

Here's a little more about the real greatest show on earth– riding the NYC subway system from Don't Know Much About...

Halloween–The Hidden History

When I was a kid in the early 1960s, the autumn social calendar was highlighted by the Halloween party in our church. In these simpler day, the kids all bobbed for apples and paraded through a spooky "haunted house" in homemade costumes –Daniel Boone replete with coonskin caps for the boys; tiaras and fairy princess wands for the girls. It was safe, secure and innocent.
The irony is that our church was a Congregational church — founded by the Puritans of New England. The same people who...