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HISTORY: unwrapped – July 2006

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July 25, 2007 – Georgia On His Mind

General James Oglethorpe (1696–1785) conceived a plan to provide a refuge for persecuted Protestants of Europe. On June 9, 1732, he was granted a charter by George II to establish a new colony. Oglethorpe named his colony Georgia. He was motivated primarily from strong Christian principles, which are evident in his denouncement of slavery. In London, in 1734, he praised Georgia for its anti-slavery policy:

Slavery, the misfortune, if not the dishonor, of other plantations, is absolutely proscribed. Let avarice defend it as it will, there is an honest reluctance in humanity against buying and selling, and regarding those of our species as our wealth and possessions. . . . The name of slavery is here unheard, and every inhabitant is free from unchosen masters and oppression. . . . Slavery is against the gospel as well as the fundamental law of England. We refused, as trustees, to make a law permitting such a horrid crime. But, Oglethorpe’s words were not heeded. The “horrid crime” of slavery was soon introduced to Georgia. “In 1750 the law prohibiting slavery was repealed and Georgia became a slave-worked plantation colony like its neighbor, South Carolina.”

In keeping with the original charter which gave the colonists of Georgia “a liberty of conscience” to worship God, the 1777 Constitution retains its essential religious character. Article VI states that “The representatives shall be chosen out of the residents in each county . . . and they shall be of the Protestant religion.” Article LVI declares that “All persons whatever shall have the free exercise of their religion; provided it be not repugnant to the peace and safety of he State.” Like many of the state constitutions, the Georgia constitution prohibited clergymen from holding seats in the legislature.

July 24, 2007 – From Slave to Poet

The eighteenth century exhibited a high degree of literacy among Americans, and it was not confined to just one class of people. Phillis Wheatley, a seventeen-year-old black servant in Boston, wrote a eulogy for the popular minister of the Great Awakening, George Whitefield, which was published. Phillis worked for the family of John Wheatley as a personal servant and had been permitted to be educated, which was most unusual for someone who was a slave and a woman. Her one and only book, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, was published in 1773, the year she was freed from slavery. One of her poems reflected her thankfulness at being brought to America and learning of her Savior, Jesus Christ. Phillis Wheatley was acclaimed as the “African poetess.”

A number of celebrities and lesser knowns threatened (promised?) to leave the United States if George W. Bush was reelected president in 2004. But before Bush, there was Martin Van Buren, and before today’s political malcontents, there was Davy Crockett (1786–1836), “king of the wild frontier” as the popular 1955 politically incorrect “Ballad of Davy Crockett” described him. In a letter written to Charles Shultz dated December 25, 1834, Crockett complains about Andrew Jackson’s influence over American voters. He describes them as “Volunteer Slaves” and declares his plan to leave the United States and move to Texas if Martin Van Buren, Jackson’s vice-president, is elected to office.

The western and southern men dare not to sustain Jackson in his mad Caesar [like rages], and when they refuse all the blood in the nation will be let loose on them.

The time has come that virtue is expected to be transferable and as negotiable and a promissory note of hand in these days of glory and Jackson and reform &c. Little Van [Martin van Buren] sits in his chair and looks as sly as a red fox, and I have no doubt but that he thinks Andrew Jackson has full power to transfer the people of these United States at his will and I am afraid that a majority of free Citizens will submit to it and Say amen. Jackson done it, it is right. If we judge by the past, we can reach no other calculations.

I have almost given up the ship as lost. I have gone so far as to declare that if Martin Van Buren is elected that I will leave the United States, for I never will live under his Kingdom. Before I will submit to his government, I will go to the Wilds of Texas. I will consider that government a Paradise to what this government will be. I never will submit to his government. In fact, at this time our Republican Government has dwindled almost into insignificance. Our boasted land of liberty has almost bowed to the yoke of bondage. Our happy days of Republican principles are near at an end when a few is to transfer the many. These are Van Buren principles. There are more slaves in New York and Pennsylvania than there are in Virginia and South Carolina and they are the meanest kind of slaves there are—Volunteer Slaves. [At least] our Southern slaves are of some use to their owner.

Van Buren won, and Davy Crockett moved to Texas and fought and died at the Alamo on March 6, 1836. His tombstone reads: “Davy Crockett, Pioneer, Patriot, Soldier, Trapper, Explorer, State Legislator, Congressman, Martyred at The Alamo. 1786–1836.” Unlike today’s political malcontents, Crockett did what he said he would do. He followed the dictates of his own motto: “Be Sure You’re Right, and Then Go Ahead.”

“Ladies and Gentlemen, young and old. This may seem an unusual procedure, speaking to you before the picture begins, but we have an unusual subject: the birth of freedom. The story of Moses.” Yes, it was an unusual way to begin a movie. The introductory words were spoken by Cecil B. DeMille, the director of The Ten Commandments (1956), before the movie was shown. If you’ve only seen The Ten Commandments on television, there’s a good possibility that you’ve never seen DeMille’s opening remarks. He considered his production to be so important that he came out on stage to deliver a short but powerful statement on the nature of freedom under the law of God:

The theme of this picture is whether men ought to be ruled by God's laws or whether they are to be ruled by the whims of a dictator like Rameses. Are men the property of the State or are they free souls under God? This same battle continues throughout the world today.

All law is a reflection of some worldview. It is impossible to avoid legislating morality. Laws against theft and murder are legislated, and they reflect some moral code. There are few people who would object to laws being made that would punish thieves and murderers. And yet, such laws impose a moral system on all of us. Although, thieves and murderers might object, no one is calling for these laws to be rescinded because they impose a moral code.

George Washington faced a personal dilemma with political overtones when the nation’s capital moved from New York to Philadelphia. Disappointed with the food served in the new capital, Washington brought Hercules, his Mount Vernon chef. Hercules was accomplished in the culinary art, and he managed Washington’s kitchen with style and discipline. But the black chef posed a problem. Pennsylvania required that slaves be freed after six months of residency. Washington tried to get around this law by returning his household slaves to Virginia just short of the deadline. After several weeks, the slaves would be returned to Philadelphia. The president had vowed never to purchase another slave, but he nearly faced going back on those words when Hercules disappeared. Eventually a white housekeeper, who could also cook, took the place of the runaway chef. The flamboyant Hercules was never heard from again.

General James Oglethorpe (1696–1785) conceived a plan to provide a refuge for persecuted Protestants of Europe. On June 9, 1732, he was granted a charter by George II to establish a new colony. Oglethorpe named his colony Georgia. He was motivated primarily from strong Christian principles, which are evident in his denouncement of slavery. In London, in 1734, he praised Georgia for its anti-slavery policy:

Slavery, the misfortune, if not the dishonor, of other plantations, is absolutely proscribed. Let avarice defend it as it will, there is an honest reluctance in humanity against buying and selling, and regarding those of our species as our wealth and possessions. . . . The name of slavery is here unheard, and every inhabitant is free from unchosen masters and oppression. . . . Slavery is against the gospel as well as the fundamental law of England. We refused, as trustees, to make a law permitting such a horrid crime. But, Oglethorpe’s words were not heeded. The “horrid crime” of slavery was soon introduced to Georgia. “In 1750 the law prohibiting slavery was repealed and Georgia became a slave-worked plantation colony like its neighbor, South Carolina.”

In keeping with the original charter which gave the colonists of Georgia “a liberty of conscience” to worship God, the 1777 Constitution retains its essential religious character. Article VI states that “The representatives shall be chosen out of the residents in each county . . . and they shall be of the Protestant religion.” Article LVI declares that “All persons whatever shall have the free exercise of their religion; provided it be not repugnant to the peace and safety of he State.” Like many of the state constitutions, the Georgia constitution prohibited clergymen from holding seats in the legislature.

The smallpox virus had its greatest impact on the Indian populations in what is now Central and South America. Some historians have theorized that “it was not Cortez’ soldiers but smallpox that conquered the kingdom of the Aztecs in Mexico in 1520.” While this might be an exaggeration, smallpox certainly took its toll. It’s no wonder that the “Aztecs couldn’t believe that such a disease could be considered small and called it the `big pox.’“

The psychological impact of smallpox was also great. Between 1518 and 1531 nearly one-third of the total Indian population died of smallpox while the Spanish remained mysteriously unaffected. The Indians interpreted this to mean that their gods had failed them. In a deeply religious and superstitious society this assessment undermined the will to resist and made it possible for the Spanish to conquer what was left of the well-established pagan Aztec population.

Smallpox was followed by waves of measles, influenza, and typhus. “By the end of the sixteenth century, it is estimated that up to 90 percent of the indigenous populations had died in the successive waves of disease, and the Spanish began importing slaves to meet the labor demands created by catastrophic disease mortality.” The Aztecs contributed to their own demise through human sacrifice. As many as fifty thousand people a year were sacrificed “as a gourmet source of protein for its privileged elites.” But, that’s another story for another time.

The Virginia colony was the first to charter a college at Henrico, Virginia, in 1619, nineteen years before Harvard and seventy-four years before the College of William and Mary. Like all the colonial colleges, Henricus College was to be designed around the precepts of the Christian faith, “for the training and bringing up of infidels’ children to the true knowledge of God and understanding of righteousness.” The college never succeeded, and no further attempts were made to establish a college in Virginia until 1695, when Rev. James Blair, the representative of the Church of England in Virginia, and his superior, the Bishop of London, were granted a charter by King William and Queen Mary. Like all the New England colonial colleges, William and Mary was designed to further the gospel of Christ in all disciplines. The founders of these early educational institutions understood the relationship between a sound education based upon biblical absolutes and the future of the nation. Putting the Bible in the hands of the people was an essential step toward religious and political freedom. “From the very beginnings, the expressed purpose of colonial education had been to preserve society against barbarism, and, so far as possible, against sin. The inculcation of a saving truth was primarily the responsibility of the churches, but schools were necessary to protect the written means of revelation.”

Yerba Buena was a tiny village of sand dunes and small oaks populated with fleas that tormented the few people who lived there. The Gold Rush transformed the sleepy town into the booming city of San Francisco. This cosmopolitan center was jolted awake on the morning of April 18, 1906 as an earthquake hit the city. People were in bed as buildings were leveled and streets rose and fell. Fires broke out, causing more destruction than the earthquake. Four square miles of the city was destroyed by fire and the death toll was 4,000. This was not the first time San Francisco had survived a disaster. The city had burned to the ground six times previously. The mythical bird that is reborn from its ashes, the Phoenix, was adopted as the city’s symbol. Did San Francisco survive only to fall victim to a future earthquake? Only time will tell.

Weather forecasters couldn’t have been more wrong with their prediction of fair weather. A legendary blizzard struck the northeastern United States in March of 1888.  The blizzard paralyzed the East Coast. Telegraph and telephone wires snapped, isolating New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington for days. Two hundred ships were grounded, and at least one hundred seamen died. Fire stations were immobilized, and property loss from fire alone was estimated at $25 million. More than 400 deaths were reported. The snowstorm took everyone by surprise. The days leading up to the storm were unseasonably mild for that time of year. The temperatures were in the 40s and 50s when torrential rains turned to snow. Temperatures plunged and roaring winds continued for 36 hours. Forty and fifty inches of snow fell in some states and winds up to 48 miles per hour caused 50 foot high snowdrifts.  The resulting transportation crisis led to the creation of the New York subway in 1900. It was so cold that many unprepared people froze to death. Teachers and children lost their lives trying to get home in the blinding storm. Dead animals were found strewn over the landscape the next day. It took days to dig out from under the storm’s deadly white blanket, causing many to realize that preparation in advance of a disaster was necessary. 

England had a head start on the Reformation because of the work of John Wycliffe (c. 1324–1384). It was Wycliffe who held that the Bible alone (sola Scriptura) set forth the definition of true Christianity. Wycliffe’s efforts to translate the Bible into the language of the people prepared the way for a reform movement that would take England and the New World by storm. His hand written translations were based on Jerome’s Latin Vulgate, the only source text available to Wycliffe. Like Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, and Tyndale, Wycliffe’s reform efforts did not go unopposed. Thirty-one years after his death, the Council of Constance condemned Wycliffe on 260 different counts, ordered his writings to be burned, and directed that his bones be exhumed and buried in unconsecrated ground. In 1428, on orders from the Pope, Wycliffe's remains were dug up and burned. His ashes were thrown in a nearby river. Wycliffe's followers, called Lollards,* carried on his work under severe persecution from Henry V (1413–1422). Because of continued opposition from the Crown and the outlawing of Bible reading in the English language, the Lollards worked in secret. But by the late fifteenth century, the activity of the Lollards began to grow more bold and effective. They brought the discussion of theological issues to the masses which in turn led some people to question certain aspects of Roman Catholic doctrine. In the end, Wycliffe’s views won out. His ashes became seed for a Reformation that transformed the world. “The sacred Scriptures,” Wycliffe wrote, “be the property of the people, and one which no party should be allowed to wrest from them.”

* The Lollards derived their name from the medieval Dutch word meaning “to mutter” (lollaerd), possibly a reference to their style of worship, which was based on reading the scriptures. The derivation may be of Latin origin, from lollen, “to sing softly” (cf. Eng. lull).

Harland Sanders was born September 9, 1890. He began franchising his chicken business in the early 1950s—at the age of 65—using money that he received from Social Security! When he was 40, Sanders began cooking for hungry travelers who stopped at his service station in Corbin, Kentucky. He didn’t own a restaurant then, but he served people on his own dining table in the living quarters of his service station. As more people started coming just for food, he moved across the street to a motel and restaurant that seated 142 people. Over the next nine years, he perfected his “secret blend of 11 herbs and spices” and the basic cooking technique that is still used today. He was made a “Colonel” by Governor Ruby Laffoon in 1935 in recognition of his contributions to the state’s cuisine. In the early 1950s a new interstate highway was planned to bypass the town of Corbin. Seeing an end to his business, Sanders auctioned off his operations. After paying his bills, he was reduced to living on his $105 monthly Social Security checks. He was so convinced that his fried chicken was superior to anything on the market that he devoted himself to the chicken franchising business.

He traveled across the country by car going to restaurants, cooking batches of chicken for restaurant owners and their employees. If the owners liked what they saw and tasted, he entered into a handshake agreement on a deal that would pay him a nickel for each chicken the restaurant sold. By 1964, Colonel Sanders had more than 600 franchised outlets for his chicken in the United States and Canada. That year, he sold his interest in the United States company for $2 million to a group of investors. In 1971, the franchise was sold for $285 million. KFC was acquired in October 1986 from RJR Nabisco, Inc. by PepsiCo, Inc., for approximately $840 million. KFC is now part of the world's largest restaurant company—Yum! Brands—with nearly 32,500 units in more than 100 countries and territories around the world. And to think that it all started with some chicken, “11 herbs and spices,” a cooker, a $105 Social Security check, and a man who did not know the word “retire.”

“In 1921, automotive tycoon Henry Ford, accompanied by Thomas Edison, came to Muscle Shoals with a vision of transforming this area into a metropolis. ‘I will employ one million workers at Muscle Shoals and I will build a city 75 miles long at Muscle Shoals,’ stated Mr. Ford.  The instant rumors of Ford’s plan hit the streets, real estate speculators began buying up land and parceling it out in 25 foot lots and putting in sidewalks and street lights. People from all over the United States bought lots, sight unseen, during this time. Mr. Ford’s offer to buy Wilson Dam for $5 million was turned down by Congress. (The initial cost of the construction of the dam was $46.5 million.)  Instead, Congress, under the influence of Senator George Norris of Nebraska, later formed the Tennessee Valley Authority to develop the dam as well as the entire river valley.  Senator Norris felt strongly that the public, rather than private companies, should receive the benefits from the government’s investments in Muscle Shoals. Although Ford’s plans did not turn Muscle Shoals into a huge city, it did lay the foundation for the city of Muscle Shoals.” Congress missed out on a great opportunity. While the quad-city area (Muscle Shoals-Sheffield-Florence-Tuscumbia) of northwest Alabama is picturesque and a great place to visit and live, it has (mostly) been bypassed by industry, as has much of Alabama, although this is beginning to change. Ford’s venture would have more than paid for the cost of Wilson Dam in jobs, production, and tax revenue. The enterprise would have transformed the South by bringing industrial diversity to a part of the country almost exclusively supported by agriculture.

Muscle Shoals is much more famous, although most people don’t know it, for being a music Mecca. The city was immortalized in song by Lynyrd Skynyrd in “Sweet Home Alabama” with the line “Now Muscle Shoals has got the Swampers.” It’s hard to believe, if you’ve ever driven through the city, that Little Richard, Wilson Pickett, Clarence Carter, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Leon Russell, Joe Cocker, Paul Simon, Traffic, Rod Stewart, Bob Seger, and others recorded there. Songs like “Take A Letter Maria,” “High Time We Went,” “When a Man Loves a Woman,” “Respect Yourself,” “Kodachrome,” “Loves Me Like A Rock,” “Land of a 1000 Dances,” “Old Time Rock And Roll,” and “Sailing” were recorded at the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio. It’s hard to imagine Mick Jagger and the rest of the Rolling Stones hanging out anywhere in the Quad-City area. The biggest tourist attraction is the home of Helen Keller down the road a piece in Tuscumbia, and it’s not much to see.

Detroit may be the automobile capital of the world with its distinctive “Motown (Motor Town) Sound,” but this tiny Alabama enclave that missed out on being the Detroit of the South set its mark in the music business as the “Hit Recording Capital of the World.”

After Marco Polo returned home from his extensive tour of the East, he enlisted in the Venetian army in Venice’s battle against Genoa in 1298. During a sea battle, he was captured and imprisoned in Genoa, Italy. While Marco was serving time, he did not waste time. Instead, he collaborated with another prisoner, a scribe named Rusticiano of Pisa, to write the story of his travels in the East. The book was an immediate hit, but it was also discredited by some who claimed that it was full of lies. Marco Polo had written a million tall tales, they said, and that is how the book became known in Italian as Il Milione (“The Million”). Despite the outlandish descriptions of his adventures, later travelers confirmed many of Polo's stories about a "salt-water lake" (the Caspian Sea), strange fat-tailed sheep, the Order of Assassins in Persia, the burning of "black stones" (coal), tattooing, the rhinoceros, and the crocodile. It is surprising that Marco Polo did not mention the Great Wall of China, but China's a large country.

Lorenzo Langstroth’s childhood curiosity of observing insects stayed with him as an adult. The Yale graduate, minister, and teacher took up beekeeping as a distraction from his bouts of depression. The beekeeping industry was revolutionized by Langstroth’s moveable frame beehive. Honeycombs could now be removed without enraging the bees. This new method also permitted the beekeeper to observe the health of his bees. Langstroth discovered that hives could be stacked one on top of the other, which turned beekeeping and honey production into a full-scale industry. His book on bee management, published in 1853, is still in use today. “The Father of American Beekeeping” is best remembered for improvements that resulted from keen observation skills of God’s intricate and fascinating creation.

Roger Williams (1603–1683), founder of the Rhode Island colony, believed that the Church of England had not gone far enough in reforming itself. To the colonists of Massachusetts Bay, Williams's preaching sounded a lot like what European Anabaptists had preached in the sixteenth century—separation and purity no matter what the cost. As a result, the fragile colony of Massachusetts feared that an uprising similar to the one in the German city-state of Münster in 1534 could take place in New England if Williams’s views spread among more radical groups.

The General Court ordered Williams to leave the colony within six weeks and return to England. Because it was winter, he was allowed to remain in the colony until spring. Before the authorities could send him packing back to England, Williams left the jurisdiction of Massachusetts Bay with twenty supporters. They headed for Narragansett Bay, forty miles south of the Massachusetts colony. There Williams established a settlement, naming it Providence Plantation “in a sense of God's merciful providence unto me in my distress.”

Upon his death, Williams was buried on the family farm where apple trees were growing. Many years later, the Rhode Island Historical Society decided to exhume his body for a more honoring burial. When the grave was opened, Williams was gone. It seems that a “root of an apple tree had penetrated the head of the coffin and had followed down Williams’ spine, dividing into a fork at the legs. The tree had absorbed the chemicals of the decaying body and had transmuted them into its wood and fruit. The apples, in turn, had been eaten by people, quite unconscious of the fact that they were indirectly taking into their systems part of the long-dead Williams.”

Before Andrew Carnegie earned his millions in steel, he made his first fortune through investments—and never used a penny of his own money. Twelve-year-old Andrew took a factory job for $1.20 a week shortly after his poverty-stricken family arrived in America from Scotland in 1848. Four years later, he went to work for Tom Scott of the Pennsylvania Railroad who taught young Andrew the art of investing. Carnegie learned how to use dividends from stock to make payments against loans. When the loans were paid off, the dividends were his. He would use this system repeatedly to build his assets and income without having to invest his own capital. Though Carnegie would go on to amass a staggering fortune in the steel business, he would always remember his very first monthly dividend of $10. Carnegie gave away much of his vast fortune, funding libraries and museums.

Edward Teach, known as “Blackbeard” the pirate, prowled the waters off the southeastern coast of the American colonies in the early 1700s. He was a menacing figure with long, dark hair twisted into pigtails and a beard that covered his face. Teach appeared surrounded in smoke from the slow burning hemp he wore under his hat. Wearing multiple pistols, knives and a cutlass, his frightening image often caused enemies to surrender at the sight of him. The citizens of North Carolina sent an appeal to the governor of Virginia who offered a reward for the pirate. Boarding a ship where the crew and captain were hiding below, Teach was taken by surprise. In the ensuing battle the fearsome pirate was defeated and his head hung from the victor’s ship as a trophy. Blackbeard’s short reign of terror had finally come to an end. 

Exchanging one commodity or service for another commodity or service is called bartering. As long as you needed what the other person had, bartering was a good way to do business. But if you needed something your neighbor had and he didn’t need what you had, you would have to find someone who needed what you had and wanted what the other man had so an exchange could be made. Over time, you can see how complicated bartering could get. One way to fix the logistic problems associated with bartering was to find a commodity that everyone valued and use it as a medium of exchange for everything else. This was most often gold and silver. But how would you know if the gold piece of one trader was as pure as the gold piece of another trader? Gold had to be weighed and certified by an assayer to insure its purity. Assayers were not always around when you needed one.

As time went on, someone had the grand idea of standardizing coinage and stamping it with an image that would be nearly impossible to duplicate. Since gold was a soft metal, it was easy to fabricate, strike, and identify. A simple bite or scratch would identify it as gold. But when there’s a way to make a buck without doing much work, someone will find a way to cheat the system. Since gold coins had smooth edges, it didn’t take much effort to clip just a little gold off the edges while keeping the coin relatively intact. The coin remained virtually the same, but with a few shavings off the edge that no one would notice. If this was done to several coins, a coin clipper would have enough extra gold to exchange for coinage while still being able to hold on to his original coins. This is inflation in action: An increase in the money supply without an actual increase in real money. There had to be a better way to stop coin clipping.

Antoine Boucher, a French machinist, devised a way to stamp coins with raised borders around its circumference and “milled” grooves around the outside edge. If you got a smooth-edged coin, you knew it had been clipped. England struck its first coins with milled edges in 1553, but the process proved costly and was abandoned. People went right back to clipping. In time, putting milled edges on coins became cost effective. This didn’t stop everybody from clipping and putting new edges on the coins. Oliver Cromwell proposed engraving mottoes around the edge of the coins. When this didn’t stop the pilfering, he had coins struck with this message: “The Penalty for Clipping Coins Is Death.” Today, no one bothers with clipping coins since they are no longer made of gold and silver. Even so, the edges of dimes, quarters, half-dollars, and dollar coins still retain the milled edge. It’s all for decoration. You’ve probably noticed that pennies and nickels have smooth edges. Clipping these coins was not worth the trouble because the metals were so cheap. The penny and dime are so close in size that a blind person might find it difficult to distinguish them. The milled edge on the dime gives its value away.

Science fiction movies have always done well at the box office. Probably the most noteworthy is The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), adapted from the 1940 short story "Farewell to the Master" written by Harry Bates. Like so many movies of the era, their storylines were often set against the backdrop of the Cold War. The Day the Earth Stood Still is no exception. But there is another element that is often missed by moviegoers. There's a great deal of religion mixed in. Probably the most overt example can be found in the Star Wars movies and its use of the Force. George Lucas admitted that he "put the Force into the movie in order to try to awaken a certain kind of spirituality in young people. . . . I think there is a God. What that God is and what we know about God, I'm not sure." There's a more subtle expression of religion in The Day the Earth Stood Still in addition to Klaatu's stated belief in "the Almighty Spirit":

Scriptwriter Edmund H. North transformed the alien emissary Klaatu into a Christ-figure, implying that extra-terrestrials would be the true saviors of mankind. He did this in a subtle manner, having Klaatu adopt the earth name Carpenter and through the alien’s death and resurrection.

North considered it his "private little joke" hoping "the Christ comparison would be subliminal." So the next time you sit down to watch Michael Rennie, Patricia Neal, and Billy Gray, who played "Bud" in Father Knows Best, see how many New Testament, Christ-like allusions you can find in The Day the Earth Stood Still.

John Adams, our second president, and Thomas Jefferson, our third, both died on the same day. These two former presidents died on July 4, 1826, on the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Both Jefferson and Adams along with Benjamin Franklin were on the committee that helped draft the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson and Adams, who had worked together in the cause of independence, became bitter political enemies. They differed on nearly every issue and became opponents in the presidential race of 1800 where Jefferson defeated Adams who was running for a second term. The two men reconciled their differences during retirement and became close friends. These two Founding Fathers died within a few hours of each other on this day 180 years ago.

July 3, 2006 – The Forgotten History of Superman

The history of Superman has a number of twists and turns. The Superman character was conceived by Jerry Siegel in 1933. Along with his friend Joe Schuster, the two seventeen-year-olds from Cleveland, Ohio, developed the character in comic strip form. The Superman storyline is said to be an amalgamation of Voltaire’s 1752 tale Micromegas, about a visitor from another world, elements of comic hero Doc Savage, Philip Wylie’s 1930 Gladiator novel, and even the biblical story of Moses being placed in a basket to be saved from sure destruction. Of course, there are messianic overtones. Kal-El, the only son of Jor-El, is sent to a world in need of salvation.

El is the Hebrew word for “God.” That would make Kal-El the son of Jor-El, the son of El or the son of God. I’m just thinking out loud. Did these two Jewish teenagers self-consciously model their superhero after biblical ideals of the transcendent becoming immanent? Siegel described Superman as “a character like Samson, Hercules and all the strong men I ever heard of rolled into one.”

Siegel and Schuster were paid $130 for all the rights to the comic and character. For years, they sued DC (Detective Comics) to participate in the financial windfall of their believed character, but with no success. It wasn’t until the first Superman movie came out that Siegel and Schuster were able to strike a deal with DC. They took their plight to the press. It was bad publicity that forced DC to sit down with the originators of Superman, who were nearly 60 years old, to reach a financial settlement.