History

My effort to break up all the New Orleans coverage. I find this type of stuff fascinating: > When still a schoolboy the American gangster Charles (“Lucky”) Luciano noticed that some of the older Irish and Italian kids were waylaying the younger and smaller Jewish kids on their way home

Tech Central Station has run a brief history of New Orleans' origins. Kinda neat. Link [http://www.techcentralstation.com/090305A.html]. Excerpt: > The [French bank] charter also granted [John Law's] company control of Louisiana. Law reappointed Jean Baptiste LeMoyne, Sieur de Bienville, to a second term

> Frances Elliot, who traveled to Sicily in 1880-81, attended a party given to the city elite by Palermo's leading industrialist, Count Ignazio Florio. She observed: “What struck me most was the sight in the lobby of a table literally covered with all sorts of weapons, handguns,

We like quirky little history lessons of obscure subjects. This is an excellent example: > Restaurant workers in the United States make more than twenty-five billion dollars a year in tips, so it's natural that people think of the custom as quintessentially American. But it wasn'

From The Know-It-All by A.J. Jacobs, p. 284: > I've read about blues singer Robert Johnson, who died after drinking strychnine-laced whiskey in a juke joint. And Marie Blanchard, an aviation pioneer who died when her hot air balloon was set ablaze by fireworks.

> Today is the 700th anniversary [http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1554805,00.html] of Scottish hero William Wallace [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wallace] being gruesomely killed in Smithfield market in the City of London. > There are a series of memorial events

There is apparently an e-mail letter touring cyberspace that tells outlandish lies about life in the Middle Ages. It identifies the 1500s as the Middle Ages, which is ridiculous, but no matter. An expert on the Middle Ages sent us this antidote (along with a disclaimer to the effect