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Animation, History

Sunday Animation: The Petard Pinch

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The Petard Pinch from Mike Brookes on Vimeo. It’s 1942, and Britain is in the midst of WW2. On HMS Petard, amidst battle, three men act with bravery and courage, in the process capturing vital Nazi documents and secret codebooks that helped Bletchley Park to crack the enigma code, and ultimately help win the war.…

Film, History

Film: Remembering Amache

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We were right to fight the war against Japan until our victory; it was nonetheless a profound error to place Americans of Japanese descent into camps during that war. See, also, Revisiting a World War II Internment Camp, as Others Try to Keep Its Story From Fading @ New York Times.

History

Jefferson’s Hotel Stay & Public Policy

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There’s an oft-repeated story about Thomas Jefferson’s visit to a Baltimore hotel when Jefferson was vice-president of the United States.  (I don’t know the date of story’s first written account, or where that account first appeared.) Here’s the telling of Mr. Jefferson’s unsuccessful reservation, from a website on the vice-presidency: In another classic anecdote, our…

Film, History, Press

Film: The Newspaper Crisis of 1945

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Print newspapers once dominated America’s news media and culture. Those days are long past; they’ll not return. Embedded below, though, is a short film describing a newspaper strike in 1945, told from the point-of-view of a New York newspaper and emphasizing how important newspapers once were.

Animals, History

Calvin Coolidge’s Pet Raccoon

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First Lady Grace Coolidge and Rebecca the Raccoon. Calvin Coolidge was a good president, but as for his taste in pets, I’m not so sure: One of the best-known four-legged White House residents during the Coolidge years — a raccoon — had actually been meant to be eaten. She was sent from Mississippi to be…

America, History, Law, Liberty

Understanding America Backwards

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There’s a longstanding maxim of liberty that Americans inherited from England: ‘those things not prohibited by law are permitted.’ The burden is on the state: if there’s no express ban under law, then a person is free to act.  Since government has to enumerate restrictions if it wants to enforce them, a free society places…