According to ancient tradition, Noah’s Ark rested on Mount Araratin the Armenian Mountain Range.    Armenia’s Coat of Arms has Mount Ararat with Noah’s Ark on top. Armenian historian Movses Khorenatsi (410-490 AD) recounted the tradition that Noah’s son Japheth had a descendant named Hayk who shot an arrow in a battle near Lake Van c.2,500 BC killing Nimrod, builder of the Tower of Babel–the […]

On CHRISTMAS EVE, DECEMBER 24, 1492, Columbus’ ship, the Santa Maria, ran aground on the island of Hispanola (Haiti). Columbus left 40 men and named the settlement la Navidad, promising to return the next year. On CHRISTMAS EVE, DECEMBER 24, 1777, Captain James Cook discovered Christmas Island, the largest atoll in the Pacific, where he observed eclipse of the sun. […]

Dark Ages to Renaissance to Reformation to American REVOLUTION In the twelve years after Mohammed’s death, 632-644 AD, Muslim jihadists conquered the Eastern Roman Empire, Syria, Palestine, Eastern Anatolia, Armenia, Upper Egypt, Lower Egypt and North Africa. Muslim pirates terrorized the Mediterranean, blockading trade. This caused economic disaster in Roman Europe by diminishing products moving from East to West. An […]

Why has the tradition in America been for oaths to end with “So Help Me God”? The military’s oath of enlistment ended with “So Help Me God.” As a commissioned officer the oath ended with “So Help Me God.” President’s oath of office ended with “So Help Me God.” Congressmen and Senators’ oath ended with “So Help Me God.” Witnesses in Court swore to tell the […]

Seeking U.N. sanctions against Iran, December 21, 1979, President Jimmy Carter stated in a speech: “Henry Longfellow wrote a Christmas carol in a time of crisis, the War Between the States, in 1864. Two verses of that carol (“I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day”) particularly express my thoughts and prayers and, I’m sure, those of our Nation in this […]

Alexander Solzhenitsyn was born in Russia, DECEMBER 11, 1918. He was arrested for writing a letter criticizing Joseph Stalin and spent 11 years in labor camps. He began writing and eventually received the Nobel Prize for Literature. Speaking in Washington, D.C., June 30, 1975, Alexander Solzhenitsyn gave a warning to the west: “In pre-revolutionary Russia…there were attempts of the Tsar’s […]

Pennsylvania became the 2nd State to join the Union, DECEMBER 12, 1787. The Continental Congress had met there, the Declaration of Independence was signed there, and the Liberty Bell was rung there.  The Continental Army spent the freezing winter of 1777 at Valley Forge there. In 1787, the Constitution was written there, and from 1790-1800, the United States Capitol was […]

Why has the tradition in America been for oaths to end with “So Help Me God”? The military’s oath of enlistment ended with “So Help Me God.” The commissioned officers’ oath ended with “So Help Me God.” President’s oath of office ended with “So Help Me God.” Congressmen and Senators’ oath ended with “So Help Me God.” Witnesses in Court swore […]

Editor’s Note: In 1937, several idealistic aviators, flying nearly obsolete P-40 War Hawks, went to China to earn enduring acclaim as the Flying Tigers, but in reality a handful of fighters simply proved inadequate against the Rising Sun. The inaction of democracies and republics in both oceans only whetted the appetites of the dogs of war, encouraging Italy, Germany, and […]

Indians gnawed off two of his fingers and roughly sawed off his thumb. He escaped and with the help of Dutch traders and made his way back to Quebec and then France. This was French missionary Isaac Jogues, who taken prisoner by the Iroquois in 1641. Indians made him run the deadly gauntlet, as described in The Jesuit Martyrs of North America, […]

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, was born NOVEMBER 30, 1835. His first popular story was “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” written in 1865 while he was in San Francisco. In 1866, as a reporter for the Sacramento Union, Mark Twain traveled to the Sandwich Islands (present-day Hawaii). In 1867, a newspaper funded Mark Twain’s voyage […]

President Franklin Pierce placed thefirst Christmas Tree in the White House in 1856.  Born NOVEMBER 23, 1804, Franklin Pierce, was elected a Congressman at age 29 and a Senator at age 33. Franklin Pierce resigned from Congress during the Mexican-American War and enlisted as a private. He was eventually promoted to brigadier general. Pierce’s leg was crushed at the Battle of Churubusco. A Northern Democrat,Franklin Pierce ran for President […]

Born a slave in New York in 1797, she spoke only Dutch until sold around the age of 9, together with a flock of sheep, for $100. Suffering hardships, her third master made her marry an older slave with whom she had five children. In 1827, she escaped to Canada. After New York abolished slavery, she returned as a domestic […]

American Minute with Bill Federer – NOV 23 His only son, 11-year-old Bennie, was killed when their campaign train rolled off its tracks. This happened to 14th President Franklin Pierce, who was born NOVEMBER 23, 1804. Elected to Congress at age 29, Franklin Pierce was a Senator at 33. He resigned from Congress during the Mexican-American War and enlisted as […]

James Otis (1725-1783) was the King’s advocate-general of the vice-admiralty court at Boston. In 1761, he was elected as a representative of Boston to Massachusetts’ colonial government, called the General Court. His main political opponent was acting Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hutchinson, a politically polarizing figure whose unbending Loyalist acts greatly increased tensions with colonists. Choosing loyalty to Britain over America, […]

He lost two sons in the Revolution and was the only clergyman to sign the Declaration. His name was John Witherspoon. A delegate from New Jersey, he declared: “Gentlemen, New Jersey is ready to vote for independence … The country is not only ripe for independence, but we are in danger of becoming rotten for the want of it!” He served on 120 […]

The Vietnam War Memorial was dedicated NOVEMBER 13, 1982, honoring 58,000 American troops who died. U.S. forces inflicted over a million enemy fatalities, yet involvement by politicians thwarted victory. North Vietnamese colonel, Bui Tin,received the unconditional surrender of South Vietnam on April 30, 1975. Bui Tin explained how the protests by “anti-war peace demonstrators” was key to the Communist victory: “Every day our […]

THE AMERICAN MINUTE The 11th hour of the 11TH DAY OF THE 11TH MONTH of 1918, World War I ended. Though the Armistice was signed at 5:00 AM, fighting continued till 11:00 AM, killing nearly 11,000 more men. In 1921, President Warren Harding had the remains of an unknown soldier killed in France buried in the Tomb of the Unknown […]

“When the first Muslim American was recently elected to Congress, he took the oath to defend our Constitution using the Holy Qur’an,” stated President Obama in Cairo, Egypt, June 4, 2009. As nice as this sounds, there is a historical dilemma, namely, how can one swear to defend a Constitution upon a book that instructs followers to overthrow it? There […]

“We are under tremendous attacks… We are attacked by the Communists who in their own documents state that capitalism – democracy – carries within itself the seeds of its own destruction,”  stated President Dwight Eisenhower. Continuing his address, NOVEMBER 9, 1954, to the National Conference on the Spiritual Foundation of American Democracy at the Sheraton-Carlton Hotel, Washington, DC, President Eisenhower […]