Sublime
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Shortly before the Hammonds’ arrival the building’s East Portico had been the scene of an assassination attempt against President Andrew Jackson. The assailant was named Richard Lawrence, who believed himself to be England’s long-dead King Richard III and claimed that Jackson had interfered with the delivery of payments long owed to him by the
... See moreErik Larson • The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War
In 1857, Scientific American specified the minimum machinery for a one-hundred-acre farm as “a combined reaper and mower, a horse rake, a seed planter and a mower, a thresher and grain cleaner; portable grist mill, a corn sheller, a horse power, three harrows, roller, [and] two cultivators . . .” But it’s much harder to relate Armory mechanization
... See moreCharles R. Morris • The Tycoons: How Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J. P. Morgan Invented the American Supereconomy
In March 1794 Congress approved a proposal, backed by Washington and Knox, to build six frigates “adequate for the protection of the commerce of the U.S. against Algerian corsairs.”16 This action officially inaugurated the U.S. Navy, although it would take four more years before a separate Navy Department was born. While the six frigates
... See moreRon Chernow • Washington

These prisoners were men from the Decima Flottiglia Mezzi d’Assalto (10a Flottiglia MAS, or the Italian ‘Tenth Light Flotilla Assault Craft’) whose activities would later occupy Ian Fleming’s intelligence commandos. Italy’s most original contribution to the technology of the Second World War was sub-aqua, pioneering midget submarines and producing
... See moreNicholas Rankin • Ian Fleming's Commandos
On November 24, the day the battle for Tarawa ended, Turner’s staff forwarded a training syllabus to Lieutenant Thomas Crist, the commanding officer of the coral-blasting Seabee unit back in Hawaii, calling for the creation of two provisional units capable of dealing with underwater obstacles—something called the “underwater demolition teams,” or
... See moreBenjamin H. Milligan • By Water Beneath the Walls
Aspinwall, with the help of a generous government franchise to carry the mail to California, had established steamship lines to and from Panama on both oceans. So except for the land barrier at Panama he could provide through steamer passage from New York to San Francisco. The railroad, then, was to be the vital land link in the system—in a grand,
... See moreDavid McCullough • Brave Companions
the presence of leaders and commanders of the Haganah. Suddenly, a currier arrived on a motorcycle with a message from Ben-Gurion, who ordered them to cancel the operation in order not to provoke the British government on the eve of their departure from Palestine (113). From 1947 to 1948, Uzi Sharon improved his “Sharks” with the help of HEMED
... See moreUriel Bachrach • The Power of Knowledge - HEMED
Right before the Princeton battle, Washington informed Philadelphia financier Robert Morris that “we have the greatest occasion at present for hard money to pay a certain set of people who are of particular use to us . . . Silver would be most convenient.” 19 Washington considered Morris, a huge man with a ruddy complexion and a genial personality,
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