How Sears Saved Christmas from the Soviets

Posted on December 20, 2017 by hradmin — No Comments ↓

by Philip Jett

It was November 30, 1955, and the Cold War was raging. The U.S. had stockpiled 2,422 atomic bombs while the Soviets had only about 200, though more than ample to annihilate the United States. With the Soviet Union fewer than 2,000 miles away, the U.S. formed the Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD) to provide a timely defense system against intercontinental ballistic missiles fired by the Soviets over the North Pole and Canada that could strike the United States. CONAD’s command post was in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and Colonel Harry W. Shoup directed its Combat Operations Center. He reported directly to four-star general Earle “Pat” Partridge, who in turn reported directly to President Eisenhower.

Tagged with: Cold War, NORAD, philip jett, santa, soviet union, US history
Posted in Contemporary History

Anne Royall: Common Scold

Posted on December 15, 2017 by hradmin — No Comments ↓

by Jeff Biggers

Bloody feet, sisters, have worn smooth the path by which you have come hither.
—Abby Kelley Foster, National Women’s Rights Convention, 1851

In the summer of 1829, more than a century after Grace Sherwood had been plunged into the Lynnhaven River in Virginia in what is generally considered the last American witch trial, a bedraggled Anne Royall took the stand at the Circuit Court of the District of Columbia to face charges of being an “evil disposed person” and a “common scold.”

The US district attorney had conjured the charges from an ancient English common law that had long been dismissed in England as a “sport for the mob in ducking women,” especially for older women, as a precursor in trials for witchcraft.

Tagged with: Anne Royall, jeff biggers, trials of a scold, US history
Posted in Modern History

The Many Affairs of Crown Prince Rudolf

Posted on December 13, 2017 by hradmin — No Comments ↓

by Greg King and Penny Wilson

On a snowy January morning in 1889, a worried servant hacked open a locked door at the remote hunting lodge deep in the Vienna Woods. Inside, he found two bodies sprawled on an ornate bed, blood oozing from their mouths. Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria-Hungary appeared to have shot his seventeen-year-old mistress Baroness Mary Vetsera as she slept, sat with the corpse for hours and, when dawn broke, turned the pistol on himself.

A century has transformed this bloody scene into romantic tragedy: star-crossed lovers who preferred death together than to be parted by a cold, unfeeling Viennese Court. But Mayerling is also the story of family secrets: incestuous relationships and mental instability; blackmail, venereal disease, and political treason; and a disillusioned, morphine-addicted Crown Prince and a naïve schoolgirl caught up in a dangerous and deadly waltz inside a decaying empire. What happened in that locked room remains one of history’s most evocative mysteries: What led Rudolf and mistress to this desperate act? Was it really a suicide pact? Or did something far more disturbing take place at that remote hunting lodge and result in murder?

World War II: The Fear and the Freedom

Posted on November 30, 2017 by hradmin — No Comments ↓

by Keith Lowe

The Second World War was not just another crisis—it directly affected more people than any other conflict in history. Over 100 million men and women were mobilized, a figure that easily dwarfs the number who fought in any previous war, including the Great War of 1914–18. Hundreds of millions of civilians around the world were also dragged into the conflict—not only as refugees like Georgina Sand (a Jewish child survivor), but also as factory workers, as suppliers of food or fuel, as providers of comfort and entertainment, as prisoners, as slave labourers, and as targets. For the first time in modern history the number of civilians killed vastly outweighed the number of soldiers, not just by millions, but by tens of millions. Four times as many people were killed in the Second World War as in the First. For every one of those people there were dozens who were indirectly affected by the vast economic and psychological upheavals that accompanied the war.

The Lordly Roscoe Conkling

Posted on November 20, 2017 by hradmin — No Comments ↓

by Scott S. Greenberger

Despite his promising start as a young man, by his early fifties Chester A. Arthur was known as the crooked crony of New York machine boss Roscoe Conkling. For years Arthur had been perceived as unfit to govern, not only by critics and the vast majority of his fellow citizens but by his own conscience. As President James A. Garfield struggled for his life, Arthur knew better than his detractors that he failed to meet the high standard a president must uphold.

How Sears Saved Christmas from the Soviets

by Philip Jett

Anne Royall: Common Scold

by Jeff Biggers

The Many Affairs of Crown Prince Rudolf

by Greg King and Penny Wilson

World War II: The Fear and the Freedom

by Keith Lowe

The Lordly Roscoe Conkling

by Scott S. Greenberger

Receive our Monthly Newsletter

Search

About Us

The History Reader on Facebook

History Blogs/Sites

Sign up for The History Reader Newsletter!