"The Three-Story Head" - When the Republican convention reconvened on the morning of June 8, 1880, Congressman James A. Garfield of Ohio had precisely two nominations to be the Republican candidate fo

Caravaggio, David and Goliath: a dangling self-portrait - My guest Scott Samuelson didnt visit Rome until he was in his mid 30s. Since then, with COVID exceptions, he has gone to Rome every summer.

When on April 9, 1865, Ulysses S Grant received the surrender of Robert E Lee, one of the staff officers who accompanied him was Ely S. Parker. He was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Union Army, an engin

As the President of the United States prepared to travel to Morocco for a wartime conference, his closest aide and advisor wrote down just why he was going to make the arduous trip. Franklin Roosevelt

Alice Lloyd: A serious woman - In 1951 the Southern Association of Colleges, an accrediting agency, sent a committee to assess a small two-year institution in the mountains of eastern Kentucky named C

East of Philadelphia and west of Atlantic City is the city of Vineland, situated in more or less the geographical center of South Jersey. Since the late 19th century, it had been the center of a dispe

The village of Oberstdorf lies in the midst of the Allgauer Alps, not that far from the Austrian border. While other Alpine towns like Garmisch-Partenkirchen, to the east in Oberbayern, or Andermatt i

William Hunter was a radical advocate for American democracy. Born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, he was the founder of the second newspaper west of the Alleghenies, and the first newspaper editor to p

Since the Middle Ages, food has always been sold on the streets of London. Women and men, boys and girls, have seemingly sold everything that can be eaten, from shellfish and fried fish, to baked pota

In the early sixteenth century there emerged upon the world stage a cast of royal characters that could almost persuade the most hardened social historian to read Thomas Carlyles On Heroes, Hero-Wors