Author Archive

Ben Butler saves Washington DC

Thanks to everyone who attended yesterday’s lecture on “Lowell and the Coming of the Civil War.” While the riot in Baltimore on April 19, 1861 which cost the lives of Luther Ladd, Addison Whitney, Charles Taylor and Sumner Needham and left two dozen of their comrades in the Sixth Massachusetts…

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The Wild Bull of the Pampas

Someone who recently visited Buenos Aires sent me this photo of the burial place of the famed boxer Luis Angel Firpo in La Recoleta Cemetery. Firpo is perhaps most famous for his 1923 fight against Jack Dempsey in which he knocked Dempsey out of the ring. Dempsey returned just in…

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Catching up on the news

It’s Friday night and I have a few minutes to catch up on the news. Here are some things that caught my eye: A year or so ago the New York Times launched a hyperlocal blog covering the Fort Green neighborhood in Brooklyn. I glance at it occasionally to see…

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