The origins of “V for Victory!”

Almost everyone is familiar with the phrase “V for Victory” and the two-fingered V-for-victory hand gesture popularized by Winston Churchill during World War II. But few people today are aware of…

“We must love one another or die.”

September 1, 1939 is now known as the day when World War II started. On that day, Germany’s Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler ordered his military forces to invade neighboring Poland.…

“Why are you not here?” – Thoreau’s famous (apocryphal) question to Emerson…

Fake quotes are sometimes harder to identify and debunk than “fake news,” especially when they are cited by hundreds of books and thousands of websites. A good example is the…

April 2, 1865 – “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”

On September 22, 1969, The Band released the great self-titled album that includes what became one of their most famous songs, “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” Like many…

“Old soldiers never die, they just fade away.”

On April 19, 1951, General Douglas MacArthur made a high-profile “farewell address” to a joint meeting of both houses of Congress. Eight days earlier, he’d been fired as the top…

“Life is unfair,” as President John F. Kennedy famously observed on this date…

Many people are familiar with the famous quotation by President John F. Kennedy, “Life is unfair.” But few people today remember or know the context of this quote. It was…

“The Final Solution of the Jewish Problem” (“Endlösung der Judenfrage”)

“The Final Solution” is one of the most chilling phrases associated with Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. It’s a euphemism for genocide. “The Final Solution” was immortalized by a memo…

On this date in 1813, Oliver Hazard Perry launched two immortal naval quotations…

On September 10, 1813, American ships under the command of Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry engaged a British naval squadron on Lake Erie during the War of 1812. Perry’s flagship was…

“No pasarán!” – They shall not pass!

During the long siege of Verdun in World War I, French military leaders urged their troops to fight the invading German army with the rallying cry “Ils ne passeront pas!”…