Creative History

In late August of 1485 the streets of London were packed with thousands of people awaiting the coronation of King Henry VII.  On the 22nd of that month King Henry’s Tudor army had defeated the last remaining forces loyal to the House of York and King Richard III at Bosworth Field thereby bringing an end to the bloody Wars of the Roses and making Henry the new King of England. Soon thousands of victorious soldiers and vanquished prisoners of war would arrive in London and swell this teeming mass of humanity, which already numbered perhaps in the tens of thousands, even further.  And already, even prior to the climactic Battle of Bosworth Field, many soldiers on both sides had been deemed too sick to fight on account of a new and mystifying disease that both armies  simply dubbed, “The Sweat”. “The Sweat” first arrived and struck without warning during the heat of high summer and it painfully killed thousands that it infected within a mere matter of hours.  It mowe...

Located on Florida’s Gulf Coast only a few miles off of Interstate Highway 75 is a place called the Koreshan Historic Site.  The Koreshan Historic Site is part of the Sunshine State’s expansive and sprawling  Koreshan State Park, which is home to much of rural Florida’s flora and fauna and is  a sanctuary for the state’s many unique species of birds and reptiles. The Koreshan Historic Site and State Park are located within the town of Estero.  Estero sits directly in the middle of the Gulf Coast tourist Meccas of Naples to the south and Fort Myers to the north.  Today Estero is home to about 37,000 people and it first became a thriving community in the 1920’s when construction on Interstate Highway 75, linking the cities of Tampa and Miami, was completed. But, built in 1894 approximately three decades prior to the completion of Interstate Highway 75 is Estero’s most famous building-- the Koreshan Historic Site.  What is known today as the Koreshan Histo...

  Some called him a conman, a scoundrel and even a criminal.  He named himself the “King of the Beggars” and published an international bestseller that detailed his exploits as a wandering vagabond who lived on the margins of accepted society.  He claimed it was a one-hundred percent true autobiography.  His detractors said that his work was nothing more than pure fiction.  But one thing is certain--Bampfylde Moore Carew’s literary talents made him one of the 18th century’s most famous (and infamous!) celebrities. To this very day, nearly three hundred years later, the question still remains--Who really was this self-proclaimed “King of the Beggars” Bampfylde Moore Carew?  And is there anything today that we  know about this man that is even remotely true? History doesn’t tell us exactly when Bampfylde Moore Carew was born, but church records tell us that an infant by that name was  baptized on the 23rd of September in the year 1690 at a churc...

  Tian is a word in Mandarin Chinese that is most closely analogous to the English word Heaven.  The word Tian in both Taoism and Confucianism is used to represent the metaphysical, celestial realm, and it is believed that Tian directly influences the Di, or earthly realm, of time and space inhabited by human beings.   In traditional Chinese culture it was believed that rulers governed due to a “Mandate from Heaven” where they were able to control what happened on earth only because of a balance in the Heavens.  Accordingly, traditional Chinese belief systems hold that if there is a natural disaster, or some other calamitous event on earth, then it must be due to disorder in the Heavens or Tian .  When such a natural disaster occurs, traditionally, it would undermine the authority of earthly rulers. At exactly 3:42 in the morning on July 28, 1976 the Heavens above China were thrown into utter pandemonium when the most deadly and destructive earthquake in...