Alex Seifert

There are many towns throughout the American west which serve as excellent examples of what a mining “boom town” was like. South Pass City, Wyoming is one such town. It is a relatively rare example, however, in that it has survived practically unchanged into the present and as such can better relate its story to … more »

I have just seen that the British Library in London has reached a deal with Google to digitize roughly 250,000 books, newspapers, articles, etc from between 1700 and 1870.

Joshua A. Norton is a little known figure in American history. He was the first and only self-declared emperor of the United States of America. He styled himself as His Majesty, Emperor Norton I. Most of his contemporaries understandably branded him as crazy, unstable and as having gone off the deep end. Although the majority … more »

I’ve recently been reading a German history magazine called Der Spiegel: Geschichte. The most current issue focuses on the Hohenzollern dynasty in Prussia and ultimately in the German Empire from 1871 until 1918. One of the last articles in the issue discusses the last German Kaiser, Wilhelm II, and his life after his abdication from … more »

In the first two decades of Queen Victoria’s reign, there was no one who played a more influential role in British affairs as Prince Albert, the Prince Consort. Upon the ascension of Queen Victoria to the throne, the state of the Monarchy was already in question.1 After his subsequent marriage to the Queen, his strength … more »

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History has just released an online version of the journal kept by entrepreneur William Steinway throughout most of this life. He documented his life in almost daily increments for over 36 years of his life. The journal contains 2,500 pages in nine volumes. William Steinway was born in 1835 … more »

As most of my readers probably know, I am a huge fan of Mark Twain. The name of this blog comes from a quote he made about history and a lot of my inspiration comes from his works. The recent news of a Montgomery, Alabama-based publisher publishing a censored version of one of Twain’s most famous books, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is really rather sickening to me.

While reading the news today, I discovered that the current governor of New Mexico, Bill Richardson, is considering pardoning Billy the Kid for killing a sheriff. Richardson only has until Friday to decide because that is when his term will end.

The first part of the new series about mining towns in the Rocky Mountains will begin with Bannack, Montana. Nothing, but a ghost town now, Bannack was the site of a major gold discovery in 1862. The town was founded the same year as a result of the discovery and is named after the local … more »

I apologize for the temporary outage. I’ve been getting hit pretty hard with spambots and my hosting service shut down service to my account. I think I’ve got it taken care of after doing some careful research about redirecting traffic coming from spambots so that they don’t hit the server anywhere near as hard. If … more »