It was on this date, December 19, 1944, that Richard Erskine Leakey was born in Kenya to famous anthropologists, Louis and Mary Leakey. After developing an eye for wildlife photography, Leakey left high school and worked with a photographic safari company. As his half-dozen books demonstrate, Leakey is an evolutionist. Leakey wrote in his autobiography… […]

It was on this date, December 18, 1947, that Pope Pius XII, in the ninth year of his papacy, promulgated the encyclical Optatissima Pax, On Prescribing Prayers for Peace. This was timed well, for World War Two had ended just two years earlier. And Pius was the same pope, born Eugenio Pacelli, whose tepid and […]

It was on this date, December 17, that the ancient Roman version of the universal midwinter nature festival which they called Saturnalia began. The week-long festival was named in honor of Saturn, the Roman god of the sowing of the harvest, and in its earliest forms included a death ritual, commemorating winter. The holiday was […]

It was on this date, December 16, 1770, that we presume the German composer Ludwig van Beethoven was born in Bonn, although we have only the record of his baptism on 17 December. He was reared a Catholic and composed inspired sacred works such as Missa Solemnis and his immortal Choral Symphony (#9). Surely Beethoven […]

It was on this date, December 16, 1863, that American philosopher George Santayana was born in Madrid, Spain, to freethinking parents who, nonetheless, sent him to Catholic school. Perhaps best known today for his quote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” ... To read more, go to THIS LINK. Originally […]

It was on this date, December 15, 1790, that the first U.S. school of law was established at the University of Pennsylvania, after a series of lectures by James Wilson, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and a Justice of the first U.S. Supreme Court. The training and certification of legal service providers was […]

It was on this date, December 14, 1417, that Sir John Oldcastle, a leader of the Lollard religious sect, was hanged and burned in Britain. He was born in Herefordshire on an unknown date in 1378, matured as a soldier, then adopted the teachings of John Wycliffe (1324-84). Oldcastle married into nobility and served in […]

It was on this date, December 14, 1739, that French economist and industrialist Pierre Samuel Dupont de Nemours was born in Paris. The family name is chiefly remembered for the company founded by his son, but the elder Dupont influenced Adam Smith‘s ideas in the latter’s Wealth of Nations during the 1760s with his own […]

It was on this date, December 13, 1805, that the great American abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts. Apprenticed early on to a printer, he rose to become editor of several journals after becoming involved in the early fight against slavery, a socially destructive institution the churches had long ignored — when […]

It was on this date, December 13, 1545, that the Council of Trent met in the Italian border town of Trento. The Council was urged on a reluctant Pope to clean up the sewer of corruption and vice that had been the Roman Catholic Church for the preceding two centuries, and even the Catholic Encyclopedia […]