Most of us are comfortable with pilotage. This is the practice of navigating from one landmark to the next in a sequence to find your way to your destination. In fact, most of us have given directions like, “go down Main Street to the third light and turn left, then …” But what do you …
Category Archives: Ideas
Edmund Halley, the famous astronomer. also designed the world’s first diving bell
Although best known for his proof that comets follow regular orbits around the sun, Edmond Halley was also an inventor. Halley invented and tested one of the world’s first submersible. In this diving bell as many as four men could descend beneath the surface of water and spend hours observing life on the bottom or …
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Surveyor, astronomer, calculator, clock builder and instrument maker David Rittenhouse was a man of great and varied talents
David Rittenhouse was a highly respected scientist during the formative years of the United States. Anyone who has attempted to survey knows that straight lines are much easier than curves. Rittenhouse ran the survey that established the circular boundary between Pennsylvania and Delaware, a circle of 12-mile radius, with Newcastle as its center. He later …
Want to be a Brewer for the Day?
Washington’s Crossing — July 4th CelebrationWashington’s Crossing Historic Park July 4, 2023 10:00pm – 4:00 pm Event Announcement: https://wordpress.com/post/colonialbrewer.com/54489 Volunteer Sign-up: https://www.zeffy.com/en-US/volunteering/7ff92cbb-be49-4a78-817c-8063ef7b46b5 In the market we will gather in the Historic Village and sell our wares, soldiers will drill 18th-century military tactics, the park’s fife and drum corps will perform, and I will be running my …
Swearing and Profanity in 18th Century England
Well, sometimes you just have to let someone know what you think and polite words don’t work. We’ve all been at events when we wanted to let loose on one or more of the “brilliant” attendees who “know everything.” Well, its just a matter of speaking the right language (Ik mompel gewoon in het Nederlands …
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Andrew Ellicott finished the work of Mason and Dixon before becoming the Chief Surveyor of Washington DC
We first met Andrew Ellicott in my earlier article on Benjamin Banneker. A commissioned officer in the Maryland militia, by the time Ellicott was given the job of surveying Washington DC, he was a highly accomplished surveyor having gained experience by working on the survey which extended the Mason-Dixon line westward to its originally intended terminus …
Barbary Pirates
Typically, when we think of pirates, images of Long John Silver with an eye patch and a parrot come to mind. This is, of course, fiction. There were some pirates in the Caribbean (although most of them were Jews displaced by the Spanish Reconquista) but by far most pirates hailed from ports in Asia and …
Reinheitsgebot
The Reinheitsgebot, literally “purity order”, is a series of regulations limiting the ingredients in that can be used to make beer and how beer can be sold in the states of the former Holy Roman Empire. The best-known version of the law was adopted in Bavaria in 1516. According to the 1516 Bavarian law, the …
Huzzah for backward thinkers!
Huzzah for backward thinkers! Now that Brexit is complete, great morons like Boris Johnson (Britian’s Trump) want to bring back Imperial metrics and where do they want to start, well your beer glass. Beginning in 1698 British pint glasses intended for measuring and serving beer were marked with a crown stamp as a declaration that …
The “Third Rail” of Reenacting – The Regimental Brewmeister will attempt a First Person Presentation
Saturday, July 8thIndependence National Historical Parkby the Commodore Barry Statuein Philadelphia 11:00 – 4:00(Multiple presentations) The Regimental Brewmeister will try his hand at a 1st person impression – David Rittenhouse. In the world of Living History there are three distinct impressions people tend to assume when presenting people from the past. When we act as …
Michael Carver -- Historical Interpreter/Reenactor 