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William Seward Burroughs
Burroughs was born into a wealthy family from St. Louis, Missouri. His grandfather, and namesake, invented the Burroughs adding machine which eventually led to the creation of the Burroughs Corporation which William S. Burroughs I owned. Since Burroughs’ birth on February 5, 1914, much was expected from him by his family due to the great success of his family. At the age of 14, Burroughs was sent to the Los Alamos Ranch School for boys in New Mexico because of an incident in St. Louis where he was playing with some chemicals that exploded and injured his hand. The injury required the use of pain medication and it was Burroughs…
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Karl Marx
Karl Marx was born on 5th May 1818, in Trier in Prussia. He was the third child of nine, born to Lawyer Herschel Marx and his Dutch wife Henrietta Pressburg, whose family later founded the Philips electronics company. Herschel Marx received a secular education, the first in his family to do so, and after studying philosophers such as Kant and Voltaire, converted to Lutheranism prior to Karl’s birth, changing his name to the German version, Heinrich. Heinrich’s male precedents on his father’s side were traditionally Rabbis, however he subsequently had all his own children baptised together as Lutherans when Karl was around six years of age. Henrietta waited until her…
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The Pied Piper of Hamelin Fact or Fiction
“When, lo! as they reached the mountain-side, A wondrous portal opened wide, As if a cavern was suddenly hollowed; And the Piper advanced and the children followed, And when all were in to the very last, The door in the mountain-side shut fast.” – Robert Browning We all know the fairy tales brought to us by the Brothers Grim, Robert Browning, and many others. Telling the tale of a pied piper whisking children out of town because he wasn’t paid for eradicating the town of their rat infestation. Could the tale actually have some truth to it? The earliest known record of this story is from the town of Hamelin…
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Aesop’s Fables
“No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.” – Aesop I am sure most of us have heard the term “Slow and steady wins the race”. It comes from a very popular fable The Tortoise and the Hare. Its just one out of a number of fables credited to Aesop, a slave and storyteller believed to have lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 560 BCE. Although his existence remains uncertain and no writings by him survive, numerous tales credited to him were gathered across the centuries and in many languages. Not every fable that has been linked to Aesop is his own original material. There are…
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The sinking of The Essex
“Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool! and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! Thus, I give up the spear!” – Captain Ahab Many have heard the story about the great white whale Moby Dick, who sunk the ship Pequod, but did you know it was actually based on a real ordeal? The American whaling ship Essex was…
