Showing results by author "A. Rivers" in All Categories

"I never had any idea my bill would make a fuss. I just thought it would become a law and that everybody would abide by it and that we wouldn't hear any more of evolution in Tennessee." (John Washington Butler)

Nearly 20 years before Jamestown was settled, the English established one of the earliest colonies in North America. Like other early settlements, Roanoke struggled to survive in its infancy. The colony's leader, John White, sailed back to England in 1587 to bring more supplies and help. What White found when he came back to Roanoke led to one of the most enduring mysteries in American history. Despite the fact he left over 100 people in Roanoke in 1587, White returned to literally nothing, with all traces of the settlement gone and no evidence of fighting.

Katarina blames herself for her husband’s death. Her only solace is running the beachfront bed and breakfast they always dreamed of, but now a big city developer plans to buy the property and bulldoze her B&B. Sterling Knightley has made Katarina’s landlord an offer she can’t refuse. The only way Katarina can keep her promise to her late husband is to persuade the aloof businessman to partner with her, but Sterling holds all the cards.

With such a storied and violent past, it is no surprise Wales has many tales of ghosts. The Ghosts of Wales: A Collection of Ghost Stories Across the Welsh Nation is a collection of such tales, just a few among the thousands of local legends and modern sightings that make people think Wales is one of the most haunted countries in the world.

When the Spanish came into contact with different tribes in the Southwest, they were so intrigued by the structure of the communities that they gave the natives the name Pueblo, a term they used to measure certain sizes for their own settlements. Thus, while most Americans have heard of the Pueblo and Navajo, many remain unfamiliar with distinctions within the tribes.

In the eighth century BCE, one of the most important provinces within the Assyrian Empire was Samaria. Also known as Israel, Samaria repeatedly rebelled against their Assyrian overlords, but in 722, the Assyrians overran Samaria once and for all, killing countless numbers and sending most of the rest of its inhabitants into forced exile.

People’s timeless captivation with those supposedly endowed with supernatural powers - these gifted individuals oftentimes regarded as gods walking among everyone else - is a fascinating phenomenon in itself. Soothsayers and clairvoyants were particularly revered in past centuries, even by royals, nobles, and other influential figures, who placed oracles, mediums, and mystics in their retinues and sought counsel from them on a regular basis.

The belief in lycanthropy is far older and more complex than most people suspect, dating all the way back to antiquity, and werewolves were once assumed to be very real. Indeed, people were even put on trial and executed because the courts of law were convinced they could change their form and kill innocent people. For thousands of years, werewolves have represented a strange and ancient tradition that still echoes through culture to this day.

Today, streets, bridges, monuments, and even neighborhoods bear Tadeusz Kościuszko’s name across the country, and in Polish communities, he is often hailed as a hero equal to General Washington himself. Tadeusz Kościuszko: The Life and Legacy of Poland’s Most Famous General profiles one of the Revolutionary War’s most important figures.

In the 16th century, corruption, debauchery, and the general perversion of ethics were running rampant within the Roman Catholic Church. The public began to grow leery of the crooked church, and soon, they could no longer bite their tongues. Among the church's most vocal opponents was Martin Luther, whose publication of the 95 Theses gave rise to the Protestant movement. This reformed brand of Christianity gradually spread throughout Europe, planting flags across the continent.

Victor Lustig: The Life and Legacy of the 20th Century’s Most Notorious Con Artist profiles one of the most eccentric personalities of his age. You will learn about Victor Lustig like never before.

All Americans are familiar with the “day that will live in infamy”. At 9:30 a.m. on Sunday, December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor, the advanced base of the US Navy’s Pacific Fleet, was ablaze. It had been smashed by aircraft launched by the carriers of the Imperial Japanese Navy. All eight battleships had been sunk or badly damaged, 350 aircraft had been knocked out, and over 2,000 Americans lay dead. Indelible images of the USS Arizona exploding and the USS Oklahoma capsizing and floating upside down have been ingrained in the American conscience ever since.

Among the New Age Movement and modern spiritualists, one name stands above the rest: Helena Petrovna (H.P.) Blavatsky. Blavatsky is best known today for co-founding the Theosophical School, a religious school of thought that she labeled "the archaic Wisdom-Religion, the esoteric doctrine once known in every ancient country having claims to civilization", and nobody was more qualified than Blavatsky to forge such a creation.

When Maude Chambliss first arrives at Retreat, the seasonal home of her husband's aristocratic family, she is a 19-year-old bride fresh from South Carolina's Low Country. Among the patrician men and women who reside in the summer colony on the coast of Maine, her gypsy-like beauty and impulsive behavior immediately brand her an outsider. She, as well as everyone else, is certain she will never fit in. And of course, she doesn't, at first.

Notorious, a hell on earth, a cesspool, a death camp, and infamous have all been used by prisoners and critics to describe Andersonville Prison, constructed to house Union prisoners of war in 1864, and all descriptions apply.

In 1988, a recently organized militant group issued its charter, which called upon Muslims to "raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine". The group, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, declared, "Allah is its goal, the Prophet is the model, the Qur'an its constitution, jihad its path, and death for the sake of Allah its most sublime belief."

On Wednesday, March 28, 1979, 36 seconds after the hour of 4:00 a.m., several water pumps stopped working in the unit 2 nuclear power plant on Three Mile Island, 10 miles southeast of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

The time of the American mountain man was not to reach its peak until the mid-19th century, but the man who served as the prototype for the cultural genre hailed from an earlier age in which the new United States had scarcely established its most basic structural tenets. A member of the original Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery commissioned by Thomas Jefferson, John Colter’s multiple journeys to the northwest country of present-day Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho were first-time events in the development of the continent.

In 2000, The Patriot, starring Mel Gibson, captured the nation's attention with the highly dramatized story of an American patriot fighting the British in South Carolina during the American Revolution. As viewers learned that Gibson's character was loosely based on General Francis Marion, nicknamed the "Swamp Fox" by his enemies, people took a new interest in this often forgotten soldier.

Since the Battle of the Little Bighorn, George Armstrong Custer has possessed one of the most unique places in American history. Although he was a capable cavalry officer who served honorably during the Civil War, he remains one of the most instantly identifiable and famous military men in American history due to the fact he was killed during one of the country's most well-known and ignominious defeats: the Battle of Little Bighorn.