curated news for friends & family ™ 
XI JINPING DECLARES WAR ON GENGHIS KHAN( education / history )
Last month, an exhibition on Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire was cancelled at the last moment by the History Museum in Nantes, in France, due to pressures from the Chinese Embassy. The latter had asked to remove from the name of the exhibition the words Genghis Khan, Mongol, and Empire. Obviously, nothing would have been ... read more
WHEN ANTARCTICA WAS A RAINFOREST( education / history )
Once upon a time, there was a swampy rainforest near the bottom of the world. Buried sediment extracted from the seafloor off West Antarctica...: theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/01/antarcticantar... read more
ANCIENT ORIGINS WEBSITE( education / history )
Possibly interesting. See ancient-origins.net/their website or feeds.feedburner.com/AncientOriginsRSS feed ... read more
RFK JR. ON JFK'S ATTEMPTS TO END THE COLD WAR( education / history )
Bolshakov smuggled a letter, the first of 21 declassified in 1993, to JFK's press secretary, Pierre Salinger, in a folded newspaper. In it, Khrushchev expressed regret about Vienna and embraced JFKs proposal for a path to peace and disarmament.... read more
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN CALLED TRAITOR FOR INFORMING PEOPLE ABOUT ACTIONS OF GOV'T( education / history )
In 1773, Benjamin Franklin leaked confidential information by releasing letters written by then Lt. Governor of Massachusetts Thomas Hutchinson and his secretary Andrew Oliver to Thomas Whatley, an assistant to the British prime minister.:... read more
EKATERINA DZHUGASHVILI, STALIN'S MOTHER( education / history )
And this, people, is why you shouldn't beat your child (any more than you have to) .She Stalin's mother once asked her son, 'Joseph, what exactly are you now?'He replied, 'do you remember the Tsar? Well, I'm like a tsar.''You'd have done better to have been a priest,' s... read more
HISTORY PAGE( education / history )
Here's a great historical timeline sort of site: title8th century, with links forward and backward in time at the bottom of the page hreffsmitha.com/fsmitha.com/ historyonthenet.com/category/podcast-episodesHistory Unplugged Podcast ... read more
SOMETHING TO PONDER( education / history )
Railroad tracksThe US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in England, and English expatriates designed the US railroads. Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail ... read more