Sublime

THROUGHOUT HIS extraordinary career Louis Agassiz was a man of large plans and boundless energy, a spirit emboldened by noble…

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Indeed, his knowledge of the railroad, in even the most minute detail, quickly became a matter of legend. For example, while standing on a Dakota rail siding one day, he spotted an engine numbered 94. From that recognition, Hill astounded the engineer by walking up and addressing him by name—Roberts—and noting that the engine had just been in for r

The importance of naming also extends to universities. A May/June 1999 article, ‘Overrated & Underrated’ by John Steele Gordon, in American Heritage magazine rated Elihu Yale the ‘most overrated philanthropist’ in American history, arguing that the college that became Yale University was successful largely because of the generosity of a man nam

“I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but by blood”—his last words before execution were recorded, and, as has often been noted, they were prophetic. But they were also only partly true. Certain crimes were ceased by the Civil War, but they have not been purged. Not yet. Harpers Ferry is

Petermann had become the guiding spirit behind the expedition—its primary theoretician, its éminence grise.

Ernest Shackleton, a member of Wooster Lodge 79 and Siloam Lodge 32 in Connecticut, was a pioneer Antarctic explorer. During an expedition in January, 1915, Shackleton's ship "Endurance" became locked in an ice floe. Eventually the pressure of the ice crushed the ship's hull, rendering it useless except for shelter and provisions. Shackle

William Keeling,