Creative History

  November 30, 1876, Thanksgiving Day, is cold and wet in northern New Jersey.  Temperatures in Hoboken that early afternoon are near freezing, and an icy sleet is falling. About 1,000 fans have gathered outside on what is called the St. George’s Cricket Ground on this Thanksgiving Day to watch twenty-two collegiate athletes, eleven students from Princeton and eleven from Yale, faceoff in the first ever Thanksgiving Day American gridiron football game. Some sources say the game was played, like modern American football by teams of eleven-on-eleven, though others say that there may have been as many as fifteen players per side, but whatever the number, the game played on that cricket ground that day was unique enough to be considered something entirely different from other collegiate sports that were popular at the time such as rugby or soccer. Most who gathered at the local cricket grounds in Hoboken, New Jersey that day, were former alumni or simply curious spectators w...

  Rural New York farmer and part-time Baptist preacher William Miller announced in October of 1831 that the end of the world was near. And he gave a specific date for when the world would end with the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.  This Second Advent, as he termed it, would occur on October 22, 1844. Miller based his claims, so he asserted, on careful study of the Bible, specifically the Old Testament.  He used one passage in particular Daniel 8:14, “And he said unto me, Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed.” KJV In Miller’s Biblical interpretation the “sanctuary” represented the planet earth, while the number 2,300 referenced in the Book of Daniel as days was meant to symbolically represent years instead. As justification for this personal interpretation of scripture Miller pointed to two passages from the Old Testament, Ezekiel 4:6 which states, “And when thou hast accomplished them lie again on thy right side ...

  The home of the American Philosophical Society, known as Philosophical Hall, is located in Center City Philadelphia mere yards from Independence Hall. It has stood as an integral part of Old City Philadelphia for well over 200 years.   Philosophical Hall is now a part of Independence National Historic Park and in addition to still being home to the offices of the American Philosophical Society it is also visited by thousands of tourists and researchers with an interest in American history each year. Founded in 1743 the American Philosophical Society was, and continues to be, an organization dedicated to promoting learning in the sciences and humanities through research, discussion, community outreach and most importantly reading.  The father and founding member, some would even say the creator of the American Philosophical Society itself, was none other than the inventor of bifocals, and the man whose portrait graces our one-hundred dollar bill, Benjamin Franklin...