The Brookes of Brunei May 31, 2017PermalinkzanspaceToday's AMITBritish History, Colonialism, SE Asia By a combination of daring and benevolent despotism, the Brooke family helped bring the Sultanate of Brunei into the modern era. Read more →
Thomas Eagleton May 28, 2017PermalinkNancy WaldoToday's AMITAmerican History, American Politics Lead: In the summer of 1972 Senator Thomas Eagleton became the first U.S. Vice-presidential nominee to withdraw from candidacy. Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts. Content: It was going to be very difficult for George McGovern to win anyway. President Nixon popularity was soaring. The struggle for the nomination had been long and bitter and the liberal Senator from South Dakota had had little time to devote to the selection of a running mate. With the Miami convention vote locked up on July 12th, exhausted McGovern staffers began the search. Senators Kennedy, Mondale, Bayh, and Nelson were asked but most, sensing a doomed candidacy, found a reason to refused. Even CBS News anchorman Walter Cronkite was considered and at the last minute Tom Eagleton, the little known junior Senator from Missouri, was added to the short list. In the course of a short check of his background, McGovern’s aids learned Eagleton had been hospitalized for “fatigue and exhaustion” following one of his campaigns but an Eagleton staffer downplayed the treatment as not being serious. Such was not the case. Read more →
Anna Larina Bukharin May 19, 2017PermalinkNancy WaldoToday's AMITRussian History, Soviet History Lead: As a teenager Anna Larina fell deeply in love with Nicholai Ivanovich Bukharin, a hero of the Russian Revolution, a man twenty-six years her elder. She shared his fate at the hands of Joseph Stalin. Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts. Content: As a girl, Larina met most of the old Bolsheviks. Her father, Yuri was one of the inner circle and often in the 1920s Lenin or Stalin would dine in their apartment in the Metropole Hotel in Moscow. Bukharin lived just upstairs and soon her crush on him became evident to all around them. Once she wrote a love letter and slipped up the stairs to put it under his door. On the way she nearly ran into Stalin who was headed that way. She gave him the note to deliver. The irony of one of the twentieth century's great butchers passing romantic notes for a love-sick teenager is inescapable. Loading... Taking too long? Reload document | Open in new tab Download [70.51 KB]
Nebraska and the Homestead Act May 18, 2017PermalinkzanspaceToday's AMITAmerican History Lead: Born of the slavery controversy, the State of Nebraska enjoyed explosive growth after the Civil War in large part due to a policy made in Washington. Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts. Content: In 1854 the Congress of the United States, in response to those desiring a railroad to the Pacific Coast, an expansion in the number of states, both slave and free, and a solution to the growing number of emigrants wishing to settle in lands west of the Mississippi, passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The legislation enshrined the concept of "squatter sovereignty," and created two new territories which could choose whether they would be slave or free states. Nebraska would enter the Union in 1867 but first it had to grow a bit. The two factors that contributed to its expansion were the construction of the railroads and an Act passed by Congress during the Civil War. Read more →
Monroe Doctrine II May 14, 2017PermalinkNancy WaldoToday's AMITAmerican History, American Politics Lead: With the Monroe Doctrine, the United States placed itself across the path of to hemispheric power by the major nations of Europe. Amazingly it worked. Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts. Content: Fearful of Russian expansion in the American northwest and emboldened by a growing national enthusiasm for manifest destiny, President James Monroe issued the proclamation that came to be known as the Monroe Doctrine. Despite the youth of the American republic and its relative weakness in comparison to the great international powers, the policy was largely honored in the breach. The U.S. assertion forced Russia into negotiation and, by treaty in the next year, the Czarist regime shifted its claim and settlements back north from California into Russian America, the future Alaska. Read more →
Monroe Doctrine I May 13, 2017PermalinkNancy WaldoToday's AMITAmerican History, American Politics Lead: On December 2, 1823, James Monroe, President of the United States, asserted one of the most important and audacious foreign policy propositions in modern diplomatic history. Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts. Content: In 1724 the work of Danish navigator Vitus Joanssen Behring, long in the employ of Czar Peter the Great of Russia, began to pay rich dividends. He sailed through the strait that was to bear his name and laid claim to Russian-America, Alaska. All during the next century Russians traders and settlers established outposts and influence all down western North America. By 1812 they had reached Spanish owned Bodega Bay just north of San Francisco. When Czar Alexander I issued a renewal of imperial claims in 1821 and asserted exclusive trading rights to the northwestern coastline, alarm began to grip Washington City, capital of the infant United States, which had enjoyed independent sovereignty only about four decades. Read more →
Buddhism II May 7, 2017PermalinkSandy CreedToday's AMITAmerican History, Religion Lead: Buddhism began as a journey of withdrawal from the world, but became one of the world’s great popular religions, fully engaged in the affairs of the world. Intro: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts Content: His early life was spent in splendid isolation. Yet, when Prince Siddhartha Gautama of the Kingdom of Sakya on the border of India and Nepal first encountered the ugliness and poverty outside his palace, he renounced his luxurious lifestyle. Buddhist scriptures teach that he began a years long journey of self-denial and asceticism which brought him to nirvana, the highest level of enlightenment. He became Buddha, the enlightened one. Read more →
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