Random Learnings #32
On my way to Chicagoland for my nephew's college graduation, I stopped at the Illinois Railway Museum - highly recommended, I'll write up my visit soon - and picked up…
Random Learnings #31
Unlike Woodrow Wilson, a Princeton professor with a PhD in political science, Truman had no abstract theories about the office. (In fact, he was the last occupant of the White…
Random Learnings #30
I have read many - too many - books, articles, scholarly papers, etc., about the anti-Semitism faced by Holocaust survivors faced returning home, especially in Eastern Europe. By a large…
Random Learnings #29
The last Shah of Iran, Shah Reza Pahlavi, was a huge Rangers fan: The diplomats pressed for yet more royal visits, ideally with the shah comping to Britain again. The…
Random Learnings #12 FOLLOWUP
Original post: https://scottsosna.com/2023/09/26/random-learnings-12/ According to this nytimes.com article, (paywall, a different free version here) a bill may be introduced in California's state assembly to give reparations to families of people…
Random Learnings #25
I recently finished reading Ken Follett's Edge of Eternity, Book Three of The Century Trilogy - I read the first two books, Fall of Giants and Winter of the World,…
Random Learnings #23
From the review of the book Socialism vs Capitalism by Boris L. Brasol in the New York Times, Sunday, November 21, 1920: ...Mr. Brasol wrote under fear that Bolshevism was…
Random Learnings #17
I occasionally go to the University of Minnesota's Wilson Library to view microfilms of old newspapers. Today, I was reading about Queen Victoria's death in January 1901 and stumbled across…
Tollbooth Nostalgia
My first memories of highway driving are of my parents throwing us three kids into our (their) VW Bug and driving from NYC to Connecticut to visit the grandparents: take…