The United States started life as colonies strung along the Atlantic seaboard of the North American continent and barely extending 50 miles inland. By the time of the Declaration of Independence, these original 13 colonies occupied an area roughly one-tenth of today’s country. Over the next 200 years, the United States great to fill the massive continent to the Pacific coast. Who were the Presidents who […]
Monthly Archives: April 2013
Scotland’s independent colonial adventures were devastating failures that ultimately led to the country becoming the junior partner in the United Kingdom. Why were Scots so drawn to central America, and why were their schemes so unsuccessful? There was something about the steamy isthmus of central America that attracted Scottish adventurers. With its tropical jungles, exotic plants and animals, searing temperatures and debilitating diseases, it was as […]
A wonderful paradise on the Isthmus of Panama
If you were fabulously wealthy and fashionable in the 16th and 17th centuries you might demonstrate your power and influence by building a grand house. Hundreds were built across England, serving the landed aspirations of a burgeoning nobility. But a handful had a design concept that was quite unique – these are the ‘calendar houses’, built according to numerological principles to represent the days, weeks or […]
Calendar houses
The United States of America has only officially declared war on five occasions in over two centuries of its existence. Formal declarations were made by Congress in 1812, 1846, 1898, 1917 and 1941. So does this mean the US has spent most of its history at peace? And what about the Korean, Vietnam, Gulf, Iraqi and Afghanistan wars? Under Article One of Section Eight of the […]
America’s official wars
If you travel to south Wales by train roughly ten miles north of Bristol you will plunge into darkness and enter the Severn Tunnel. Seven kilometres later, you will emerge into the light and over the border into Wales. The tunnel was built by the Great Western Railway between 1873 and 1886 and was, for many years, the UK’s longest mainline railway tunnel. I had never […]