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The Wounded Knee Massacre ended the US Indian Wars

Wounded Knee Massacre of Lakota Sioux, 1889 — Wounded Knee Massacre of the Lakota Sioux, 1889

For decades, the Lakota Sioux watched helplessly as their way of life on the American plains faded away. They’d witnessed a generation of broken treaties by the U.S. government. They’d watched as the white man came come like a flood from the East. First they came after their land, then buffalo, then gold in the Dakota Black Hills. The nomadic Lakota were now confined to small reservations. Wounded Knee would change even that.

From the earliest colonial days, contact between white European settlers and Native American tribes had been troublesome. As white settlers pushed westward, they killed or forced Native Americans off ancestral lands and onto reservations. One of the most infamous was the Cherokee Trail of Tears. The most violent conflicts in the late1800’s were known as The Indian Wars. By the end of the 1880’s, a series of brutal massacres and forced removals had reduced the native population to a fraction of what it had once been.

Reservation life was slowly destroying Native American culture as well, so some tribal leaders attempted to bolster their spiritual traditions. In 1889, a new “Ghost Dance” movement began to grow. It preached that all the bad things happening were because the tribes had abandoned their traditions and angered the gods. Ghost Dance leaders promised that the buffalo would return and the white man would be cast away, IF they performed the “Ghost Dance.”

During a solar eclipse in 1889, a shaman of the Nevada Paiute tribe named Wovoka had a vision.

He said the Great Spirit had revealed to him a bountiful land of love and peace. Wovoka founded the Ghost Dance spiritual movement. He foresaw the uniting of the remaining western tribes, the banishment of the white man, the return of the near extinct buffalo, and a lasting revival of the Native American way, in an Eden like world.

According to Wovoka, the Ghost Dance reunited the spirits of the dead with those of the living, and the collective power of these spirits would protect them in battle against the white man’s army. Dancers wore brightly colored shirts emblazoned with images of the buffalo and the eagle. They believed their “Ghost Shirts” would protect them from the white man’s bullets. It quickly spread to other Indian tribes in the west, including in the Dakotas.

Four years earlier, the infamous Battle of Little Bighorn, better known as Custer’s Last Stand, marked the beginning of the end of the Indian Wars. Nevertheless, the Ghost Dancers triggered one last wave of resistance. As the movement began to spread, white settlers grew increasingly alarmed and feared it was the prelude to yet another armed uprising.

On the reservations, Native Americans found themselves dependent on the government for food. There was widespread anxiety among the Oglala around their federal dependency. The once proud Sioux found their nomadic life destroyed, the buffalo gone, and themselves confined to reservations, dependent on unreliable US Indian Agents for their very existence.

In October 1890, Daniel Royer arrived at the Dakota Pine Ridge Reservation, home of the Oglala Lakota Sioux, as the new Indian Agent. Unfortunately, he knew next to nothing about Native Americans and in fact had an irrational fear of them. His dispatches back to Washington were full of unwarranted warnings of an imminent Sioux uprising.

In Royer’s paranoid mind, the new Ghost Dance was in fact a War Dance.

In his telegrams to Washington, he urged that troops be sent immediately. “Wild and crazy Indians are dancing in the snow,” he wrote to the Indian Affairs Commissioner in November 1890. “We need protection and we need it now! The leaders must be arrested and confined at a military post until the matter is quieted, and this should be done now!”

President Benjamin Harrison ordered the army to the southwest Dakota Territory. On the troop train was a group of newspaper reporters. The “Crisis in the Badlands” had made headlines due to rumors about the Ghost Dancers. These false stories fed a growing anxiety of another Indian War. By mid-December, both government and news reports referred to the Ghost Dancers as “Hostiles.” This news also trickled into the reservations, where the Lakotas heard of an impending troop build-up.

The troops and reporters made their way to Pine Ridge Reservation. General Nelson Miles arrived with 500 troops as part of the US Army 7th Cavalry, General Custer’s old command. He ordered the arrest of several Sioux leaders thought to be the Ghost Dance instigators, including the famous Sitting Bull.

Chief Sitting Bull had led the Sioux victory over the US 7th Cavalry at the Battle of Little Bighorn. He too embraced the Ghost Dance movement and helped spread it throughout the Sioux Nation. They would arrest the Chief at his home in Standing Rock Reservation. On December 15th, officers feared that Sitting Bull was about to flee the reservation. Police tried to arrest the Chief, but a gun fight erupted.

The famous Sioux leader was shot and killed in the melee.

At the Cheyenne River Reservation, the Miniconjou Lakotas grew nervous. Their leader, Chief Big Foot, also a Ghost Dancer, was under close observation by the military. When he heard of Sitting Bull’s death, Big Foot led his people out to seek protection at the Pine Ridge Reservation. On December 23, about 350 left their village under the cover of night and fled towards the Badlands.

Chief Big Foot was also on General Miles’ arrest list. The tribe managed to avoid the military for five days. But on December 28th, the cavalry caught up with them. A cold, bleak winter gripped the snow-covered hillsides in 1890. The Lakota were camped in their teepees near the banks of Wounded Knee Creek, which winds through the Dakota Badlands. Charged with arresting Big Foot and disarming his warriors, the Army positioned their Hotchkiss Guns (a deadly cousin of the Gatling gun) on a rise overlooking the Lakota camp.

As a bugle sounded the following morning—December 29th, 1890—American soldiers mounted their horses and entered the Lakota camp. A Medicine Man started to perform the Ghost Dance, praying loudly, “Do not fear. Let your hearts be strong. Many soldiers are about us, but their bullets cannot harm us.” He implored the heavens to scatter the soldiers like the dust as he threw dirt into the air. Both sides were tense and on high alert. Many of the warriors were dressed as Ghost Dancers.

Col. James Forsyth convened a council with Chief Big Foot and his leaders. Big Foot was racked with pneumonia and could not even stand. He sat among his warriors and powwowed with the army officers. Forsyth demanded they surrender all their firearms and told them they’d be relocated to a new camp. The order was interpreted as exile to yet another reservation, a prospect the Lakotas found intolerable.

The cavalry soldiers went teepee to teepee seizing axes, rifles and other weapons. A warrior named Black Coyote refused to surrender his rifle, hidden under a blanket, to a soldier. The two began wrestling over the gun, and in the struggle … it went off.

Within seconds, the troops launched a hail of bullets at the Lakota.

The warriors attempted to retrieve their collected weapons and returned fire. Chaos erupted as troopers fired volley after volley into the Sioux camp. The cavalry’s rifle fire was quickly complemented by the rapid-fire Hotchkiss Guns up on the hillside. Their impact was deadly as they tore the Sioux teepees into ribbons, killing the women and children huddled within.

The shouts of the soldiers and screams of their victims filled the morning air. Clouds of gun smoke blew through the camp as men, women and children scrambled for their lives. Many ran for Wounded Knee Creek only to be cut down in cross fire. Outnumbered and outgunned, the Lakota could offer little resistance. Survivors fled into the hills only to be pursued by the cavalry and killed.

When the shooting stopped and the smoke cleared, approximately 150 Sioux were lying dead in the blood-stained snow. Unarmed Chief Big Foot was among them, shot where he sat at the powwow. Young children who moments before were playing leapfrog and throwing snow, had been mowed down. In just a matter of minutes, almost half the Lakota were killed, along with 25 American soldiers. Nearly half the Sioux victims were women and children.

By midafternoon, the troops had gathered up their dead and returned to Pine Ridge. Dead soldiers were placed in a nearby Episcopal church and laid in rows underneath Christmas decorations. As the cavalry began the grim task of burying the Sioux, a winter blizzard swept in. A few days later in January, they returned to the massacre site to complete the job. Chief Big Foot was still lying in the snow, his corpse frozen where he had been shot.

A burial party dug a single large pit and dumped in the 150 now frozen bodies in the mass grave.

Others killed in the surrounding hillside were late accounted for, bringing the total to more than 250 Lakotas. Reporters observed the burial and took a series of stark photographs. The snowstorm added a cold edge to the grim scene of carnage. Their news stories carried the story of the “Battle” of Wounded Knee worldwide. US public opinion of the massacre was generally favorable. The attack effectively ended the Ghost Dance movement. In the aftermath, an official Army inquiry exonerated the 7th Cavalry of any wrong doing.

Over time though, Wounded Knee became the symbol of the inhumanity of US government policy toward Native Americans. Those Sioux were guilty of no crime and were not engaged in combat. A substantial number killed were unarmed women and children. For decades, survivors of the massacre lobbied in vain for compensation. The U.S. Army awarded 20 Medals of Honor to members of the Seventh Cavalry for their heroic roles.

Decades later, a Lakota survivor was interviewed: “I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered along the crooked gulch, as plain as when I saw them with young eyes. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody snow, and was buried in the blizzard. Our people’s dream died there as well.”

The massacre at Wounded Knee was not the last armed conflict in the US Indian Wars, but it marked its end. The remaining tribes were subdued, forced onto reservations on unwanted land, and made to assimilate into white US society. Over the 19th century, 18 million Native Americans had been reduced to about 237,000 by 1900. Since then, the Native American population has recovered somewhat. 2.9 million Americans identified as “American Indian” in the 2010 US Census.

Compared to numerous military monuments standing across the United States, today, only a small, fenced-in graveyard sits at the site of the Wounded Knee Massacre in southwest South Dakota. There you will find a small historical sign and a simple, granite monument, just 8 feet high, erected by the survivors. If you visit the crowded grandeur of nearby Mount Rushmore, be sure to drive an hour south, and pay your quiet respects at Wounded Knee as well.

For more by historical writer Paul Andrews, click BOOKS.

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Podcast: White Friday 1916 – History’s Deadliest Avalanche occurred during WWI

The deadliest avalanche in history occurred at the worst possible time in the worst possible place. A powerful avalanche killed hundreds of Austrian and Italian soldiers near Italy’s Mount Marmolada on 13 December 1916 in the middle of World War I. Over the next several weeks, more avalanches in the Alps killed an estimated 10,000 Austrian and Italian soldiers fighting Nature as well as each other. Some claim the White Friday avalanches were purposefully triggered the armies against their enemies, but we’ll never know for sure.

Graves of the victims of the White Friday Avalanche, 1916

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A Diver’s Defection, Summer Love and the Montreal Olympics

For an Audio Podcast CLICK HERE]

Sergei Nemtsanov diving at Montreal Olympics 1976 — **Sergei Nemtsanov diving at the Montreal Olympics in 1976**

In July 1976, at the Montreal Summer Olympics, 17 year old Russian diver Sergei Nemtsanov makes the gut wrenching decision to defect to Canada from Communist Soviet Union. He had won numerous Soviet diving competitions and was brought to Montreal with medal expectations. He finished only 9^th in the Men’s 10 meter Platform diving competition. As punishment for not earning a medal, his Soviet coaches angrily informed him he’d be banned from further international competitions.

The Russian coaches were always wary of a defector amongst their athletes. Now that the diving competition was over, they had restricted the entire Soviet Diving Team to their rooms in the Montreal Olympic Village. The divers would fly out to Moscow as soon as possible and not stay the remainder of the Games, OR participate in the Closing Ceremony. But Sergei had gotten a taste of western freedom while at the Olympics. The young teen realized if he wanted the same for himself, it was Now or Never. So he quietly approached friends on the Canadian diving team for help.

The Montreal Summer Games was an Olympics to remember, with the likes of Romania’s Nadia Comaneci, Sugar Ray Leonard and Bruce Jenner all winning Gold Medals. Tensions were high though as the terrible murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Summer Games in 1972 was still fresh on everyone’s minds.

Another young diver, a 16-year-old American named Greg Louganis had made a name for himself by winning the Silver Medal. Scott Cranham, a diver from the Canadian team, enlisted Louganis’ help to get the Soviet Team out of their rooms and into the cafeteria for a going away luncheon. In the midst of emotional hugs & goodbyes to new Olympic friendships, Sergei and Scott silently slipped away. They ran downstairs to a Canadian office where athletes could seek asylum. There, the exhilarated yet frightened boy declared in broken English, “I wish to defect to Canada!”

He wanted to be free of Communism, free to live as he wished, free to love who he chooses!

With wavy blond hair and teenage good looks, the affable young ‘Russian Apollo‘ instantly became a darling of the press, and an embarrassment to the Soviets. The Canadian team helped him retain 2 high-profile lawyers pro-bono, David Mathewson and Alex Peterson, to obtain a Visa extension and official entry into Canada. They secretly smuggled Sergei out of Montreal in an ambulance, and into the Toronto area in Ottawa. He stayed on Lake Muskoka at the summer house of a sympathetic Toronto businessman, John Fleming.

The Soviets launched an angry propaganda campaign, his coaches shouting to the Olympic Committee that “The United States and Canada are drugging and brainwashing Soviet athletes to defect!” The Soviet Consul declared this a kidnapping, as Sergei was still a minor at only 17. They said his lawyers were gangsters since all young Sergei truly wanted to do was return to his loving family in Mother Russia. Threats were made that all sporting relationships would be cut off between Canada and the USSR, including their beloved Ice Hockey!

Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau entered the mix stating the decision to return or stay was up to the boy alone. The Soviets were allowed one supervised opportunity to convince him to return. They falsely claimed later that Sergei was a pale statue with vacant, dilated eyes, repeating the word ‘I choose Freedom’ over and over again, like a programmed robot.

Watch Sergei dive at the Montreal Olympics – AP Video Archive – 30 July 1976

Nothing could be farther from the truth, for here is where the Wrinkle of Romance entered into the mix. Sergei told his fellow athletes he had begun falling in love with a female American diver named Carol Lindner, then 21. The complicating factor – she was the daughter of the wealthy family that owned the Cincinnati Enquirer and Thriftway Supermarkets. Sergei and Carol had met earlier that year when he came to Fort Lauderdale, Florida for an international diving meet. With an athlete for a daughter, Richard Linder invited all the divers onto his boat, allowing Sergei and Carol more time together. The pair rekindled their relationship when they met again at the Montreal Olympic Pool, meeting for several discrete rendezvous.

Carol’s father released a stern statement saying their relationship was Strictly Casual and the two NEVER discussed defection. At her father’s insistence, Carol wrote Sergei a letter, urging him not to stay due to any feelings he might have for her. Soviet coaches forced his teammates to also send him messages, reminding him of his aged and ailing grandmother waiting for him back in the USSR. His father was a military pilot and Sergei was raised by his grandmother from an early age. They sent him an audio-cassette of her pleading for Sergei to return: ‘Why are you leaving me, Sergei? I am completely alone here!‘ Separated from Carol, alone in Canada, what was he to do?

What would YOU have done? Return to family? Or stay for love and freedom?

It was much like the anxiety an Olympic diver feels during competitions. Imagine balancing on the edge of the hard platform, 10 long meters above the glistening surface of the blue pool, a thousand spectator eyes silently watching, international judges scoring you. The Canadian government wanted his lawyers to give a press conference with Sergei present. It was arranged at a Holiday Inn hotel, then Sergei got cold feet and backed out at the last minute. He was not liking how he was being portrayed by the media. Plus he had just graduated high school and could frustratingly speak but a few sentences in broken English. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), who were there to provide security, were frustrated by his absence.

**Soviet diver Sergei Nemtsanov at the Moscow Olympics**

In the end, after 19 nerve-wracking days in isolation, Sergei made the painful decision to return to Russia. The relationship with his Canadian benefactors was growing tenser by the day. The letter from Carol had left him with a broken heart. The audio-cassette of his grandmother’s pleas left him with pit of guilt in his gut. He said sad goodbyes to his new Canadian friends, and his lawyers transported him to the RCMP. They then delivered him back to his coaches at the Montreal Olympic Village. The Soviets told the press he was very tired by the ordeal and would not make any statement. To avoid the press further, within hours they put Sergei on an Aeroflot plane back to Moscow.

Needless to say, Sergei received an icy reception on his return, both from his teammates and the Soviet fans. He admitted in a statement that he was brainwashed in Canada. Only his youth and naivete allowed him to escape the humiliatingly brand of traitor. Even the long-time Soviet head coach was restricted from travel abroad as punishment. Communist Olympic officials never allowed Sergei to compete outside the Soviet Union again. But he was allowed to dive again, in the 1980 Moscow Olympics. These were the game boycotted by the USA due to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. He was now 21 and he sadly won no medals at the Moscow Games, finishing 7th. It was to be his last Olympics.

Sergei attended university in Russia, and in 1982 joined the Soviet military for a brief stint. He then moved back home to Kazakhstan and, after a short time in the Soviet military, opened an auto-repair shop. He struggled with and ultimately overcame an alcohol addiction. A decade later in 1991, after the fall of the Soviet Union, Sergei finally got his freedom. He emigrated to the USA … with his Russian wife and two young children. It was in the U.S. where his son too became a competitive collegiate diver. Today, Sergei lives a quiet life with his family in the suburbs outside of Atlanta, Georgia, as an American citizen.

For more by historical writer Paul Andrews, click BOOKS.

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The Black Hole of Calcutta’s Infamous Night of Horror

Depiction of the Black Hole of Calcutta — **Depiction of the infamous Black Hole of Calcutta**

In 18th century India, the power of the Mughal Empire lay in the despotic hands of the Nawabs, or provincial princes. At the same time, the British and French East India Companies had built competing empires on the lucrative sub-continent. The British had established a trading hub at Kolkata (Calcutta) and built Fort William to guard it from French attack. Within it lie the infamous Black Hole prison.

This British military build-up infuriated Bengals’ volatile, 23-year-old Nawab, Siraj-ud-daula, who took power in 1756. He ordered Calcutta’s British governor to immediately cease all work on the fort. When the predictable Brits ignored him, the hot-headed Nawab marched his massive army of 50,000 on Calcutta, including elephants and artillery. The governor and residents fled to armed company ships on the River Hooghly. They left behind a small garrison of only 170 English soldiers to defend Fort William.

Siraj’s attack came the morning of Sunday June 20th. John Holwell was in temporary command of the fort. He was a surgeon by training and had no military experience. He knew they were hopelessly outnumbered, and the fort was no match against 50,000 Mughal attackers. By the afternoon, the walls were about to be breached by relentless cannon fire. Howell’s options were limited. He reluctantly raised a white flag and was forced to surrender the fort. His only condition was that his men be treated fairly.

That night the Black Hole horror would occur, which would become legend.

Holwell and 145 British prisoners, including two women and all the wounded, were clustered to together in the center of the fort. The Mughal warriors then ordered every single one of them into the fort’s ‘Black Hole.’ This was the name given a single, small cell built to hold a half dozen prisoners. It measured only 18 by 15 feet. The Black Hole had but two small, barred windows near the ceiling of one wall. Still the Mughal soldiers, using their scimitars and own bodies, managed to somehow squeeze ALL 145 prisoners into the single cell. Holwell shouted his objections, but it fell on deaf ears. They then slammed and locked the wooden door behind them.

A depiction of the Black Hole of Calcutta

The heat of an Indian summer is suffocating, even at night, reaching up to 40C/104F. Conditions were so tightly packed the men could barely breath. They could not sit or lie down. The prisoners shoved and trampled each other just to get near the only fresh air – those 2 small windows against one wall. John Howell could do little to maintain order. They fought over the small cups of water they were handed by the soldiers through the window’s bars. The prisoners pleaded for mercy from their indifferent guards, who laughed and jeered while they screamed out in agony. Those who fell underfoot were trampled and quickly died.

They were the lucky ones. The British prisoners were left in the Black Hole to suffer in the oppressive heat. They gasped for fresh air, sucking the perspiration from their own shirts or resorting to drinking their own urine by hand. Holwell finally lost consciousness. As the night progressed, the cries of the pitiful prisoners slowly quieted, then finally ceased as man after man died.

The next morning, the door was finally unbarred. The guards discovered 122 steaming corpses, still standing as they were packed too tight to fall to the ground.

Only 23 of the 145 prisoners survived the hellish night in the Black Hole.

The rest had died throughout the long night from a mixture of suffocation, trampling, or dehydration. Howell was one of the miraculous survivors. The Mughal soldiers dug a large pit for the dead outside the fort. The bodies were dumped unceremoniously into a mass grave. The Nawab later claimed to have had no knowledge of the inhumane incarceration. He said the guards were all to blame. Few would later believe him. John Holwell claims to have seen Siraj-ud-daula himself at the Black Hole’s window, jeering in satisfaction.

British vengeance was swift. When news of the ‘Black Hole’ reached London months later, a rescue expedition led by Colonel Robert Clive was immediately dispatched. They arrived in Bengal by October and found the remnants of the East India Company encamped on the river bank downstream. Clive wasted no time marching his men on Calcutta. He set siege to the Mughals at Fort William, which he bombarded from a fleet of warships in the River Hooghly.

The fort fell to the British after a relentless siege, with the Mughals retreating.

But Robert Clive, a war hero from his last Indian campaign, was not finished with his vengeance. He listened to Holwell’s tale of the Black Hole with simmering anger. He intended to secure Bengal for Britain once and for all. In June 1757, with an army of a mere 3,000 men, Clive marched inland to the Bengal capital at Plassey. Though vastly outnumbered, they defeated the Nawab’s army of 50,000 with their 500 war-elephants and artillery. Siraj-ud-daula fled the battlefield with his entourage to his capital Murshidabad. There he was killed by his own people for desertion.

Mughal Prince Siraj-ud-Daula and Dr. John Zephaniah Holwell

John Holwell later described in great detail the horrors of that night in: A Genuine Narrative of the Deplorable Deaths of the English Gentlemen, who were Suffocated in the Black Hole. Holwell’s tale caused an uproar in Britain. The story inspired patriotic fervor in the United Kingdom and rage at the Indian Mughals. Clive had this to say of his victory over the Mughal army at Plassey:

“There will be less difficulty, as the natives themselves have no attachment whatever to their princes. As they have no security, they would rejoice in so happy an exchange as that of a mild despotic government.”
Colonel Robert Clive

The Black Hole set into motion events that would have a profound impact for India. Colonel Clive’s victory over the Mughals at the Battle of Plassey was the start of absolute British colonial rule in India from Kolkata to Delhi to Mumbai. India became a part of the British Empire. The subjugation of the Indian people would last uninterrupted for nearly 200 hundred years.

That is, until Mohandas ‘Mahatma’ Gandhi. He inspired a non-violent Indian independence movement against Britain. It finally succeeded in 1947 when an independent Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan were proclaimed. The Black Hole itself was destroyed when Fort William was raised by the British for a new mightier Fort William in 1781. A 50 ft. memorial obelisk was erected in 1901 for the victims of the Black Hole. It stands in the quiet cemetery of St. Johns Church in Kolkata.

For more by historical writer Paul Andrews, click BOOKS.

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Podcast: Australia began as a Penal Colony 230 Years Ago

It is no longer a well-hidden fact, nor even a national embarrassment, that Australia was originally founded as the Botany Bay Penal Colony in the late 18^th century. Botany Bay is an inlet on the eastern coast of Australia, just south of Sydney. But how exactly did an entire continent come to be settled by thousands of British convicts sent into exile?

Botany Bay Penal Colony, Australia — Founding of the Botany Bay Penal Colony in Australia

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President Andrew Jackson was the Founding Fathers’ Donald Trump

**Portrait of Andrew Jackson hanging in the White House**

U.S. President Andrew Jackson certainly had a background tailor-made to be a life long politician. And he certainly was a bombastic, shrewd and seasoned one. But what did “Old Hickory” do to earn the right to be on the U.S. twenty-dollar bill? Born in the Carolina wilderness, he was a true son of the American Revolution. His quiet frontier life changed forever when the British Redcoats invaded in 1780.

At only 14, he volunteered in the local militia, serving as a rebel courier. Captured once by the British, the boy brazenly refused to shine a Redcoat officer’s boots. The red-faced officer drew his saber and struck him across the cheek, leaving a permanent scar. Such hot-headedness would get Jackson into many fights. Tall and wiry, with fiery red hair and ice blue eyes, he certainly looked the part of a loose cannon.

After the war, Jackson decided to become a lawyer and moved to Nashville in the Tennessee territory to practice law. There he met and married Rachel Robards, a young woman who was leaving a very troubled marriage. To his shock, he later learned her divorce had never been finalized! It was a scandalous detail that would hound him the rest of his public life.

The press accused Rachel of bigamy and Jackson of adultery.

Jackson’s willingness to physically fight any of his wife’s accusers earned him a reputation as a volatile man with a VERY short-temper. He even challenged one of his critics to a formal duel. Despite being wounded in the chest by the 1^st shot, Jackson stood his ground and fired a round that killed his opponent. Like the facial saber scar, he’d carry that lead bullet in his chest the rest of his life.

In 1798, the Jacksons acquired The Hermitage plantation in Tennessee and became slave owners as well. The loud, gregarious Jackson was popular amongst the menfolk, fond of both drinking, dancing, and gambling. Though at first reluctant, Jackson was convinced by local colleagues and officials to enter politics. He won his first election, becoming Tennessee’s first U.S. House Representative, followed later by its U.S. Senator.

The Hero of New Orleans

When the War of 1812 with Britain erupted, Jackson was appointed Major General of the Tennessee militia, though he had zero military experience. Nevertheless, he led 1,500 troops on a 5 month campaign against the Creek Indians (who were British-allies at the time). He defeated the Creeks and forced the chiefs to sign a treaty ceding 20 million acres to the U.S. government, over half their territory in Georgia and Alabama.

Jackson was then ordered south to defend New Orleans from a British invasion. The two sides finally clashed in January of 1815. Although outnumbered 2-to-1, Jackson led 5,000 U.S. soldiers to a surprise victory over the British in The Battle of New Orleans (hence the presence of his statue in Jackson Square). The British suffered 2,000 casualties while the Americans only 70.

Jackson received a Congressional medal and his status as a daring national war hero was forever solidified. He was so popular amongst his troops they gave him a nickname he carried the rest of his life.

They called him “Old Hickory” because he was “as tough as hickory wood” in battle.

Jackson’s exploits made him a political star, and Tennessee nominated him for President. In the election of 1824, against John Quincy Adam, Jackson won the popular vote, but neither man won the Electoral College. The Speaker of the House, Henry Clay, threw his support behind Adams, who later made Clay his Secretary of State, once Congress chose John Quincy as the winner.

Jackson raged publicly against what he called a “corrupt political bargain” and resigned from the Senate in protest. Undeterred, he spent the next 3 years campaigning for president, presenting himself not as a Washington politician, but as an outsider, a representative of the American people or “the Common Man.”

His campaign slogan was “Andrew Jackson, the Will of the People.”

In 1828, after a 2nd ugly campaign where the old bigamy and adultery charges rose up once again, Jackson defeated the incumbent John Quincy Adams by a landslide. His pious wife Rachel though had been deeply affected by the cruel campaign and her smearing in the press. She died of a heart attack before entering the White House. Jackson never remarried. The couple never had children of their own, but adopted the 3 sons of Rachel’s deceased brother.

Jackson became America’s 1st frontier president, calling himself “The People’s President.” His opponents called him an Unstable Jackass, a name he took a liking to. So much so, the donkey became the emblem of his Democratic Party. Jackson was the 1st president to invite the public to attend the White House Inaugural Ball. A large and rowdy mob arrived, got promptly drunk on the free booze, and began to break furniture and shatter dishes!

Early in his first term, Jackson dismissed his entire cabinet as he watched them slowly distance themselves from his unpredictable behavior. So he relied on a group of close Tennessee friends and advisors instead— his opponents calling them the Kitchen Cabinet. He would eventually replace much of the Executive Branch, loudly charging them with either incompetency or corruption.

“One man with courage makes a majority.”
U.S. President Andrew Jackson

Despite his popularity with the people, Jackson’s presidency had its share of controversies. He had an oversized ego and demanded absolute loyalty. Still angry that he lost the 1824 election, he believed in the Popular Vote and attempted to abolish the Electoral College. As his opponents grew, they coalesced into a new political party, united in their common aversion to Jackson. The Whigs were formed to “defend liberty and protest the despotic policies of King Andrew.”

While prior presidents vetoed bills they deemed unconstitutional, Jackson vetoed bills he simply did not like. He vetoed the bill to renew the Second Bank of the U.S., which he felt favored “the Elites.” His opponent for re-election in 1832, Henry Clay, believed the bank fostered a strong economy, making it his central campaign issue. The public supported Jackson’s populism instead and he won re-election with 56% of the popular vote and five times as many electoral votes.

Jackson faced another opponent however in his own Vice President. South Carolina believed new federal tariffs favored the North and vowed to secede. A furious Jackson threatened to use the military to enforce the law. VP John C. Calhoun supported his home state and became the first U.S. Vice President to resign. A compromise was passed, the crisis averted, but it foreshadowed South Carolina’s role in the coming Civil War 30 years later.

During Jackson’s 2nd term, he was the target of the 1st assassination attempt against a U.S. President.

An unemployed housepainter fired a pistol at the president just outside the Capitol. When the gun failed, the assassin pulled out a second pistol, which also misfired. An irate Jackson charged the shooter, and hammered him with his cane until others, including Representative Davy Crockett, subdued him. Of course, this only added to his legend amongst his followers.

Jackson is perhaps best known for his controversial policies toward Native Americans, who were being pushed slowly westward by frontiersmen. Jackson believed the backbone of America was family farms—so to maintain that growth – new farmland was needed, even at the expense of peaceful American tribes, considered autonomous nations – Creeks, Seminoles, Chickasaw, Choctaw and Cherokee.

In 1830, Jackson signed the infamous Indian Removal Act.

The Indian Removal Act gave him power to force treaties on tribes, resulting in their forced displacement to the Oklahoma territory west of the Mississippi. Jackson let the state of Georgia violate a treaty and seize 9 million acres of Cherokee land. Although the Supreme Court ruled Georgia had no authority to do so, Jackson refused to enforce the decision. The so-called Trail of Tears forced the westward relocation of an estimated 15,000 Cherokees. It claimed the lives of 4,000 men, women, children and elderly, who died along the way of starvation, exposure and disease.

Andrew Jackson was a 2 term president. His successor, Democrat Martin Van Buren defeated the Whigs and won the 1836 election. Due to Jackson’s often erratic fiscal and banking policies, he left his successor with an economy on the brink of collapse, leading to The Panic of 1837 and America’s first economic depression.

Photograph of President Andrew Jackson — **Photograph of retired President Andrew Jackson**

After leaving the White House, Jackson retired to his Hermitage in Tennessee, his popularity now dried up due to the state in which he left the country. He died in 1845, at the age of 78. The cause of death – lead poisoning from the bullet still stubbornly wedged in his chest after all these years. At the time of his death he owned 150 slaves at his Hermitage plantation.

His face was placed on the U.S. $20 bill in 1928 by an act of Congress. Jackson continues to be regarded as one of the most polarizing and controversial of U.S. presidents due to his brutal treatment of Native Americans in the Southeast. He is a personal favorite of the 45-47th U.S. president, Donald Trump. He had a portrait of Old Hickory hung prominently in the White House Oval Office near the Resolute desk.

For more by historical writer Paul Andrews, click BOOKS.

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Podcast: 10 Examples of Being on the Wrong Side of History

Here are 10 cases of ideas or theories that were once widely believed, but most definitely are on the Wrong Side of History – some are moral, some technological, and some philosophical. Through today’s lens, some of these will appear ridiculous … or even repugnant. Yet at the time, in their day, they were deemed Fact and perfectly logical and acceptable. Some may even give you an unsettling sense of déjà vu.

Depiction of a flat Earth on the wrong side of history

To read a blog post of this podcast CLICK HERE

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The Long and Storied Life of Mont-Saint-Michel

Mont-Saint-Michel is truly an astonishing site. An awe-inspiring Gothic/Renaissance Abbey rising out the sea like something from Game of Thrones. Today it’s referred to as the “Wonder of the West,” a UNESCO World Heritage Site with over 3 million visitors a year. But how on earth did such a gem get in such a place?

Mont-Saint-Michel is actually a rocky, pyramid-shaped tidal island sitting about a kilometer off the northwest coast of France, between Normandy and Brittany, near the mouth of the River Couesnon. The island itself covers only 17 acres. It’s connected to the French mainland by a silty tidal embankment that’s completely submerged at high tide. The tides in the bay are quite dramatic and can vary by as much as 50 ft (15 m) depending on the weather and time of year. Because of this unique phenomenon, the Mont has held great religious AND strategic value over the centuries.

Back in the 5th century, the forested Mont was named Mont-Tombe by Irish monks. They established a small hermitage on the island, which over the next 300 years became a site of religious pilgrimage. Then according to legend, in 708, Bishop (later Saint) Aubert of Avranches was visited by the Archangel Michael in a dream 3 times. In his visions, Michael told Aubert to build an oratory chapel in his name atop Mont-Tombe. By 709, Aubert had fulfilled the Angel’s wish, building a small church on the island. He placed there holy relics of St. Michael he had brought in from Italy.

Norman domination of Mont-Saint-Michel began in 966 when King Lothair of France issued a charter, establishing a Benedictine monastery on the island. The monastery was built in the Romanesque style with thick stone walls, arched ceilings, and small windows. The Benedictine monks, under the Duke of Normandy’s rule, managed their monastery extremely well, turning it into both a major center of religious pilgrimage AND, due to its strategic coastal location, a place of commerce. The Benedictine monks produced so many manuscripts on the island, Mont-Saint-Michel became known as the “The City of Books.”

During the 11th century, Norman rulers saw Mont-Saint-Michel both as a place of faith AND a strategic fortress, due to the increased rivalries within France. The Mont received a military garrison, put at the disposal of both the abbot and the Norman kings. It was the Normans who built its larger Romanesque abbey church on top of the old Aubert chapel, which became its crypts.

During a successful siege by Philip II of France in 1203, Mont-Saint-Michel endured heavy damage. But his subsequent patronage facilitated the construction of a larger, three-story stone Monastery known as La Merveille, “The Wonder.” This impressive building is a masterpiece of Norman-Gothic architecture. Built on the rocky, sea-side of the island, it consists of a pilgrim almonry, a Chevaliers Hall for royal guests, a monks’ Refectory, plus a beautiful Cloister. The French King also fortified the small island, building high stone battlements and 9 towers around 2/3 of its perimeter.

The Abbey of Mont Saint-Michel continued to become a place of military, commercial and religious significance over the centuries.

Benedictine monks translated ancient texts to Latin, and the relics of Saint-Michel attracted the faithful by the thousands. Back in the Middle Ages, those pilgrims had to cross about 4 miles (7 km) of sea to reach the island (5 kilometers farther than it is today). Those crossings could be a deadly task as one had to time it carefully with the low tides. Pilgrims routinely drowned trying to beat the tides and reach the Mont. In addition to the abbey, a small thriving village flourished on the island’s shore, on the south and east sides, facing the French mainland. Surrounded by high, thick walls, its narrow winding streets, with successive flights of stone steps, lead up to the abbey on top.

Thanks to its fortifications, the Mont survived numerous English attacks during the Hundred Years War. Then in 1421, during a siege by Breton knights, a fire resulted and burned down much of the abbey church’s chancel. It was then reconstructed a final time over the next 100 years, now in the Gothic style, complete with tall stained glass windows and flying buttresses like Paris Notre Dame. The church was heightened as well with a slender gothic tower above the transept, topped with a golden, armored Archangel St. Michael at 300 ft (91 m) high.

But all good things must come to an end. After the 14^th century Renaissance and the 15^th century Reformation, the island had lost both its military and religious significance. Mont-Saint-Michel sadly fell into a period of slow decline and disrepair. By the time the French Revolution came about in 1789, there were only seven monks left in residence at the Abbey. The French clergy, as well as its aristocracy, became targets of the bloody Revolution and its notorious guillotine.

The Mont held the new French republic’s political prisoners, deposed members of the aristocracy, and ironically, even priests, up to 300 at one time – anyone who went against the principles of Robespierre’s new Republic. Mont-Saint-Michel sadly became known as the “Bastille of the Sea”—in reference to the despised Parisian prison that was stormed during the Revolution.

When Emperor Napoleon took over, he continued to use the abbey as a prison, adding wooden floors into the high ceiling monk’s Refectory to hold even more cells. A large treadwheel crane, manned by prisoners, was installed to drag supplies up the hillside. The beautiful Mont had turned from an admired place of worship and pilgrimage, into a feared fortress prison.

Mont-Saint-Michel continued to hold prisoners until 1863, when influential French figures, like writer Victor Hugo (author of Les Misérables), campaigned fiercely for its closure. Hugo wrote, “Mont-Saint-Michel comes into view like a sublime thing, a marvelous pyramid.” The campaign was successful. Its 650 remaining prisoners were transferred elsewhere, and the abbey was rented from the government by the French Catholic Church.

In 1874, the abbey was formally declared a French national historical monument and a major restoration project began.

The French government, still owner of the abbey, managed the renovations. To make access easier for visitors, a long causeway road was built in 1879, on an elevated, artificial embankment. In 1922, monks and worship services finally returned to the Mont, making it a site of Catholic pilgrimage once again. The Abbey was returned to the Benedictine order in 1966 to mark its 1,000 Year Anniversary. Religious pilgrimages, and more importantly thousands of European tourists, came back in force. It became a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1979

Mont-Saint-Michele and Causeway from the air — Mont-Saint-Michel and Causeway from the air

In 1983, a project to restore the ‘island’ aspects of the Mont was begun. Over the decades, the causeway road had provoked silt and sand to build up along the coast, basically connecting the island to the mainland, making it into a peninsula rather than island! The old causeway and a car park were removed. A new road, constructed above the water on concrete pillars was built, again allowing the bay’s tidal waters to flow freely around the island. It opened in 2015.

If you visit Mont-Saint-Michel, and I highly recommend you do if ever in France, be sure to have a hearty brunch at La Mere Poulard, a local restaurant since 1879, famous for its fluffy omelets. And wear sturdy shoes for you will be climbing a LOT of stones stairs up to the famous gothic abbey and monastery. The challenge for our 21st century is to continue providing access to the abbey for the 2,500,000 visitors who come each and every year. Only about 45 people live there in residence year round. Today, it remains one of the top three most visited sites in France, outside of Paris.

For more by historical writer Paul Andrews, click BOOKS.

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The Forgotten Palomares Nuclear Bomber Crash of 1966

Crash of the US Air Force B-52, carrying 4 hydrogen bombs, at Palomares, Spain, 1966

There was a time during the Cold War when nuclear warheads were not only sitting in ballistic missile silos, but also flown 24/7 by large bombers. In 1966, a B-52 Stratofortress bomber took off from a North Carolina airbase, headed to Eastern Europe. It would explode over Palomares on the Mediterranean coast of Spain. For years, the U.S. Air Force’s Strategic Air Command flew bombers to the very edge of the Soviet Iron Curtain. At least a dozen B-52s patrolled the skies over the North Atlantic and Western Europe at all times, each with a payload of 4 HYDROGEN BOMBS.

At 10:30 am on January 17th, 1966, a B-52 bomber collided with a KC-135 tanker plane during a mid-air refueling attempt at 31,000 feet over the Mediterranean Sea, just off the east coast of Spain. The KC-135 tanker was destroyed when its fuel load ignited, killing all four crew members. The B-52G broke apart in the explosion, killing three of the seven crew members aboard. The other four, including pilot Major Larry Messinger, managed to parachute to safety.

The B-52 was carrying 4 MK28 hydrogen bombs, each about 100 times as much as Hiroshima’s.

Fortunately, all four bombs were unarmed, so there was never any danger of nuclear detonation. Wreckage from the 2 military airplanes soon rained down on the unfortunate town of Palomares, a small seaside community of about 2,000, known for growing the best tomatoes in Spain. Townspeople looked up and saw a huge ball of fire streaking towards them as the two large planes broke apart. Miraculously, no one on the ground was killed.

The bomber was part of Operation Chrome Dome. During the Cold War, it provided NATO with a rapid-response nuclear strike capability around the world. What the villagers didn’t know was that falling debris also included four thermonuclear weapons. Three crashed down near Palomares. None of the bombs caused a nuclear explosion, but the conventional explosives on two of them detonated upon hitting the ground. The third bomb landed intact and unexploded. The 4 American survivors were soon rescued and taken to a nearby hospital.

With four “broken arrows” (U.S. code for lost nuclear weapons), SAC mobilized a small army of American military to quickly descend on tiny Palomares. Military police arrived by helicopter just a few hours after the crash. They found huge pieces of smoking airplane wreckage all over the village. A large part of the bomber had crashed in the school yard. The undetonated bomb had thudded into a soft sandbank near the beach and remained intact.

Two bombs had hit hard and exploded, leaving house-sized craters on either side of the village. While safeguards prevented nuclear detonations, explosives surrounding the plutonium cores exploded and blew radioactive dust over the houses and tomato fields of Palomares. The two exploded weapons in essence acted like ‘dirty bombs,’ scattering radioactivity across the Spanish coast.

By the next day, truck loads of US troops arrived from nearby bases, bringing hand-held Geiger counters. Almost everywhere they pointed them, the highest readings were measured. The Pentagon’s top priority was collecting those 4 bombs, and largely ignored the danger of plutonium dust. Villagers and troops were told by the U.S. Air Force that they were safe, since the radiation would not penetrate their skin. U.S. troops searched for the bombs through highly contaminated tomato fields, with Geiger Counters, but no safety gear.

Within 24 hours, they recovered the 3 bombs, but the 4th was nowhere to be found.

Reports leaked in the press that a nuclear device had been lost. Both the US Air Force and Spanish dictator General Francisco Franco made no statement about Palomares. The silence only fed the rumor mill. The Soviet Union’s Radio Moscow reported that the entire area was covered in a ‘death rain‘ of lethal radiation. Accounts of the crash became front-page news around the world. American and Spanish officials tried to play down the risk. They blocked the press from the village and flatly denied any nuclear weapons were involved in the crash, and there was NO radiation. In order to show this, Spanish officials allowed Palomares’ villagers to remain in the town!

After a week of searching, the 4th bomb still remained lost. Then a random tip came in and they interviewed a fisherman who witnessed a crash at sea. Now the search became far more tedious. The US military became engaged in a massive underwater search and recovery operation. The US Navy arrived and began trawling the Mediterranean waters off the coast of Palomares with an armada of ships and 2 submersibles, the Alvin and the Aluminaut.

By March, with still no sign of the missing bomb, the US military finally admitted it was hunting for a lost H bomb off the coast of Spain, and that another had ‘cracked,’ and released a small amount of harmless radiation on the coast. Spanish officials described a rigorous cleanup and vehemently denied Soviet claims that the Mediterranean was contaminated. Worries the news would destroy Spanish tourism, the Spanish Minister of Tourism, Manuel Fraga, and US Ambassador Angier Biddle Duke took a much-publicized swim at a nearby beach on March 8th to ‘prove’ the waters were safe.

After 2 months of the largest undersea search in history, the missing bomb was finally located by the submersible Alvin, 5 miles off the coast, 2,550 feet deep. Then while the bomb was being winched to the surface, the cable suddenly snapped, causing the bomb to fall again, another 350 feet deeper! An unmanned recovery vehicle then became tangled in the bomb’s parachute. Both were finally lifted to the surface by a U.S. Navy ship on April 7th—nearly 3 months after the crash. Reporters were allowed to photograph it the next day.

But that was not the end for poor Palomares.

Spanish and American authorities assured villagers that they had nothing to fear. The villagers, accustomed to living under General Franco’s dictatorship, dared not question a thing. Spain insisted the mess be cleaned up by the US before the summer tourist season. The U.S. Air Force bought tons of contaminated tomatoes the Spanish public refused to eat. Troops hacked down contaminated vines with machetes. The Air Force scooped up 5,300 barrels of dirt from the radioactive craters and loaded them onto US Navy ships. American troops hauled away some 1,400 tons of contaminated topsoil and vegetation, to be buried in a secure nuclear waste storage site in South Carolina.

After all this, the incident was largely forgotten! But there was still the matter of the people, both U.S. troops and Palomores citizens, who’d been exposed to plutonium dust. Radiation near the bombs had been so high it sent the military’s monitoring equipment off the scales. Troops spent months shoveling toxic dust, wearing little more protection than military fatigues. And the villagers were allowed to stay in their homes during the clean-up.

Palomares' B-52 4th lost hydrogen bomb, recovered at sea. — Palomares’ B-52 4th lost hydrogen bomb, recovered at sea, 1966.

For 50 years, the US Air Force has maintained there was no harmful radiation at the crash site. It says the danger of contamination was minimal and strict safety measures ensured that all personnel were protected. U.S. Troops started to get sick soon after the cleanup ended. Healthy young men experienced joint pain, headaches, weakness, and skin rashes. Decades later, some developed testicular cancer, and rare lung and lymph nodes cancers. Of 40 veterans who helped with the cleanup, 21 had cancer and 9 have died from it. Of course, it’s impossible to determine whether or not these men developed cancer as a direct result of Palomares, or through natural causes.

What about the poor people of Palomares?

A medical monitoring system was established, and for the last several decades, the US and Spain have funded annual health checkups. Monitoring of Palomoras however has been random. While at least 5% show traces of plutonium in their bodies, officials maintain that the amount is well below the danger levels. The US promised to pay for a public health program, but has provided little funding. Spanish scientists lacked the resources to follow up on potential risks, including reported leukemia deaths in local children. Today, the long-term health effect on villagers is poorly understood.

In the late 1990s, new surveys of the village found some contamination that had gone undetected. About a fifth of the plutonium from 1966 was estimated to still contaminate the Palomares area. The Spanish government appropriated the land in 2003 and fenced it off to prevent further use by the locals.

In 2015, after several years of negotiations, the U.S. government signed a Statement of Intent to assist Spain in finally finishing the 50-year-old cleanup process in Palomares. The U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, and the Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel García-Margallo, signed an agreement in Madrid to finish cleaning up the site and remove the remaining contaminated materials at a suitable location in the United States.

For more by historical writer Paul Andrews, click BOOKS.

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6 Ways the Count Saint Germain was a true Renaissance Man

Count Saint Germain amongst the backdrop of the 18th Century

Count Saint Germain and his amazing talents attracted as much attention as his believed immortality. We know he was a gifted Musician, a talented Alchemist, a trusted Spy, and a Confidant of kings. First, he was a natural linguist and could speak over dozen languages with such perfection no one could pinpoint his origin, including Italian, French, German, Spanish, English, Russian, Greek and Latin. He dropped into local dialects with such ease people thought him a native no matter where he traveled. And travel he did, from the gilded palaces of Versailles and Peterhof, to the exotic capitals of the Persian and Mughal Empires.

Second, a skilled raconteur, Saint-Germain regaled nobility with stories from centuries past. Whether scandals of ancient Rome, or exploits from the Dark Ages, his audiences were always glued to their seats. He spun tales with such exquisite detail, relaying the intimate conversations of famous historical figures, listeners believed he had been present in the flesh. He often slipped into the first person, then back to narrator, leaving guests positively bewildered. Those who knew him intimately claimed he never aged over the decades as the 18th century progressed. He looked to be 40 years of age, but exactly how old was this man?

Many courtesans were convinced he was hundreds if not thousands of years old.

Third, the Count was also an accomplished composer. He played several musical instruments “like an orchestra,” including his favorites, the violin and harpsichord. This was the Classical Age of Music, with prolific geniuses like Handel, Mozart and Hayden as his contemporaries across Europe. While in London in the 1740’s, Saint-Germain presented a pasticcio opera, L’Incostanza Delusa, at the Haymarket Theatre and published several of his own Violin Sonatas. At the palace of Versailles, he privately entertained French King Louis XV and his mistress, Madame Pompadour, with his violin.

Adagio Sonata for Violin by Count Saint Germain

Fourth, his alchemical skills were also known far and wide. Count Saint Germain offered ladies beautifying cosmetics for delicate skin and pomades for their voluminous hair. For the Russian Navy during the Turkish War, he developed St. Germain’s Tea, a purge still in use today. For the Venetians, he started a factory to dye wood and skins. French King Louis XV gave him apartments at the Chateau Chambord to conduct his alchemical experiments. Many believed he possessed the secret to removing flaws from gems and enlarging pearls. And of course, rumors abounded he possessed the legendary Philosopher’s Stone or even the Elixir of Eternal Youth.

In typical fashion, he would smile at such rumors, wave a hand in the air and neither confirm nor deny it.

Fifth, Saint-Germain was a high-ranking member of several Masonic Lodges throughout Europe. Every lodge jealously wanted the ‘Immortal Count’ among their ranks. He used the Freemasons (Free and Accepted Masons) to expand his network of influential contacts worldwide. He was whispered to be among the inner circle of the Illuminati, the Knights Templar, and perhaps the most secret society of all, the Rosicrucians [Brotherhood of the Rose and Cross]. He used such societies to move about freely and gain trust and acceptance at royal courts in France, Austria, Britain and Russia.

Sixth, Louis XV used him a secret diplomate in an attempt to end the Seven Years War which had enveloped Europe. The Count’s jealous detractors labeled him a charlatan and a fraud. The British twice arrested him as a suspected Jacobite spy in London. His enemies tried in vain to discover his true identity and the source of his ample wealth. Over the decades, the Count accumulated a long list of rivals, including the famous rogues Casanova and Cagliostro. To his credit, they failed to prove him guilty of a single crime. He offered his talents to many kings and kingdoms, but never asked for payment in return. Though at times vague and wily, he never swindled any of his many patrons.

Today, we would label such an unusual man as eccentric or an enigma – a wealthy, overly-intelligent gentleman involved in various world affairs now and again, whether governmental, corporate, or philanthropic. Shying away from the spotlight, yet never hesitating to get involved when a true need arises. Our world could use such a person right about now. But in the time of Count of Saint Germain, he was indeed a true Renaissance Man.

Click here for the historical novel: The Man Who Would Not Die.

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