Current events Archives - Page 12 of 12 - Tales of Times Forgotten

Why Tearing Down Confederate Monuments Is Not “Erasing History”

In case you haven’t already heard, the United States has a lot of monuments honoring the Confederate States of America, as well as the individuals most closely associated with it, such as Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and Stonewall Jackson. According to a report by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), there are currently 780 monuments and statues across the United States honoring the Confederacy and people associated with it.

According to The Washington Post, about one in every twelve Confederate monuments is in a Union state, which is absolutely baffling when you consider that the Union actually won the war. My home state of Indiana, which was a Union state through and through, currently has several Confederate monuments. Even Massachusetts, one of the most vociferously pro-Union states, had a Confederate monument until just a few years ago.

Most people reading this are probably already well enough aware that there is a great deal of controversy over these monuments. Many people (myself included) believe these monuments should be taken down. Defenders of the monuments, however, insist that removing them is “erasing history.” In this article, I intend to show how this insistence is a form of false framing. Taking down Confederate monuments is objectively not “erasing history” at all, but rather simply refusing to glorify people who fought to defend the institution of slavery.

Should the Elgin Marbles Be Returned to Greece?

The Elgin Marbles are a collection of ancient Greek marble sculptures that originally decorated some of the ancient monuments on the Akropolis in Athens, particularly the Parthenon, but were removed in the early nineteenth century by Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin and are currently held in the British Museum in London. There have been many calls for the Elgin Marbles to be returned to Greece so they can be put on display in the Akropolis Museum in Athens along with most of the rest of the sculptures from the Parthenon. In this article, I will make the case for why I think they should.

The Origins of the Christmas Tree

Decorating Christmas trees every December is a time-honored western holiday tradition, one that almost everyone has fond memories of. According to the USA Today, in December 2017, approximately 95 million households had Christmas trees in the United States alone. Strangely, though, few people actually know where this tradition originally comes from and most people who think they know where it comes from have been misinformed. Decorating Christmas trees is not nearly as old of a tradition as many accounts would lead one to believe.

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Why Are We Still Celebrating “Columbus Day”?

October 12, 2018 marks the 526th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival on the island of San Salvador in the Bahamas in 1492. You have doubtlessly heard much about the controversy surrounding Columbus Day (which actually fell on October 8 this year), but, surprisingly, most people do not know the full reasons why so many people are opposed to it.

This is because, for over a century and half, students have been taught a thoroughly inaccurate and glamorized tale about who Columbus was and what he did. Even today as educators and activists work to disseminate the horrifying truth about Columbus, the legend remains strong. In this article, I want to debunk a few of the most popular misconceptions about Columbus and expose some of the atrocities he committed.

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Why Ancient History Matters

The College Board, the non-profit organization that owns the Advanced Placement program, recently announced that it will be entirely cutting ancient and medieval history from its A.P. World History course, the most widely taken world history class in the country. The new course will begin at the year 1450 and will only cover modern history, omitting the entire first 5,000 years of recorded history. The College Board will offer another course, called “pre-A.P. World History” which will include only ancient and medieval history; the problem is that material from this course will not be included on the A.P. test and no college credit for taking the course will be offered, so students will have little motivation to take it and schools will have little motivation to offer it. Furthermore, most public high schools will not be able to afford to offer it, because the course costs money.

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The Ancient Greeks’ Surprising Views on Weapons Regulation

After the tragic mass shooting in Las Vegas on October 1, there has been a renewal in discussion over the possibility that Congress might enact some kind of regulation on firearms to (hopefully) reduce the chances of another such shooting taking place. Obviously, the ancient Greeks did not have guns, so they could not have had “gun control” in the modern sense. Nonetheless, some people may find it surprising that the ancient Greeks actually had shockingly strict (some might even say “draconian”) restrictions on citizens bearing arms.

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The Not-So-Pagan Origins of Easter

If you have been on the internet at all around this time of year, you have no doubt at some point encountered claims that Easter is actually a pre-Christian pagan holiday and that popular modern Easter traditions such as the Easter bunny and painting Easter eggs are actually thinly-veiled pagan customs. I am here to tell you that these claims are essentially bunk. Although the holiday of Easter takes its name in English from an obscure Anglo-Saxon dawn goddess, the holiday itself is of Christian origin and there is no evidence to support the notion that popular traditions such as the Easter bunny and the painting of Easter eggs were ever pagan.

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Caesar’s Real Last Words

On 15 March 44 BC, an event happened that changed history forever: a group of over thirty conspirators led by Gaius Cassius Longinus, Marcus Junius Brutus the Younger, and Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus assassinated the Roman politician and general Gaius Julius Caesar in the Theater of Pompey. It is an assassination that has gone down as one of the most famous in history. The assassination of Julius Caesar has been the subject of countless plays, books, films, television shows, and even video games.

Partially reinforced by these takes on Caesar’s assassination in popular culture, many people mistakenly believe that Julius Caesar’s last words were, “Et tu, Brute?” which means, “And you, Brutus?” in Latin—allegedly an expression of shock and horror at Marcus Junius Brutus’s betrayal. In reality, however, the historical Julius Caesar never uttered these words; no one knows what Caesar’s real last words were, but ancient writers attribute a number of different phrases to him in the moments leading up to his death.

Debunking Popular Myths about the First Thanksgiving

Most people think that they know the story of the first Thanksgiving. The truth, though, is that much of the traditional narrative that we have all been taught about the so-called “first Thanksgiving” is historically inaccurate. Here, in this article, I debunk a few of the most popular misconceptions about the so-called “first Thanksgiving,” including when it was held, why it was held, and who was present at it.

The Bizarre Origins of the Word Idiot

The 2016 election cycle in the United States has been one of the most bitter and divisive in recent memory. Both of the candidates—Hillary Rodham Clinton (D) and Donald J. Trump (R)—are regarded as so thoroughly unlikeable in every way that many people are outright refusing to vote for either of them. If you decide not to vote in this election, though, you are an idiot. I do not necessarily mean you are unintelligent or even ignorant for that matter; I merely mean that you are an idiot.

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