-
Napoleon’s Failed War: Factors and Foes
Logistics In Lynch Bennett’s article The Grand Failure: How Logistics of Supply Defeated Napoleon in 1812, he points to logistical errors as a primary and often overlooked reason for Napoleon’s “Grand Failure” to invade Russia in 1812. As the popular idiom states “the devil is in the detail”; devilish details grew large and unruly, details that Napoleon neglected to anticipate. He was blinded by ambition and hubris, fed by his past accomplishments of conquest; he had by 1812 conquered the whole of continental Europe. The logistical difficulties involved in supplying his Grande Armeé of over 600,000 men were multiple and grave. By the time the French retreated Russia in a devastating defeat…
-
History of the Personal Computer
Alan Kay considers the LINC (1962) the first Personal Computer. But most people think of Gates and Jobs when associations are made to the personal computer. This association is well deserved. Gates and Jobs developed major innovations that literally put the PC on the everyday person’s desk and made it mobile from there. Bill Gates had the goal to put the personal computer into every home. It was at the young age of 13 that Gates began programming in Basic. Fifty Years of BASIC, the Programming Language That Made Computers Personal The computer programming language acronym BASIC stands for “Beginner’s All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code” The combination of Gates and BASIC started…
-
The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956
The first volume of The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956, a history and memoir of life in a Soviet Union prison camp, written by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, was first published in Paris in the original Russian on Dec 28, 1973. “… authorized for Western publication only after the Soviet secret police seized a copy of the manuscript last August, …” The Soviets arrested Solzhenitsyn on February 12, 1974 taking away his citizenship and deporting him. Solzhenitsyn warned the Russian people, citizens of a severely, censorial, 1973 Russia, in the preface of his book The Gulag Archipelago (a three-volume work), that they must consider the reading of his writings as a “very dangerous” act. Learn more about life in Stalin’s Gulag.
-
Woodstock Music & Art Fair Music Festival Performers
Bethel, New York from August 15 to August 18, 1969 Musicians: Richie Havens – 5:07pm – 7:00pm “The Minstrel from Gault” “From the Prison/Get Together/From the Prison” “I’m a Stranger Here” “High Flying Bird” “I Can’t Make It Anymore” “With a Little Help from My Friends” “Handsome Johnny” “Strawberry Fields Forever / Hey Jude” “Freedom (Motherless Child)” Swami Satchidananda – gave the invocation for the festival – 7:10pm – 7:20pm Sweetwater – 7:30pm – 8:10pm “Motherless Child” “Look Out” “For Pete’s Sake” “What’s Wrong” “Crystal Spider” “Two Worlds” “Why Oh Why” “Let the Sunshine In” “Oh Happy Day” “Day Song” Bert Sommer – 8:20pm – 9:15pm “Jennifer” “The Road to…
-
Paleolithic History
The popular conception of what constituted the Paleo diet of our ancestors from between 10,000 and 2.5 million years ago may be incorrect. The contemporary notion in question claims a subsistence of high amounts of meat, fish and vegetables and not on a grain based diet. Anthropologists at the Georgia State University in Atlanta have released a paper challenging that idea and going further to say that nothing in the findings indicate that our early ancestors’ meals where limited to any one specific food group. Anthropologist Ken Sayers explained it as an “opportunistic buffet”, also saying, “They lived short, tough lives that were focused on survival and reproduction”. Find the article…
