In recalling the "birthday" of the Protestant Reformation (i.e., the anniversary of Martin Luther's nailing his Ninety-five Theses to the palace chapel door) recently, I retrieved my copy of J.M. Merle d'Aubigne's hefty masterpiece History of the Reformation in the Sixteenth Century. He is in my estimation the greatest historian of that period of history. J.H. Merle d'Aubigne We used his tome as the textbook for a course I took in college that was taught be the inimitable Dr. Edward Panosian,...

For two tense weeks in 1956, a nation fought for its freedom only to be ignored by the free countries of the world and consequently suppressed by a ruthless foreign power that controlled their native leaders. At the end of World War II, while the Allied powers worked to rebuild the countries of Western Europe destroyed by the war and to help them establish free governments and economies, the Soviet Union was subjugating the countries of Eastern Europe that their troops occupied, setting up...

A baby was born on this date in 1758. The American colonies were in the midst of the French and Indian War, or, as it was known in Europe, the Seven Years' War. I don't know when that baby learned to talk, but his vocabulary grew quickly and exponentially. Before the end of his life, he had become known primarily for his many words. At the age of 16, the word maven entered Yale College, graduating when he was 20. He wanted to study law, but he couldn't afford the extra schooling and so became...