Showing results by author "Christopher Lee Philips" in All Categories

The Bermuda Triangle is notorious for making things disappear. Cosmic theorists and supernatural sensationalists would have us believe that planes, trains, automobiles, and perhaps even a few companies from the dot-com era have been zapped through the vortex and into another dimension near the Atlantic island chain, some 640 miles east south-east off the North Carolina coast.

Virginia patriot and jurist John Marshall wrote the first authorized biography of George Washington, commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, first president of the United States and father of his country.  Published from 1804 through 1807 and sold by subscription, Marshall’s Life of Washington is a 3,200 page doorstop, more history than biography, and a work Thomas Jefferson privately considered “a five-volume libel”.

Three sons of the London-born actor Junius Brutus Booth followed in their father’s footsteps and became eminent tragedians of the 19th-century American stage, bringing the drama of William Shakespeare to audiences across the country and helping to secure the Bard’s legacy for generations to come. When the brothers Booth gathered in New York during the fall of 1864 to stage a benefit production of William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, the quintessential tragedy of political assassination and its aftermath, it was their first professional appearance together.

On the morning of May 5th, 1893, Cleveland lumbered into the White House lavatory, brushed back his walrus moustache, and discovered a “rough spot” on the roof his mouth. Although he chose to keep the matter to himself for over a month, attendant discomfort increased, and he soon began to consider the likely cause of his ailment more seriously. In the annals of political cover-ups, Grover Cleveland’s brilliantly orchestrated secret cancer surgery, performed during the financial crisis of 1893, was a public hoodwinking par excellence.