Alabama Gazette - The people's voice of reason

The world Nicholas Copernicus was born into was wrong. Indeed, 550 years ago, almost everything people thought about the world and their place in it were based on false ideas. Without necessarily...

Five Hundred years ago, the Protestant Swiss reformer, Ulrich Zwingli’s theology was designated the official religion of Zurich. The rumblings of the Reformation were just starting. As education...

One hundred years ago this month, delegates from various parts of the old Russian Empire met in Moscow to create the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The world would never be the same. Prior to th...

The Pilgrims’ first Christmas in the new world was remarkable, but not for the reasons you’d think. On December 25, 1621, William Bradford, the governor of the Plymouth Colony, prohibited the...

One hundred years ago this month, Italy succumbed to a new political order that would ignite a worldwide struggle for freedom. Completely abandoning its rightful claim as the birthplace of republican...

With supersonic air travel, it takes less than three days to travel around the world. Five hundred years ago, it took three years. When Ferdinand Magellan left Spain in 1519, he embarked on an...

Prior to the American Revolution and more than a decade before the French Revolution, there was the Swedish Revolution, which marks its 250th anniversary this month. While often out of the orbit of...

Ninety years ago, Portugal was the poster child for instability. New governments came and went roughly every 6 months. Change seemed the only constant, which created a vacuum of leadership tailor...

Dr. Martin Luther King argued that the arc of the moral universe is long and bends toward justice. This geometry lesson was used to illustrate a belief that history is pulled gravitationally towards...

May was an interesting month for our neighbors to the South. This year, Mexico commemorates the 200th anniversary of the coronation of Emperor Agustín I, and the 160th anniversary of the Battle of...

It was no surprise when 60 years ago President Kennedy nominated Byron White as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. With few detractors and almost nationwide acclaim, White was...

Had she lived, the Queen of Soul would have been 80-years-old in March. For at least 60 of her 76 years, Aretha Franklin shared her vocal gift all over the world. In addition to bringing her both...

Eighty years ago this month, with the stroke of a pen, President Franklin Roosevelt in Executive Order 9066 effectively relegated 120,000 Japanese Americans to internment camps. Many of these...

One vision of utopia includes the conversion of weapons of war into farming implements. The Bible anticipates a time when swords will be beaten into plowshares, and spears will become pruning hooks....

This article recalls the Philippines off-year election in 1951. It is a little known story about how the good guys avoided a communist take-over. Regrettably, these lesson were forgotten in Vietnam...

As Thanksgiving morphs into Christmas, the December television schedule will be filled with the usual assortment of Christmas classics, not the least of which is Frank Capra’s: It’s a Wonderful...

In the blood sport of electoral politics losers are forgotten and rarely rewarded; in British politics even winners experiencing their peak of success can be defeated. As a result, dealing with the...

Experience is the practical scientific method. Some things succeed while other things fail; observing the reasons for success should help draft a blueprint for planning the future. It may be vogue to...

Imagine your football team is in the first quarter of a game, a couple of star players are sidelined and the opponent’s offense seems unstoppable. The score is already 28-0 when your head coach...

Few calendars in this part of the Western Hemisphere will note it, but on July 28, Peru celebrates 200 years of independence. Two centuries of anything is a big deal; it demonstrates generational...

If the 4th of July has a pre-game, it is June 15th. On that date in 1215, the Magna Carta was signed, beginning a gradual process of defined individual rights and limiting the power and authority of...

Always the catch-all political crime, an accusation of treason is used to punish rivals and remove them from civic engagement. Autocrats use the insinuation of treason with brutal efficiency to banish...

When great powers stump their toe on foreign policy, the initial pain, though slight, often causes loss of focus, a stumble, and sometimes a more serious accident. Sixty years ago, the United States...

There has been much debate lately about how we name public buildings and whether we should remove some names because of long ago actions that no longer conform to contemporary societal practices....

We take freedom of conscience for granted, but, 500 years ago, accepting and practicing beliefs outside of the mainstream was deadly. The 1521 Diet of Worms was a legislative gathering held in Worms...