The Wreck of the Sultana

  On April 23, 1865, only a few weeks after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrender his troops to General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House in Virginia, the steamship Sultana docked in Vicksburg. The Sultana was a 260-foot-long wooden steamboat—about two-thirds of the length of a football field and half as wide.* Built…

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Word with a Past: Quisling

In her April 9 report on the German invasion of Norway, Sigrid Schultz reported that Major Vidkun Quisling, the Norwegian Nazi leader, had taken power as premier and foreign minister only hours after Oslo surrendered. In a radio proclamation that evening, he “called upon the people to cease resistance to the German army and avoid…

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Queen Magrethe I, Pt. 2

One of my favorite things about writing this blog is the conversations I have with my readers about the subjects of my posts, or in fact about history in general. This morning I got a sidebar to the life of Queen Margrethe I from textile maven Julie Holyoke, who is my cousin by marriage and…

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