History
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It was an age of disco and punk, wide lapels, and hairspray. 1981. Ireland. Friday, 13 of February, in a northern Dublin suburb called Artane, The Stardust nightclub held a Valentine’s Disco Championship Dinner. The girls and women glammed up and the young lads mostly donned jackets and ties. This was the place to be
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OR, “Ye Olde Deaths in Times of Yore” Genealogy research has forced me to brush up on my medical ailments of centuries past to understand what horrible diseases befell my poor ancestors. Physicians of yore had all sorts of colorful ideas and terminology relating to the body, and its functions and diseases. It’s been an
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Sometimes I cannot explain my fixations with history, nor my devilish need to mock it. I could argue that certain topics, such as Roman Emperors, are discussed with such reverence and so little endeavor at levity, that there is a vacuum of historical entertainment. I am painting these men as mortals, defying the dusty, pretentious
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Welcome, friends to a fantastical dinner party of your own making and imagination. Yes, it’s time to play a grand game and intellectual exercise, somewhat akin to the lunchroom game of Stranded On a Deserted Island. However, instead of imagining implements of survival, escape, and spiritual fulfillment, you are being asked to host a grand
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Percy Shelley. You know him as one of those poetry dudes. He was a privileged young English poet in the 1810s, who had a progressive, yet romantic voice that attempted to influence religion and politics. But, his very brief life was full of secrets and intrigue that eclipse anything he put down on paper. Percy Shelley
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A terribly true story of my great-great grandfather, Lorenzo, and his brother, Rufus, taken directly from eyewitness accounts in court records. On the afternoon of September 16, 1884, Rufus Eldridge and Lorenzo “Ron” Stevens, farmers living on adjoining properties in London, Ontario, drove their horse-drawn wagon to Nilestown, Ontario to purchase “domestic supplies”. Lorenzo was a 41
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Genealogy nerds like me frequently weep and fan themselves to exhaustion over a gaping hole in America’s historical record: The 1890 U.S. Census is gone. The original was destroyed. No copies exist. No scans. No photos. Therefore nearly all of it has been erased from history. That, my friends, is no small deal. Every ten
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“His wife died. They destroyed his wife and she died. He was a swashbuckler, but when his wife died you know he visited her grave everyday? I visited her grave actually because I was in Tennessee…And it was amazing. The people of Tennessee are amazing people. They love Andrew Jackson. They love Andrew Jackson in
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Over 35 years ago, the young Republican up-and-comers in Washington were called up to serve the new president, Ronald Reagan. Saint Reagan reached down from his “shining hill on the city”, pulled them up from the pits of Carter hell, anointed them, and in turn they pledged their undying fealty. “Forever, Master Reagan.” Today these
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I’ve been a bit obsessed by the The Wars of the Roses lately. I look at it like a really, really old season of Scandal, just with much worse hygiene. But apparently I’m not alone in my fascination, because author George RR Martin has made no secret that his A Song of Ice and Fire series (aka Game
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For nearly one hundred years in England’s history, a knot of noble families fought over the royal throne in a giant, messy multi-generational screw-you fest that history has dubbed “The Wars of the Roses”. This title is a misnomer, of course. The murder, deception, and power mongering went far beyond any battlefield. So not simply
Katie Using Words 