After Columbus discovered the New World, Spain grew in power to surpass Portugal as the largest global empire, giving rise the saying, the sun never set on the Spanish Empire. From Madrid, the Spanish Holy Roman Emperor Charles V ruled territories in Europe, North America, Central America, South America, Africa, Asia, the Pacific, and all the way to the Philippines. Catholic Spain was instrumental in beating back the attacks of the Muslim […]

Chief Justice Warren Earl Burger wrote in Marsh v. Chambers (1982): “It can hardly be thought that in the SAME WEEK the members of the first Congress VOTED to appoint and pay a CHAPLAIN for each House and also VOTED to approve the draft of the FIRST AMENDMENT … (that) they intended to forbid what they had just declared ACCEPTABLE.” The […]

One week after the First Amendment was approved by the U.S. Congress, President George Washington issued the First National Day of Thanksgiving and Prayer to Almighty God on OCTOBER 3, 1789. From the U.S. Capitol in New York City, the First Session of the United States Congress successfully placed ten ‘handcuffs’ or limitations on the power of the new Federal […]

“It can hardly be thought that in the same week…Congress…approved…the First Amendment…(that) they intended to forbid what they had just declared acceptable.” Chief Justice Warren Burger One week after the First Amendment was approved by the U.S. Congress, President George Washington issued the First National Day of Thanksgiving and Prayer to Almighty God on OCTOBER 3, 1789. From the U.S. […]

Crying “No taxation without representation,” he instigated the Stamp Act riots and the Boston Tea Party. After the “Boston Massacre,” he spread Revolutionary sentiment with his network of Committees of Correspondence. Known as “The Father of the American Revolution,” his name was Samuel Adams, born SEPTEMBER 27, 1722. Samuel Adams called for the first Continental Congress and signed the Declaration […]

“Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Thus began the first of the Ten Amendments, or Bill of Rights, which were approved SEPTEMBER 25, 1789. “The Father of the Bill of Rights” was George Mason of Virginia. George Mason was the richest man in Virginia, owning 15,000 acres. When George Washington […]

“I have not yet begun to fight!” shouted John Paul Jones when the captain of the 50-gun British frigate HMS Serapis taunted him to surrender. Their ships were so close their cannons scraped and masts entangled, yet his American ship Bonhomme Richard, named for Ben Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac, refused to give up. When two cannons exploded and his ship […]

“Done … the SEVENTEENTH DAY of SEPTEMBER, in the year of our LORD one thousand seven hundred and eighty seven.” This is the last line of the U.S. Constitution. Signer of the Constitution James McHenry noted in his diary (American Historical Review, 1906), that after Ben Franklin left the Constitutional Convention, he was asked by Mrs. Elizabeth Powel of Philadelphia: […]

John Harvard’s grandfather lived in Stratford-upon-Avon and was an associate of Shakespeare’s father. His father was a butcher and owner of Queen’s Head Inn and Tavern. John Harvard was born in London and baptized on November 29, 1607, in the old St. Savior’s Parish near the London Bridge (present-day Southwark Cathedral). Most of his family died when a plague swept England in 1625,the same year the […]

Did you know Assyria was the world’s first empire? It was located in what is today Syria and Iraq. It was mentioned by name in the Book of Genesis, chapter 1, verse 14: “And the name of the third river is Hiddekel (Tigris): that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria.” Around the year 2371 BC, as related […]

“Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive!” wrote Sir Walter Scott in his poem “In Marmion” (1808, canto VI, stanza XVII). On AUGUST 19, 1785, Thomas Jefferson wrote to Peter Carr: “He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells […]

Mandatory versus voluntary. Though court cases have sought to limit “mandatory” school-sponsored prayer, students continue to have the right to “voluntarily” pray! Brad Dacus, President of Pacific Justice Institute, stated (www.legaltopray.com):  “In every case defending students’ rights to pray, the students have prevailed, even teachers have the right to pray in school.” President Bill Clinton stated at James Madison High School, July 12, 1995: “The First Amendment does not require students to […]

Herbert Clark Hoover was born AUGUST 10, 1874, in West Branch, Iowa. At the age of 6, he spent eight months on the Osage Indian Reservation in Oklahoma with his Quaker uncle, who was an Indian agent. There he made many Indian friends and attended the “Indian Sunday-School.” Herbert Hoover was the only U.S. President to have lived on an Indian reservation. His Canadian-born Quaker mother, Hulda, taught Sunday School […]

“There she blows!” cried the lookout, sighting the great white whale, Moby Dick. The classic book, Moby Dick, was written by New England author Herman Melville, published in1851. In the novel, Captain Ahab, driven by revenge, sailed the seas to capture this great white whale who had bitten off his leg in a previous encounter. The crew of Captain Ahab’s ship, the Pequod, included: -Ishmael, the teller of the tale, which begins the line: […]

On JULY 26, 1775, Benjamin Franklin became the first Postmaster General of the United States, a position he held under the British Crown before the Revolution. Franklin’s public career began when he organized Pennsylvania’s first volunteer militia during threaten attacks from Spanish and French ships. Franklin then proposed a General Fast, which was approved by the Colony’s Council and printed in his Pennsylvania Gazette, December 12, 1747: “As the calamities […]

Spanish Explorers Hernando de Soto, in 1540, and Juan Pardo, in 1567, traveled inland from North America’s eastern coast and passed through a Native American village named “Tanasqui.“ A century and a half later, British traders encountered a Cherokee town named Tanasi. After the Revolutionary War, attempts were made to turn the area into the “State of Franklin” in honor of Ben Franklin. At the […]

38-year-old King George III ruled the largest empire that planet earth had ever seen. The Declaration of Independence, approved JULY 4, 1776, listed the reasons why Americans declared their independence from the King: “He has made judges dependent on his will alone… He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people […]

Get ready for a long, hot summer filled with protests, extreme rhetoric and unexpected intraparty skirmishes ahead of the 2018 midterm elections this fall. Thousands of demonstrators, from Washington, D.C. to Portland, Ore., braved the sweltering temperatures to hit the streets over the weekend, underscoring the new era of citizen activism that began with the Women’s March one day after […]

The first formal “Father’s Day” was celebrated JUNE 19, 1910, in Spokane, Washington. Sonora Louise Smart Dodd heard a church sermon on the newly established Mother’s Day and wanted to honor her father, Civil War veteran William Jackson Smart, who had raised six children by himself after his wife died in childbirth. Sonora Louise Smart Dodd drew up a petition supported by the Young Men’s Christian Association and […]

England was invaded by “Dane” Vikings from Scandinavia who destroyed churches, libraries and defeated all opposition except for 23-year-old King Alfred. Forced into the swampy, tidal marshes of Somerset, Alfred, King of the Anglos and Saxons, began a resistance movement in 878 AD. According to biographer Bishop Asser: “Alfred attacked the whole pagan army fighting ferociously in dense order, and by divine will eventually won the victory.” […]