I can understand why the Hope Diamond is such a popular exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History. The magnificent 45.52-carat blue diamond—allegedly the subject of a Hindu curse that influenced the French...
It’s been a very long time—closing in on 60 years—so my memories of being a student at Hill Junior High School have faded. Some scenes remain distinct, but many others are less so; in certain cases, I have just a general impression of what it was...
In May 1959, John Lennon, Paul McCartney and junior partner George Harrison started calling themselves the Beatles. They appeared at Lennon’s art college, churches and wherever else they could plug in their equipment and play covers of the songs...
The present trip was canceled three times—Christmas 2021 (frigid weather), once in March and once in April (my gathering medical problems)—but I could no longer be deterred. On Saturday morning, I boarded a 32-seater at Express Bus Terminal and...
Starting in my college days, I read The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers, The New Journalism, The Painted Word and The Bonfire of the Vanities, and...
If you were to somehow combine Clyde Lovellette, Danny Manning, Paul Pierce, Raef LaFrentz, Nick Collison and Mario Chalmers into one super-great University of Kansas basketball player, he would still fall short of Wilton Norman Chamberlain, Esq...
Guys envied him, girls desired him, paparazzi chased him, and his death in the summer of 1999 unleashed a wave of teary encomia. As I just finished reading a bio of John F. Kennedy, Jr., I have him on my mind and wish to make a tentative...
Pleasing: Incheon International Airport. This huge facility, which opened in 2001, is among the best airports in the world in terms of cleanliness, security, low baggage mishandling rate, speed of customs processing, quality of duty-free shopping...
My friend Kevin Nietmann is a genealogical nut. He loves delving into the identity of his ancestors, going all the way back to the 18th or even the 17th century. Kevin’s hobby makes sense. As much as I read and write about history, you might...
“Regrets, I’ve had a few / But then again, too few to mention.” Those lines come from “My Way” (sung by Paul Anka, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley and Sid Vicious among others), a nostalgic review of the events of a person’s life. They apply to me...
During my final semester as a college student—fall 1975 at Stephen F. Austin State University—a friend named Andy introduced me to a rather soaring tune by British rocker Al Stewart. It was about physician, astrologer and purported seer...
People in Chicago may have been rather hyperbolic in calling it the “crime of the century.” But what a 24-year-old, pock-marked, sociopathic drifter named Richard Speck did over five hours bridging July 13 and 14, 1966 was awful enough. Carrying...
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