Napoleon Bonaparte (1769) It was on this date, August 15, 1769, that Napoleone Buonaparte, later to become the French military leader Napoleon Bonaparte, was born in Ajaccio on the Mediterranean island of Corsica, now part of Italy. He entered a Parisian military academy and rose quickly to become one of the greatest military commanders in […]

Fidel Castro (1926) It was on this date, August 13, 1926, that Cuban revolutionist and President-for-life Fidel Castro Ruz was born in Mayari, Cuba. Educated from the first by Jesuits, Castro took a Ph.D. in law in 1945 at Colegio Belén, a Jesuit preparatory school, in Havana. After 1950, he practiced law. The Fulgencio Batista […]

Robert Green Ingersoll (1833) It was on this date, August 11, 1833, that the most eloquent advocate of Freethought, Robert Green Ingersoll, was born in Dresden, New York, the son of a Congregationalist minister. In Peoria, Illinois, he trained in the law before enlisting in the Union Army during the Civil War, where he was […]

The famous 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial was a publicity stunt that exposed the imbecility of fundamentalism.

There are in this country... a certain proportion of restless and turbulent spirits who must always have something to quarrel about with their neighbors. These people are the authors of religious revivals.

"The Supreme Being is best displayed by the fixed and unalterable order of nature." Rousseau was expelled from Geneva for "irreligion."

"In theory it is still possible to be an orthodox religious believer without being intellectually crippled in the process; but it is far from easy."

The Catholic Church has been hypocritical in its position on divorce and adultery.

A husband could beat his wife, or sell her, take all her property and her children. Down to the 19th century, women were denied the vote because the law specified only men.

It was some consolation to the survivors of the largest pogrom in human history that a Jewish state was formed on this date in 1948.