History Highlights

Week of December 9
Almost two years into the war that President Lincoln declared upon his own people in order to constrain the southern states to remain in the union…

Week of November 25
“I will sing of the Lord’s great love forever” declared the psalmist, “with my mouth I will make your faithfulness known through all generations.” It is a duty to give thanks to the Lord…

Week of November 18
At the height of America’s Gilded Age, Hiram Bingham III—American paragon of self-made academic prowess and explorational accomplishment…

Week of November 11
Also known as Remembrance Day, and observed as such by countries across the globe, the eleventh of November marks the anniversary of the ceasing of hostilities between the Allied and…

Week of November 18
A mere sixteen years after the Mayflower deposited her few intrepid passengers on the wild and barren shores of Plymouth Harbor, the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay…

Week of October 21
Due in part to our rich heritage of blended cultures and our abundance of exceptional characters, along with the distinctly public method of our electoral process, America…

Week of September 23
In the late 1500s, Reformation was sweeping across Europe and the grand colonizing nations of the old world were at odds with each other over matters religious and…

Week of September 16
The clash of Union and Confederate armies at the small Appalachian town of Chickamauga was one of the costliest engagements of the American Civil War with 125,000…

Week of September 9
A little over a century ago, Polish novelist Henryk Sienkiewicz (pronounced sane-KAY-vitch) stood apart as an international literary phenomenon when he accepted his…

Week of September 2
On this day, while on holiday in Scotland with her family, aspiring naturalist Beatrix Potter penned a note to cheer the son of a friend, a little lad who had been confined…

Week of August 26
As the American War for Independence drew to a close, with the battle of Yorktown being a decisive victory the previous year, a young luminary of the conflict rose from his deathbed…

Week of August 19
On August 19, 1812, an American legend was forged into being when the United States frigate, USS Constitution, met and defeated the British…

Week of August 12
On the 12th of August, 1919, esteemed statesman and Senate Majority Leader, Henry Cabot Lodge, rose to his feet on the floor…

Week of August 5
Britain in the six hundreds was a war-torn place. Gone were the days of Roman governance and provincial stability in previous centuries; here and now…

Week of July 29
On a blisteringly hot day in Philadelphia, after weeks of pleading and making…

Week of July 1
Perhaps the largest battle ever fought on English soil took place two years into England’s bloody Civil War. There the King of England, Charles I...

Week of June 3
Amongst the largely futile clamor that marked the early half of the Second Continental Congress, there rose to his feet the leading delegate...

Week of May 27
In his book The Man Who Presumed, Byron Farwell records that former Confederate soldier turned journalist-explorer, Henry Morton Stanley, upon meeting David Livingstone in...

Week of May 20
This summer, Landmark Events will be embarking on a tour of the old kingdom of Northumbria, a land once encompassing northern England and southern Scotland, with strategic...

Week of May 6
The first year of the First World War was markedly contained in the neutral American mind. While Europe and her various colonies all became embroiled against each other in accordance with...

Week of April 29
On April 29, 1945, the greatest mercy operation of the Second World War began, although initially it had all the marks of a suicide mission, the...

Week of April 22
In the late 1400s, the country we now call Italy was divided into many states and governed each by their own rulers. In the north, Milan’s form of...

Week of April 8
One hundred twelve years ago, the luxury ocean liner RMS Titanic struck an iceberg and began to sink. In the three short hours before she was submerged, her enduring legacy of heroism and....

Week of April 1
On this day in 1918, Britain’s Royal Air Force was created by Winston Churchill. It is now considered the oldest independent flying force in the world. They were spawned from the existing...

Week of March 25
Since the overthrow of the infamous Macbeth’s usurpation, Scotland’s rightful kings were crowned by a member of the clan MacDuff....

Week of March 18
Once upon a time in Jamestown, Virginia, during the days of King James I when America was yet a wilderness, an Indian Princess was traded for a...

Week of March 11
It was in the reign of Tiberius Caesar that our Lord Jesus Christ was crucified, and what an imposing reign it was. He was born the first son of Tiberius Nero, an acclaimed Roman General,...

Week of March 4
When looking back at our nation’s road to independence, there were a number of inciting incidents considered to be formative in setting the tone for the manner in which such an...

Week of February 26
There was a time not so long ago in this country where, if a woman or child found themselves in less than ideal surroundings, they might look around...

Week of February 19
Seventy-nine years ago, the battle for Iwo Jima began in the Pacific Theatre during World War II. It was fought during the last year of the war and the final push for victory extracted a brutal toll...

Week of February 11
In times of persecution, many of our heroes of the faith proved they were men of perseverance, men who mounted eloquent apologetics, who defended the innocent from slaughter...

Week of February 4
The reign of King Edward I of England was made notable and is recalled for many things. His nicknames—those of “Longshanks” and “Hammer...

Week of January 28
Writer of the preamble to our constitution, leading patriot of our revolution, esteemed member of the Continental Congress, wartime...

Week of January 21
On this date, all over the globe, in royal grandeur and in humbler abodes, “Burns Night” is celebrated. Toasts are drunk, verses recited, odes offered to the famed haggis, and...

Week of January 14
An Oxford Don possessing great academic prowess and enjoying the perks of royal patronage—the “Morning Star of the...

Week of January 7
On January 8, 1948, having been condemned to death for treason against her country, Madame Anna “Ans” van Dijk made a final appeal for...

Week of December 31
With this inauspicious summary of the state of things, so began the diary of Samuel Pepys who would, in an astounding twist of providence, prove our greatest contemporary...

Week of December 24
Entering 2024, we will soon mark the 110th anniversary of the commencement of the First World War—“the war to end all wars”. In 1914 the nations of Europe collectively...

Week of December 17
The year was 1898; war with Spain loomed on the horizon. William McKinley, the last Union Civil War veteran elected to the presidency,...

Week of November 26
On a late Indian Summer’s day, the crippled Confederacy gave its last valiant gasp when 33,000 brave southern men and boys charged the Union...

Week of November 5
Particular national images resonate through the years, becoming iconic symbols with great meaning in popular culture...

Week of October 29
Some historians, theologians and insurance companies of the past attributed “natural disasters” to God’s control over His creation...

Week of October 22
The colony and state of Virginia was the birthplace of nine Presidents. Seven were Tidewater or Piedmont Planters, one was a...

Week of October 15
According to Christian historian Paul Johnson, the ideas of four men shaped the intellectual world of the 20th, and now 21st, centuries:...

Week of October 1
God ceased direct and written revelation in the era between the Old Testament and the New Testament, but He did not stop His providential....

Week of September 24
John Marshall was one of the most important men of his age or any age: soldier, lawyer, statesman, diplomat, congressman, secretary of state, and...

Week of September 17
The German Augustinian friar and theologian Martin Luther, upset over the sale of indulgences, tacked his 95 complaints against the Catholic Church on...

Week of September 10
The American cause in the War for Independence had gotten a life-saving boost in the victories George Washington scored over the British army in the Christmas surprise at Trenton and the...

Week of September 3
Islamic countries, especially the Arab nations, have never accepted the State of Israel as a legitimate member of the family of nations. Israel has fought and won eight recognized separate wars since 1948...

Week of August 27
Every state is allowed to install two memorial state representative images in Statuary Hall in the United States Capitol. In 1953 the State of Washington set up a beautiful bronze statue of a frontiersman in...

Week of August 20
On August 18, 2019, reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones of The New York Times Magazine launched a revolutionary program to rewrite American...

Week of August 13
The Mughal Empire ruled most of the Indian subcontinent, Afghanistan, and modern Pakistan and Bangladesh for about 200 years. In...

Week of August 6
Adults and children alike complain that history teachers force students to memorize dates and the events therein associated, which “just turn the pupils away from learning history.” They assume...

Week of June 18
The Cherokee Nation is the largest Native American tribe. They lived for most of their known history in the Western Carolinas, North Georgia, Alabama,...

Week of June 11
The Presidency of Andrew Jackson changed the direction of American history in significant ways, so much so that his ascendancy has been called “The Age of...

Week of June 4
In past centuries, fathers wanted their sons to succeed and prosper. They hoped that their children would exceed their own accomplishments and, subsequently,...

Week of May 28
During the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901), England’s control of the world’s land surface equaled between 20-25%, and, by 1919, British soldiers had accumulatively through history...

Week of May 21
On May 24, 1607, Captain Christopher Newport sailed his ship the Susan Constant and her companion vessels, the Godspeed...

Week of May 14
One hundred ten years ago Henry Flagler died. Outside of Florida, few Americans recognize his name. In his own day he was often mentioned in the same breath with John D. Rockefeller, Andrew...

Week of April 30
Two hundred twenty years ago this week the French flag was lowered and replaced by an American flag in New Orleans, the...

Week of April 23
The military campaign in Gallipoli, in 1915, is little known or remembered in the United States. The U.S. did not join the 1914-1918 War until two...

Week of April 16
There are several famous horseback rides in American history, not counting at racetracks. Delegate Caesar Rodney made a midnight ride from...

Week of April 9
April 12, 1861 the United States Navy tried to resupply Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. The State of South Carolina claimed...

Week of April 2
The month of April being Confederate History Month, at least in Shenandoah County, Virginia, we would do well to remember the battle that shattered the preconceptions of...

Week of March 26
In 1887 France added Vietnam to its imperial properties and put its own unique stamp on what became known as ...

Week of March 19
For more than two hundred years, the House of Canmore, eight kings in succession, had ruled Scotland. In 1285, King Alexander III wed a...

Week of March 12
The Protestant Reformation produced two different approaches to worship among those who left the Roman Church. The “Calvinistic” Reformation sought a return...

Week of February 26
At the beginning of the 21st Century, American historian Arthur Herman published a book entitled How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western...

Week of February 12
Upon the “Restoration” of King Charles II to the English monarchy in 1660, after the Commonwealth period of Oliver Cromwell, the persecution of...

Week of February 5
For more than a century, the literary world proclaimed Charles Dickens the greatest novelist in the English language. With the deconstruction of literary standards and the moral turpitude that...

Week of January 29
Upon the death of Queen Elizabeth I, the Tudor line of the English monarchy came to an end, and the Stuart family of Scotland inherited the English throne; James VI, Elizabeth’s first cousin...

Week of December 18
The year 1838 was auspicious in the life of John Hunt. In February he met two missionaries to the Islands of Fiji in the Pacific Ocean and heard of the rampant cannibalism there...

Week of December 11
Norwegian explorer Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen lived almost at the other end of the world. He defied the predictions that he would end...

Week of December 4
Scholasticism is the term given to the theology of the Middle Ages (c.500-1500 AD). The Schoolmen “collected, analyzed and systematized" the...

Week of November 27
In war there are a million ways to die. Occasionally someone, by the providence of God, survives what killed almost 100% of men caught in the same situation. A Wisconsin farm boy, eager to enlist...

Week of November 20
Several Russian novelists produced works that appear on almost every list of “the greatest novels ever written;” Count Lev Nickolayevich Tolstoy usually sits atop that list. On November 20, 1910...

Week of November 13
If Christians paid more attention to history and genealogy, they might find godly lines of many generations in their own past...

Week of November 6
The Great Lakes contain 21% of the world’s fresh water by volume—more than 94,000 square miles of surface. Lakes Superior...

Week of April 10
Several of the greatest preachers, evangelists and theologians of the Protestant Reformation were born in France, often writing in French as well as Latin. They pastored churches in France…

Week of January 2
If ever there was an international city in America, New Orleans was it. The city was founded by the French Mississippi Company in 1718, ceded to Spain as a result of the French and Indian War...

One hundred nine years ago tonight, RMS Titanic struck an iceberg and, in less than three short hours before she sank, her enduring legacy of heroism and hubris was cemented in history.

Week of March 7
In the year 1748, twenty-three-year-old English seaman John Newton recorded that “on March 10th, the Lord came from on high and delivered me out of deep waters.” Preacher John Wesley was...

Week of November 22
The Protestant Reformation in the 16th Century changed the music used in the worship of God. No longer the sole provenance of choirs or professional singers, the congregation began singing in...

Week of November 8
Once the Protestant Reformation of the 16th Century had swept across Europe, various countries were able to stabilize their borders and establish their new-found faith, although political...

Graduates accepting their diplomas at the University of St. Andrews are whacked with the “pant-leg of John Knox.” I once asked a student the day after his graduation if he knew who John Knox was.

Week of October 23
The birth of Theodore Roosevelt on October 27, 1858 presaged by one week the first ever capture of a branch of the federal government by the...

Week of December 13
The creation of the American Republic under the Constitution of the United States, in 1787, came into being through extremely contentious debates and competing visions of the place of a central...

Week of December 20
The roll of Christian martyrs extends back in time to the days following the resurrection of Our Lord. It continues daily in many far-flung nations of the earth. Jesus Himself told the Apostles to expect...

Week of December 27
The First World War shattered, for many intellectuals, what remained of the philosophical and theological presuppositions that had undergirded Western Civilization for centuries...

Week of December 12
In 1868 at Fort Laramie, in Goshen County, Wyoming, the United States Government signed a treaty with the Sioux Nation, wherein the Sioux agreed to accept all the...

Week of December 19
One of the most massive engineering projects in history took place from its formal and legal authorization...

Week of December 26
Rudyard Kipling published eleven novels and hundreds of poems, short stories, and newspaper articles between 1881 until his death...

Week of September 4
West Africa has long been known as “the white man’s graveyard,” and for obvious and deadly reasons—fatal tropical diseases have plagued Europeans along those coasts for five hundred...

Week of September 11
Sir Winston Churchill, MP (1620-1688) fathered eleven legitimate children, fought for Charles I in the English Civil War, paid a huge fine for serving on...

Week of September 18
Americans tend to ignore Japan as a nation, even less the men who have served there as Prime Minister in the post-WWII era. Unless a tsunami...

Week of September 25
“I would affirm that much of the modern approach to evangelism, with its techniques and methods, is unnecessary if we really believe...

Week of October 2
Following the American War Between the States, the United States government reorganized the army after demobilizing a million men. In 1866...

Week of October 16
Few battles in history had larger repercussions than the Siege of Yorktown, Virginia, concluded on October 19, 1781. An army, representing thirteen...