Saturday, April 19th6:00 pm – 10:00 pm While few Officers’ Clubs survived the Cold War, we are going to bring back the tradition at Fort Mifflin this year. Military Officers’ clubs date back to the Middle Ages and were establishments where officers from the aristocratic landowners congregated. These were meant to be distinct from the …
Category Archives: Ideas
Come to Crooked Billet and Learn to Survey
Saturday, April 26, 202510 am – 4pmKeith Valley Middle School227 Meetinghouse Rd, Horsham, PA In my persona as “David Rittenhouse,” I will be conducting hands-on surveying demonstrations at this years Crooked Billet History Fair in Horsham. The first surveyors in America arrived with the Jamestown Company in 1621. Given the goal of quickly settling Virginia …
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Freedom Means NOTHING Unless You Also Embrace Tolerance
Tolerance implies no lack of commitment to one’s own beliefs. Rather it condemns the oppression or persecution of others. John F Kennedy As Americans we focus a lot on our Constitutional Freedoms. Frankly, we are far more enthralled with these than most of the rest of the world for in the time since our Revolution, …
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Exposing Spies
William Wickham was Britain’s first Master Spy and head of the British Secret Service. Wickham was also the focus of a massive government scandal and Parliamentary investigation when it was found that millions of pounds in taxpayer’s money had been funneled to Wickham and then disappeared without a trace. In Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen …
Not the First Library but Perhaps the Best
In 1727, Benjamin Franklin and several friends established a “club of mutual improvement” called the Junto which met in a Philadelphia alehouse each Friday evening. There they held lively discussions of politics, morals and philosophy. Eventually, they left this ale-infused atmosphere for a quieter meeting place in the home of one of the wealthier members. …
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Historical Tidbits — Congress establishes the US Mint
When reenacting or acting as a historical interpreter, its good to have a few historical dates and stories to share. This series will publish a few. April 2, 1792 Congress establishes the US Mint in Philadelphia. On April 2, 1792 Congress passed the Coinage Act, establishing the first national mint in the United States. In …
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April Fools — Part 3
What do you call someone who’s fallen for a prank? In most English-speaking places, you’d probably just call them gullible. But in France, you might use the term poisson d’avril (“April fish.”) The centuries-old name is linked to a 1508 poem by Renaissance composer and writer Eloy d’Amerval, who used the phrase to describe the …
April Fools
The origins behind April Fool’s Day are a little sketchy but it is generally understood that it started back in 1582. That was the year that France switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian but communication was slow and unreliable so, not everyone switched at the same time. As a consequence, many priests didn’t …
April Fools — Part 2
In my last post, I picked on Boston because, well its Boston. But stupid laws are not a Massachusetts thing. Let’s look a little closer to home. Here are a few from Pennsylvania: It is illegal to catch a fish by any body part other than the mouth. There’s also a law forbidding the use …
The DUTCH East India Company
The Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC), better known as the Dutch East India Company was set up in 1602 and head-quartered in the Oost-Indisch Huis (East-India House) in downtown Amsterdam, which still stands today. The company was first company to officially issue stocks, which peaked during the Dutch “Tulip Mania”, a craze for tulip bulbs that …
Michael Carver -- Historical Interpreter/Reenactor 