Creative History

  Imagine a world where the day to day calendar--something as simple as what day in the year it actually is--could vary from place to place.  The New Year might begin as late as March 25th, or much earlier, and things like holidays and the start and end of the seasons could fluctuate from year to year based on the phases of the moon or some other quirk of astronomy much like Easter Sunday and Passover week do to this day.   Well, that is exactly the type of world that citizens of Great Britain and her colonies--including our forefathers here in America--lived in until the year 1752.  In that momentous year everything changed.  Our calendar was completely reset, eleven days from the month of September simply vanished into thin air and for a brief moment in time the entire English speaking world nearly descended into chaos--or did it? But not everyone lived that way until as recently as 1752.  In fact, most Catholics (and many other people who weren’...

  At the end of the eighteenth century between 1788 and 1790 there was a man on the loose roaming  the streets of London who attacked unsuspecting beautiful aristocratic women at will.  The penny press of the Georgian Era quickly dubbed the assailant “The London Monster” and over fifty such attacks were reported in just under a two year span.             The London Monster became a cause celebre almost overnight.  Armed vigilante groups formed in all of the city's neighborhoods; well known politicians, authors, actors and entertainers all called upon the city government to do something, anything , to capture the fiend that was terrorizing London's most lovely ladies and bring him (or them) to justice. All of the city’s well-to-do ladies were up in arms and sent into a near panic, the likes of which would not be equaled again until the 1880’s during Jack the Ripper’s reign of murderous terror.  The wor...