On 31st March1968, just four days before his assassination, Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered a speech at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., inspired by a previous sermon when he had recited parts of the hymn “We shall overcome” to the interfaith congregation at Temple Israel in Hollywood, California. The resonant line of the folk… Read More “We Shall Overcome” – by Martin Luther King, Jr.
In August 1963, Joan Baez led a crowd of 300,000 in several verses taken from “We Shall Overcome” at the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Even President Lyndon Johnson, himself a Southerner, used the phrase “we shall overcome” in a speech delivered after the violent attacks on Civil Rights… Read More 🎶 We Shall Overcome 🎶 (4. Use in protest movements)
Around this day in 1698, Tsar Peter I – known as Peter the Great- established a beard tax. He wasn’t the only ruler in history to do this: in 1535, King Henry VIII of England, who wore a beard himself, had done the same. But what was Peter’s reason for the tax? During 1697 and… Read More The Beard Tax 🧔
On 31 August 1997, 36-year-old Princess Diana died following a horrific car crash in the Pont de l’Alma road tunnel in Paris. This led to huge expressions of emotion from those who knew her and from the public. Tony Blair, still fresh in his job as Prime Minister, was one of many notable people… Read More The People’s Princess
On 23 August 1927 Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, defendants in a controversial murder trial in Massachusetts, were executed, still maintaining their innocence. They had been sentenced to death by Judge Webster Thayer, who had described the two as “anarchist bastards”. He had condemned each of them to “suffer the punishment of death by… Read More Sacco & Vanzetti
On 13 August 1910, Florence Nightingale died at the age of 90. She was born in 1820, in Florence, Italy, the city which inspired her name. She gave nursing a favourable reputation and greatly affected 19th- and 20th-century policies around proper care, becoming an icon of Victorian culture. She gained the nickname of… Read More The Lady with the Lamp
On 14 July 1881 American frontier outlaw Billy the Kid was shot and killed by sheriff Pat Garrett, at the Maxwell Ranch in New Mexico’s Fort Sumner (the ranch fell into disrepair shortly after Billy the Kid’s death and the remains were washed away in the 1937 Pecos River floods). Sheriff Pat Garrett had heard… Read More Billy the Kid🔫
Il 7 luglio 1456 venne assolta Giovanna d’Arco. L’eroina francese, nota anche come “la pulzella d’Orléans” , aveva avuto un ruolo fondamentale durante la guerra dei Cent’anni. Aveva infatti contribuito a diverse vittorie delle armate nazionali che avevano permesso di riunire al paese gran parte dei territori che erano sotto il dominio inglese. Purtroppo, nel… Read More La pucelle d’Orléans
Sabato scorso, durante il viaggio annuale organizzato dalla sezione CAI (Club Alpino Italiano) a cui sono iscritta, un gruppo composto da una ventina di persone ha deciso di staccarsi dal resto della comitiva, che quel giorno era alle prese con la più impegnativa delle scalate nel Parco del Cilento, quella alla vetta del Monte Cervati.… Read More V come Velia (… e Volubilis) 🏛️
Christopher Marlowe (1564 –1593) was a famous English playwright, poet and translator of the Elizabethan period, whose best-known plays are “Doctor Faustus”, “The Jew of Malta”, “Tamburlaine the Great”. On Wednesday, 30 May, 1593 Marlowe died in a tavern brawl. Even if it appears to be a drunken fight, today scholars believe that his death… Read More The Mysterious Death of Christopher Marlowe
