Creative History

  The Vicar stands at the pulpit and addresses the packed congregation inside the cathedral.  It is sweltering.  The midsummer sun beats down on the stained glass windows.  Many, early on that Sunday morning, nearly swoon from the heat.  Already, just a few hours past dawn, the temperature has risen well above 100 degrees Fahrenheit. He reads, in Latin, from the Book of Deuteronomy: “Take heed to yourselves that your heart be not deceived, and ye turn aside, and serve other gods, and worship them; And then the LORD’s wrath be kindled against you, and he shut up the heavens, that there be no rain, and that the land yield not her fruit; and lest ye perish quickly from off the good land which the LORD giveth you.” -Deuteronomy 11:17-18 KJV All across Europe that Sunday in July of 1540 this scene repeats itself.  In churches, Protestant and Catholic, Vicars, Priests, Reverends and Christian holy men of all sorts and denominations read from scripture and l...

  In 1850 local resident Dr. Jonathan Pitney began to promote the idea of Absecon Island, located just off southern New Jersey’s coast, as an ideal seaside medical retreat for many of his patients who suffered from various ailments, everything ranging from tuberculosis to nervous breakdowns. Pitney extolled the healing properties of ocean air and saltwater to all who would listen, and by 1853 Pitney along with civil engineer Richard Osborne, who would be in charge of the building’s design and construction, were able to successfully pitch the idea of building a major seaside resort on Absecon Island in New Jersey to influential financiers and politicians. Within a year of the resort’s construction Philadelphia politicians and railroad investors were persuaded enough by Pitney, Osborne and other New Jersey lobbyists to finance a railway that linked the City of Brotherly Love directly with the Jersey Shore and traversed the whole of the Garden State. On July 4, 1854 by charter o...

  First launched in 1826 the HMS Daedalus was a forty-six gun top of the line frigate of the Royal Navy.  Having never been used in combat in that capacity, after eighteen years of service in 1844, the HMS Daedalus was literally cut down in size and recommissioned as a smaller, faster more maneuverable nineteen gun Corvette of the Royal Navy. On August 6, 1848 the HMS Daedalus was cruising in the south Atlantic about 300 miles off the coast of west Africa.  The weather was dark and cloudy and seemed to presage the onset of a midsummer thunderstorm at sea. At approximately 5 o’clock that afternoon midshipmen aboard the Daedalus alerted their officers to a most unusual sight.  The ship’s Captain Peter M’Quhae along with the First Lieutenant and all of the ship’s officers rushed to the quarterdeck to view what the crewmen had described as a “sea serpent” swimming above the surface of the water alongside their ship. A Royal Navy Corvette of the 1840's similar to Dae...