If you’re a lover of good compelling stories
That not only inspire you

But also help you to ponder the greater meaning
Of why you are where you are today in life
Then I can’t see why you would not be

Loving History.

History GIFs | Tenor

If your attention span is lacking the ability to
Sit and read a good history book hours on end
Till the info contained within the pages slowly seeps into your cranium
There are a plethora of podcasts and YouTube channels
Devoted to it that will start the fire faster.

I have made My own contribution to informing others
About the stories of the past
With various articles I have written
And continue to write each week with my Last Week In Life column.

Outside of Patheos I have written an article for ‘Where Peter Is”.
It’s a piece that highlights all the cultural things that were happening in the same decade that the Second Vatican Council was happening.
A snapshot of the world of Vatican II – Where Peter Is.

Here is an example of what I’m talking about.

23 Facts that will Mess with your Perception of Time-May 25, 2020

Connecting Creative Moments in History

My style and approach to history is to take a particular day like November 1 and relate all the interesting things that happen on that day in different years.

1604 – William Shakespeare‘s tragedy Othello is performed for the first time, at Whitehall Palace in London.
1611 – Shakespeare’s play The Tempest is performed for the first time, at Whitehall Palace in London.
1896 – A picture showing the bare breasts of a woman appears in National Geographic magazine for the first time.
1897 – The first Library of Congress building opens its doors to the public; the library had previously been housed in the Congressional Reading Room in the U.S. Capitol.

This ruinous and critical state of affairs was put right by the celebrated George Washington, famed for his courage and keen intelligence. He was a close friend of the Bishop of Baltimore. Thus the Father of His Country and the pioneer pastor of the Church in that land so dear to Us, bound together by the ties of friendship. Holding, so to speak, each the other’s hand, they form a picture for their descendants, a lesson to all future generations, and a proof that reverence for the Faith of Christ is a holy and established principle of the American people, seeing that it is the foundation of morality and decency, consequently the source of prosperity and progress.
Sertum laetitiae, Pope Pius XII (November 1, 1939) In memory of the 150th anniversary of the installation of the first American bishop John Carroll (bishop) of Baltimore in 1789.

By the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and by our own authority, we pronounce, declare, and define it to be a divinely revealed dogma: that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.
Munificentissimus Deus -Pope Pius XII (November 1, 1950)-Ex cathedra definition of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary as a dogma

1968 – The Motion Picture Association of America‘s film rating system is officially introduced, originating with the ratings G, M, R, and X.

Heck of a Ride Around the Sun

After dissecting a certain day and date, I like to take a particular year and explore the interesting things contained therein.
It’s fun to connect certain specific people and brands to other monumental years where lots of stuff happened.

This modified quote regarding a particular year sums up my fascination with highlighting certain years.

History does not fit neatly into the annual cycles of the Gregorian calendar.
A year is not a historical category, it’s a cosmological event: a single revolution of the earth around the sun;
three hundred and sixty-five spins on its polar axis; or, in the case of a leap year, three hundred and sixty-six.

With that in mind, here is a more modest claim:
This particular Date, by whatever quirk of history or cosmology,
was one hell of a ride around the sun.

What follows is an attempt to recount the disparate events that people of that year confronted on their way into their own futures.
Confined to a single journey of the earth around the sun exactly some time ago,
it is the story of several smaller journeys, beginning, on the first day of the year in this place.

Jim Rasenberger,America, 1908: The Dawn of Flight, the Race to the Pole, the Invention of the Model T and the Making of a Modern Nation (2006)

I have a bunch of years researched that have to be formed and fitted before I can share them with my readers.
But here is a sample of what I want to blog and publish eventually.

1939

The film Tower of London directed and produced by Rowland V. Lee and starring Basil Rathbone as the future Shakespearian King Richard III of England, and Boris Karloff as his fictitious club-footed executioner Mord is released.

The fantasy musical The Wizard of Oz premieres at Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Los Angeles, California on the future feast of the Assumption August 15th and opens to the public on the future date of my wife’s birthday August 25nd.

The Golden Age of Sci-Fi begins with the July 1939 issue of Astounding Science Fiction featuring the first published story that started it all by Sci-Fi legend A. E. van Vogt,”Black Destroyer“, as well as the first appearance by Isaac Asimov (“Trends“) in the magazine that featured a character preparing to fly a rocket, the Prometheus, to the Moon. The following month in the August issue contained the first published story by another Sci-Fi legend Robert A. Heinlein (“Life-Line“).

September 1
World War II: Nazi Germany and Slovakia invade Poland, starting World War II.
J. Robert Oppenheimer “father of the atomic bomb”and his student Hartland Snyder publish the Oppenheimer–Snyder model, proving for the first time in contemporary physics how black holes could develop.

Pius XII’s first encyclical Summi Pontificatus-“On the Supreme Pontificate” On the Unity of Human Society (October 20, 1939) is promulgated.

Sertum laetitiae “The Crown of Joy” -On the Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the establishment of the hierarchy in the United States (November 1, 1939) is promgulated.

1950

Julius Caesar – The first film version of the Shakespearean play with sound starring Charlton Heston is released.

January 31-United States President Harry S. Truman orders the development of the hydrogen bomb, in response to the detonation of the Soviet Union‘s first atomic bomb in 1949.

March 3 – Poland indicates its intention to exile all Germans.

May 14 – The Huntsville Times runs the headline “Dr. von Braun Says Rocket Flights Possible to Moon.”

Sci-Fi Books Published-

The Voyage of the Space Beagle by A E van Vogt-The first third of this novel contains his first story BLACK DESTROYER, which is the basis of the Sigourney Weaver Film, Alien
I, Robot-A collection of stories by Isaac Asimov
Farmer in the Sky by Robert Heinlein (The fourth book in the Heinlein’s Juveniles series).

Humani generis-“On Human Origin” Concerning Some False Opinions Threatening to Undermine the Foundations of Catholic Doctrine (August 12, 1950).

Munificentissimus Deus -Pope Pius XII (November 1, 1950)-Ex cathedra definition of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary as a dogma.

The first fantasy novel in the Narnia Chronicles ‘The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe” by Christian author C.S. Lewis is published.