The link between the invention of eyeglasses and economic growth has been known for years, says Peter Coclanis.
A new book by Evan Osborne describes the surprising history of economic liberalism in China, especially during the nineteenth century. Sam Gregg reviews Markets with Chinese Characteristics on Law & Liberty.
New art has been discovered at the ruins of Pompeii, in a banquet hall with scenes illustrating the Trojan War, Reuters reports in the Jerusalem Post.
Scene from Pompei ruins, taken by Lyn Gatel y and licensed under CC BY 2.0. A taste of the troubling history of sugar. Read an excerpt from a book on Coca-cola from DelaneyPlace.com
Slaves cutting sugar cane. From Ten Views of the Island of Antigua. (London: 1823). In the Flickr.com British Library collection. (And my discussion of sugar plantations here. )
How Vietnam has moved toward capitalism in one generation is told by Rainer Zittelman in Reason.
A Wall Street Journal article on a possible “brokered” Democratic convention in 2024 describes the down-to-the-wire selection of Abraham Lincoln in 1860. Author is Edward Achorn. (Behind a paywall.)
The famed Eisenstaedt photo of a sailor kissing a girl in Times Square was almost banned from use by the Veterans Administration. Here’s the story of the photo and the story of the “woke” decision.
To make you smile: Howard Tanzman has collected initial press reactions to a group of musicians who gave concerts in the 1960s. Among them: “appallingly unmusical,” “like a group of disorganized amateurs,” “not just awful . . .god awful.” And they are . . .
A collective farm in the United States, sponsored by FDR? Yes. Amity Shlaes introduces the republication of Edward Banfield’s 1951 book about a collective farm in Arizona .
David Friedman
Why is Leap Day on Feb. 29? It’s the result of a complicated history, but Chad de Guzman of Time e xplains it.
An extraordinary revision of history at New York’s American Natural History Museum.
Image of the museum is by WikimediaImages from Pixabay. Elizabeth Weiss of City Journal says that in a new exhibit the museum curators are allowing “creation myths and other religious and supernatur-al beliefs to be depicted as historical facts and scientific truths.” Why not do the same for Christian creation stories?
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Thomas Jefferson was a “politically unclassifiable” founder, writes Thomas W. Merrill on Law & Liberty. Like other founders, he is more complex than our culture wars allow.
It Started in 1968:
Image of Iowa state capitol by Alan Stanley on Pixabay. The story of how the Iowa caucuses became a national institution is told by Mark Z. Barabak in the Los Angeles Times.
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The debate over who should own the Elgin Marbles continues. James Kierstead lays out the history behind the tussle between Britain and Greece in Quillette.
Howell Raines tells about the 2,066 white “fighters and spies” from Alabama who joined the Union Army in 1862—and how their story was deliberately erased. In the Washington Post.
Stalin and Korea
“Fortunately for the world, Stalin died in March 1953,” writes (Clark) Aoqi Wu, in a discussion of the complex negotiations over ending the Korean War. On the Diplomat site.
Image of Josef Stalin on a gray day in Henan, China. Taken by Gary Lee Todd, it is in the public domain. _______________
“Anyone who has a naive belief in the power of higher education to instill ethical values has not studied the history of German universities in the Third Reich.” Niall Ferguson casts a historical light on German academia In the Free Press.
Once again, on Dec. 7, we commemorate the tragedy of Pearl Harbor. I see it as an example of high-level complicity as well. I have written about the tragic circumstances and the controversy surrounding them. In this post, I focused on the 1945 congressional inquiry into the Pearl Harbor events.
Gaza was once a prosperous stop on the Silk Road. “The fifth-century Byzantine Christian philosopher Aeneas of Gaza called the city “the Athens of Asia,'” writes Robert C. Thornett in a short history of the region on Quillette.
