origin Tag

26 Mar

Posted at 11:14h in Newsletter

THE NELSON STATUES, from left we have a statute of Lord Admiral Viscount Horatio Nelson, hero of Trafalgar in London, next in Dublin before and after the bombing, and the Spire that replaced the statue. I am sorry for skipping last week, but we were traveling to Dublin for St. Patrick's Day and we were really busy. My brother told me that before I headed to Ireland for the St Patrick's Day Parade to not use my surname in Dublin as people there hated Nelson, the hero of the English. I said, "but we're Swedish Nelson's, not English." He said it...

05 Feb

Posted at 16:38h in Newsletter

I WAS ALWAYS CURIOUS ABOUT WHERE HER NAME CAME FROM, AND HOW DNA TELLS THE STORY Caryn Elaine Johnson was born in Manhattan, New York City, on November 13, 1955, the daughter of Robert James Johnson Jr. , a Baptist clergyman, and Emma Harris, a nurse, and teacher. She was raised in the public housing project, Chelsea-Elliot Houses, in NYC. She has stated that her stage forename ("Whoopi") was taken from a whoopee cushion: "When you're performing on stage, you never really have time to go into the bathroom and close the door. So if you get a little gassy, you've got...

08 Jan

Posted at 16:54h in Newsletter

GEORGE WASHINGTON AND OUR FIRST MASS INOCULATION George Washington's military genius is undisputed. Yet American independence must be partially attributed to a strategy for which history has given the infamous general little credit: his controversial medical actions. Traditionally, the Battle of Saratoga is credited with tipping the revolutionary scales. Yet the health of the Continental regulars involved in the battle was a product of the ambitious initiative Washington began earlier that year at Morristown, close on the heels of the victorious Battle of Princeton. Among the Continental regulars in the American Revolution, 90 percent of deaths were caused by disease, and...

30 Oct

Posted at 21:12h in Newsletter

WHAT I LEARNED ABOUT EUGENICS IN MY JAMESTOWN VISIT In 1924, the Virginia General Assembly enacted the Racial Integrity Act. The Act reinforced racial segregation by prohibiting interracial marriage and classifying as "white" a person "who has no trace whatsoever of any blood other than Caucasian." The Act, an outgrowth of eugenist and scientific racist propaganda, was pushed by Walter Plecker, a white supremacist, and eugenist. He held the post of registrar of the Virginia Bureau of Vital Statistics. The Racial Integrity Act required all birth certificates and marriage certificates in Virginia to include the person's race as either "white" or "colored."...

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