Tagged: history

Margaret Thatcher, the first and only woman prime minister of Great Britain, left a personal style and political legacy that will be debated for years to come. Like her American ally and friend, Ronald Reagan, she took power at a time when her nation was seen by many to be in economic and international decline.

Professor Roy Ginsberg, chair of the department of government at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York, spoke today with WAMC’s Brian Shields on the Thatcher-Reagan alliance.

    In more than a century of vampires in pop culture, only one lord of the night truly stands out: Dracula. Though the name may conjure up images of Bela Lugosi lurking about in a cape and white pancake makeup in the iconic 1931 film, the character of Dracula—a powerful, evil Transylvanian aristocrat who slaughters repressed Victorians on a trip to London—was created in Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel of the same name, a work so popular it has spawned limitless reinventions in books and film.

But where did literature’s undead icon come from?

    In modern memory, Winston Churchill remains the man with the cigar and the equanimity among the ruins. Few can remember that at the age of 40, he was considered washed up, his best days behind him.

    On Friday, the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park, New York kicked off their "100 Days" Countdown to the public opening of the Roosevelt Library's new permanent museum exhibits on June 30th. Today marks 97 days.

These exhibits will tell the story of the Roosevelt presidency beginning in the depths of the Great Depression and continuing through the New Deal years and World War II with an emphasis on both Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt’s relationship with the American people. Special interactives, immersive audio‐visual theaters, and rarely seen artifacts will convey the dramatic story of the Roosevelt era as the Roosevelt Library brings a New Deal to a New Generation.

To help us countdown, we welcome Lynn Bassanese, Director of the FDR Presidential Library and Museum and Felica Wong, President and CEO of the Roosevelt Institute.

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) — The Connecticut Historical Society has purchased a collection of letters written in the 1830s and 1840s by a woman describing the lives of the African captives from the slave ship Amistad.

The society paid $66,000 Tuesday for the letters written by Charlotte Cowles, whose abolitionist family took in one of the former Amistad captives.

Cowles described a captive showing her where she was burned on her shoulder with a red-hot pipe in Africa and her interactions with the leader of the captives.