Monthly Archives: October 2013
HISTORIC CELEBRATIONS: HALLOWEEN AND THE FEAST OF BASTET
Happy Halloween! Above is one of the FEW holiday pictures for which one of our cats co-operated. His name’s Lucky. In many places, black cats are deemed unlucky, but we’re British, so to us, black cats are a symbol of good luck. Hence his name. We’ve had four full blacks over the years (the others […]
HISTORIC RADIO BROADCAST: THE WAR OF THE WORLDS
On October 30th, 1938, actor Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre Group caused a nation-wide panic with a radio broadcast of a play adapted from the science fiction novel, The War of The Worlds, by H.G. Wells. That this was just a play was clearly stated in the introduction, but close to a million of […]
HALLOWEEN BOOK REVIEW: A HALLOWE’EN TALE
This book’s very cover gives you chills. As well it should because, who hasn’t been on a lonely road like that? A road on which anything might happen on a dark night – especially if that night is Halloween. And something does happen when Olivia and her friends set off for a Halloween party and […]
MAKING HISTORY FUN: TRIVIA TRAILS
“If you don’t know history, then you don’t know anything. You are a leaf that doesn’t know it is part of a tree.” – Michael Crichton As those who live in the northern hemisphere have no doubt noticed, leaves have started to turn colour, and children everywhere are gathering them up for autumn projects. As […]
HISTORIC RUNNERS: STRATEGIC WITHDRAWALS
“He who fights and runs away, lives to fight another day.” The above saying has proven advantageous for several historical figures. You can introduce kids to this wise old adage by telling them about England’s merry monarch, Charles II, whose life wasn’t always merry. In 1646, civil war forced the teen-age heir to the English […]
HISTORY SHARE: CAT HATERS & CAT LOVERS
The world is made up of ailurophobes and ailurophiles. Ailurophobes hate and/or fear cats. The list of cat-hating historical figures includes Pope Gregory IX, Queen Elizabeth I, France’s King Henry III, Johannes Brahms, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Dwight D. Eisenhower. Ailurophiles love cats. The list of cat-loving historical figures includes Muhammad, Nostradamus, Marie Antoinette, Robert E. […]
HISTORY LURE: MAKE HISTORY SPARKLE
Kids with little interest in history can sometimes be drawn to it through something they are interested in. For girls who like jewellery, and boys who like rocks, a starting point might be birthstones. October’s is the opal, with a history that ranges from the opal mines of ancient Europe to the 1915 ‘Opal Rush’ […]
DOUBLE CELEBRATION: THANKSGIVING AND EID AL-ADHA
Happy Thanksgiving, Canada, and a Happy & Joyous Eid to all those celebrating the Festival of Sacrifice. It was in 1957 that the second Monday of October officially became Thanksgiving Day in Canada, but feasts and celebrations were held in abundance before that, and not just after the harvest. There were also thanksgiving celebrations for […]
Time Travelling With Kids 