By Michael Lederer

His­to­ry nev­er crawls or walks. It runs. Some­times silent­ly as if on the soft­er sands of time. Some­times we can hear its foot­steps loud­er as they hit the hot pavement.

As I write this on Jan­u­ary 19, 2017, Barack Oba­ma is still the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States. But only just. Great Britain is still a mem­ber of the Euro­pean Union. But only just. And after the painful lessons of the 20^th cen­tu­ry, nation­al­ism is still a sleep­ing giant. But only just. The giant is waking.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 to the vote for Brex­it in 2016, Europe and the Unit­ed States have known over a quar­ter cen­tu­ry of rel­a­tive peace. No wars, hot or cold. Some excep­tions: Sara­je­vo, Sre­breni­ca, 9/11. But for the most part, some 10,000 morn­ings, after­noons, and evenings have unfold­ed in secure calm. But as in the eye of a storm, calm can be decep­tive. And tem­po­rary. Read more »

By Roger Nichols

Every­one read­ing this blog has seen mon­u­ments to his­tor­i­cal events or nation­al heroes. But how many of you have seen a memo­r­i­al to a mass hang­ing? Out­side the movies or TV, few peo­ple today have ever seen a pub­lic hang­ing. That was not true a hun­dred years ago when crim­i­nals’ lives often end­ed at the end of a noose. The largest pub­lic hang­ing in Amer­i­can his­to­ry took place on Decem­ber 26, 1862, in Manka­to, Min­neso­ta. That day, fed­er­al troops exe­cut­ed 38 Dako­ta Sioux Indi­ans for their part in the Min­neso­ta Sioux War that had just end­ed. By some accounts, up to 4,000 whites jammed the town square or sat atop near­by build­ings to watch the mass exe­cu­tion. The crowd cheered loud­ly when the trap­doors opened and all 38 men hung at the end of the ropes. Why not take a few min­utes to find out why this grue­some spec­ta­cle hap­pened 134 years ago and how the city of Manka­to – often asso­ci­at­ed with the Lit­tle House on the Prairie TV series – has dealt with this lega­cy? Read more »