Famous Eclipses In History And Literature

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Hank Morgan faced death in the worst way. The king had ordered he be burned at the stake. His heart sank. There was no way out. “I shall never see my friends again—never, never again,” he whispered mournfully. Unless…

Facing his doom, Hank confidently warned, unless the king freed him, “I will smother the whole world in the dead blackness of midnight; I will blot out the sun, and he shall never shine again; the fruits of the earth shall rot for lack of light and warmth, and the peoples of the earth shall famish and die, to the last man!”

No one believed him… until it was so!

King Arthur released this Connecticut Yankee; thus, scoring the perfect theatrical tension in Mark Twain’s famous story. Ah, the power of fiction. To create worlds that we can only dream of. To craft scenes we can only wish for. To fashion from our imaginations that which could only happen in the land of make believe.

But wait! Twain’s story telling borrowed from actual events (as Hank Morgan attests in the Continue Reading “Famous Eclipses In History And Literature”

How Has Your Life Changed in the Past 30 Years?

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By Raphaël Thiémard from Belgique (Berlin 1989, Fall der Mauer, Chute du mur) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Where were you in 1989? Were you glued to the television watching the Berlin Wall come down, symbolizing the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the dawning of democracy in Western Europe? Perhaps, instead, you marveled at the picture of the one lone protestor in Tiananmen Square stare down a column of tanks as China decided it would not experience the same fate as its communist rival. Back on the brighter side, evil nemesis Ayatollah Khomeini died, although that didn’t seem to change much. Oh, yeah, and George H. W. Bush was sworn in what many expected to mark the beginning of Ronald Reagan’s “third” term.

Maybe, rather than the geopolitick, you preferred the here and now of the budding world of technology. You probably couldn’t believe this “486” chip just introduced by Intel could make “home” computers (that’s what they were called then) operate so fast. Little did you know you’d need that extra power to best use Microsoft’s new entry into the business software market with its product called “Office.” (And, if you were like most of us, you’d have thought only a fool would believe Excel could supplant Lotus’ 1-2-3.) Less interested in home computers? How about home video games? Nintendo releases something called a “Game Boy,” an 8-bit handheld system featuring interchangeable cartridges that revolutionized the industry.

High tech not your gig? No doubt you spent time waiting in line at the post office to buy a Continue Reading “How Has Your Life Changed in the Past 30 Years?”

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