Free Republic

Spain laid claim to the Island of Jamaica from the time Columbus landed there in 1494. In 1503, Columbus was shipwrecked there for a year. In 1655, Jamaica was captured by British Admiral William Penn, the father of Pennsylvania’s founder. Jamaica was too far from England to defend, so the inhabitants turned to privateers, freebooters, buccaneers and pirates for protection. The likes of Blackbeard, Calico Jack and Captain Henry Morgan, namesake of the rum, attacked Spanish ships and settlements, then returned to Jamaica with their booty. The skull pirate flag, called the “Jolly Roger,” was adapted from the flag of...

One of the most important dating tools used in archaeology may sometimes give misleading data, new study shows - and it could change whole historical timelines as a result. The discrepancy is due to significant fluctuations in the amount of carbon-14 in the atmosphere, and it could force scientists to rethink how they use ancient organic remains to measure the passing of time.

The title of this article will raise eyebrows even among conservatives, but read on. The title is accurate and undeniable. The left has succeeded in driving a final nail in the coffin of the Boy Scouts as it once was. The organization is now a shell of its self. It capitulated first on “gay” scout leaders, then on “transgender” scouts, and now on girls joining the Boy Scouts. Progressives bask in their triumph, dancing on the grave of an organization they never wanted to build up; it was an organization they wanted to take down. For the left, this is...

“There’s no politics here ….In fact, there's no clear no evidence that Hemingway was a Castro enthusiast, or critic, says Sandra Spanier, an English professor at Penn State University who is the editor of the Hemingway Letters Project. "He felt that it was important, as a guest living in another country, that he be apolitical," Spanier said in an interview.” (Los Angeles Times story on the restoration of Ernest Hemingway’s mansion Finca Vigia near Havana, Cuba, May 30.)  Got it, amigos? According to the Los Angeles Times a former KGB agent living in a KBG-founded and mentored Soviet satrapy while...

They found the Turks coming right up under the walls and seeking battle, particularly the Janissaries ... and when one or two of them were killed, at once more Turks came and took away the dead ones ... without caring how near they came to the city walls. Our men shot at them with guns and crossbows, aiming at the Turk who was carrying away his dead countryman, and both of them would fall to the ground dead, and then there came other Turks and took them away, none fearing death, but being willing to let ten of themselves be...

"Well, the supermen marched us, without food, water or sleep to Limberg, a distance of about sixty miles, I think, where we were loaded and locked up, sixty men to each small, unventilated, unheated box car. There were no sanitary accommodations -- the floors were covered with fresh cow dung. There wasn't room for all of us to lie down. Half slept while the other half stood. We spent several days, including Christmas, on that Limberg siding. On Christmas eve the Royal Air Force bombed and strafed our unmarked train. They killed about one-hundred-and-fifty of us. We got a little...

Credit for the initial concept that developed into the World Wide Web is typically given to Leonard Kleinrock. In 1961, he wrote about ARPANET, the predecessor of the Internet, in a paper entitled "Information Flow in Large Communication Nets." Kleinrock, along with other innnovators such as J.C.R. Licklider, the first director of the Information Processing Technology Office (IPTO), provided the backbone for the ubiquitous stream of emails, media, Facebook postings and tweets that are now shared online every day. Here, then, is a brief history of the Internet: The precursor to the Internet was jumpstarted in the early days of...

Two months after Ben Franklin helped draft the Declaration of Independence, a surprise visitor walked into his Philadelphia shop. The young man’s curly brown hair cascaded down toward his shoulders, and his English was so broken he switched to French. Thaddeus Kosciuszko, a 30-year-old Pole just off the boat from Europe via the Caribbean, introduced himself and offered to enlist as an officer in the new American nation’s army. Franklin, curious, quizzed Kosciuszko about his education: a military academy in Warsaw, studies in Paris in civil engineering, including fort building. Franklin asked him for letters of recommendation. Kosciuszko had none....

SIX is a History Channel drama about SEALS. They need no introduction. :)

Watching this documentary about Caligula and I find the similarities between Caligula and Obama striking. The unbridled narcissism and twisted childhood. In Caligula's case, his exposure to his Uncle's proclivities and deviancy. In Obama's case, being raised by a radical prog mother and a variety of uninterested fathers as a spoiled child.

Pulitzer Prize-winning jazz musician Wynton Marsalis said that the racially charged and profanity-laced creations in rap and hip-hop are "more damaging" to the culture and to black Americans "than a statue of Robert E. Lee." During a recent interview with the Washington Post's Jonathan Capehart, Marsalis -- the first jazz musician to win the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1997 -- said: “My words are not that powerful. I started saying in 1985 I don’t think we should have a music talking about niggers and bitches and hoes. It had no impact. I’ve said it. I’ve repeated it. I still...

... China’s programme to build a Navy and formulate its doctrine was initiated by Deng Xiaoping in 1979. The pace of construction of warships and submarines picked up in the past decade. By 2000, China had a Navy of 19 large surface combatants and 63 small surface combatants like frigates and corvettes. Construction was accelerated and in 2016 alone the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) commissioned 18 warships, including destroyers, corvettes and guided missile frigates. The PLAN plans to have a total of 60 “light missile frigates” in its inventory, with one missile frigate to be launched every three weeks.

“One man’s terrorist is another man’s Freedom Fighter.” Such is a popular bromide that wittingly or not serves to obscure any essential difference between those who participate in organized violence and destruction by various means -- and for even more widely divergent reasons. What they all have in common is a mindset that the perpetrators are entitled and the victims are either themselves not as important in some way or unfortunate casualties in a larger struggle. Terrorism will then be defined in terms of motivation and tactics. The history will be explored with an emphasis on what provided incentives and...

Sentinel (Penguin/Random House) has just authorized a new edition (4th) of "A Patriot's History of the United States" written by Larry Schweikart (LS) and Mike Allen. This will be the 30th printing of the book since 2004 with a half-million copies in print. The new edition, expanding on the 10th Anniversary Edition in 2014, will cover all of US history from Columbus's discovery of the New World to the end of Trump's second year. That means all of Zero's useless presidency will be included. Since Trump is erasing it as fast as possible, there may not be much to cover...

Execution by cannon was a method of execution in which the victim was typically tied to the mouth of a cannon which was then fired. The prisoner is generally tied to a gun with the upper part of the small of his back resting against the muzzle. When the gun is fired, his head is seen to go straight up into the air some forty or fifty feet; the arms fly off right and left, high up in the air, and fall at, perhaps, a hundred yards distance; the legs drop to the ground beneath the muzzle of the gun;...

May 8th is the anniversary of V.E. Day (for "Victory in Europe") in 1945, and commemorates the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany to the Allied forces, ending World War II in Europe. With Adolf Hitler dead by his own hand, German military leaders signed surrender documents at several locations in Europe on May 7, capitulating to each of their victorious foes. Germany’s partner in fascism, Italy, had switched sides in 1943, though many Italians continued to fight alongside their German comrades in Italy. Upon entering the war in December 1941, the United States had agreed on a “Europe first” strategy:...

Donald Trump and the tainted Nobel Peace Prize jury deserve each other. So just go ahead and award the President the sullied prize. After all it was created by Alfred Nobel, the international arms merchant keen to recast his blood-stained legacy after pocketing a fortune making mass killing far more cost-efficient. And Trump, unlike some of the warmongers, racists, handmaidens to genocide, and terrorists already among the pantheon of winners, might actually have a credible claim to it. At least 18 slavish Republican Congressmen and South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in are already on record saying Trump deserves the award. At...

The Hong Kong government is rewriting the city’s history, one phrase at a time. After the proposed removal of the words “taking back” from school textbooks to describe the return of the city to China in 1997, the Post has learned that the official protocol office has changed its website to erase any mention of a “handover of sovereignty”.

On a rugged bluff overlooking the Ohio River, known locally as "Devil's Backbone," centuries of overgrowth obscures a secret of history... In 1799, early settlers found six skeletons clad in breastplates bearing a Welsh coat of arms. Indian legends told of "yellow-haired giants" who settled in Kentucky, southern Indiana, southern Ohio and Tennessee -- a region they called "the Dark and Forbidden Land." Archeologists debunk the legend. They say that evidence indicates that the natives of the region once conducted a vigorous trading network nearby and buried their dead on the bluff... Upstream about 14 miles from Louisville, Ky., the...

While we here at Today in Fort Smith recognize the passion and depth of individuals who recklessly own, breed and champion the pit bull breed, the harassment, anonymous attacks and yes, even death threats, we have endured in the past week does nothing to change the facts of the dangers said animals present to society. This chapter started about two weeks ago when we detailed the attack of a child in Washington County by a pit bull that resulted in the mauling of the the toddler. The bottom line? We posted a cautionary warning for people not to comment on...