Has the Western World Been Secularized?
Reading time: 4 minutes. A farmer with many barns full of grain used to pray every day asking God to help the poor. But every time poor people asked him for help, he said he had nothing to give. One day his son heard him pray again. When the prayer was done, he said: “Father,…
The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy – Part 11: Were David Belin and Joe Ball Incompetent Investigators or Competent Liars?
Reading Time: 8 minutes Reading Guide: Dallas, November 22, 1963 – The Forged Photos of the Sniper’s Nest Half an hour after President Kennedy’s assassination, three rifle casings were found on the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository. They lay in front of a window overlooking Elm Street, where Kennedy’s car had passed.…
The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy – Part 10: Where Did It Go Wrong in the Interrogations Led by Joe Ball and David Belin?
Reading Time: 12 minutes Reading Guide: Dallas, November 22, 1963 – The Falsified Photos of the Sniper’s Nest Half an hour after President Kennedy’s assassination, three rifle casings were found on the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository. They lay in front of a window overlooking Elm Street, where Kennedy’s car had passed.…
The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy – Part 9: What Information Did Joe Ball and David Belin Overlook?
Reading Time: 10 minutes Reading Guide: Dallas, November 22, 1963 – The Forged Photos of the Sniper’s Nest Half an hour after President Kennedy’s assassination, three rifle casings were found on the 6th floor of the so-called Texas School Book Depository. They were lying in front of a window overlooking Elm Street, where Kennedy’s car…
The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy – part 8: Falsified Photographs and the Adventures of Three Casings
Reading time: 19 minutes Reading guide: Together with the captions the pictures provide the essence of the story The discovery of the sniper’s nest It was not clear where the shots came from that fatally wounded President Kennedy on November 22, 1963. Many officers first ran to a grassy knoll, where Kennedy’s car drove past…
The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy – part 7: The Investigation of the 6th floor of the Texas Schoolbook Depository building, on November 22-25, 1963
Reading time: 15 Minutes Reading guide: Together with the captions, the pictures provide the essence of the story Dallas, November 22, 1963 at 12:30 p.m. At half past twelve on Friday afternoon, President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. Sitting in the back of a car, he was hit by several gunshots. It was not immediately…
The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy – part 6: Problems of Oswald’s Alibi
Reading time: 7 minutes Reading guide: Together with the captions, the pictures provide the essence of the story Dallas – Friday, November 22, 1963 At half past twelve on a Friday afternoon, President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. Sitting in the back of a car, he was hit by several gunshots. It was not immediately…
The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy – part 5: The Execution of the First Two Line-ups on November 22, 1963
Reading time: 10 minutes Dallas: Friday night, November 22, 19.20 hours “Oh, that’s the way it is going to be?”. That is probably what Lee Harvey Oswald said on Friday night, when he was officially charged with the murder of Officer J.D. Tippit. He said he was innocent and later that evening he would repeat…
The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy – part 4: Callaway and Guinyard as Witnesses of the Murder of Officer J.D. Tippit
Reading time: 8 minutes Together with the captions, the pictures convey the essence of this story Dallas – Friday, November 22 at 13.15 hours At a quarter past one, forty-five minutes after the assassination of President Kennedy, officer J.D. Tippit was murdered while getting out of his car. There was only one witness of this…
The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy – part 3: Helen Markham as a Witness of the Murder of Officer J.D. Tippit
Reading time: 8 minutes Together with the captions, the pictures provide the essence of this story Dallas – Friday, November 22 1963 at 1.15 in the afternoon A few minutes after one o’clock, Helen Markham, a waitress, was walking to a bus stop to go to work. At the intersection of 10th Street and Patton…
The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy – part 2: The Warren Commission and Its Critics
Reading time: 15 minutes Establishment of the Warren Commission In order to prevent the United States from being regarded as the largest banana republic in the world, Lyndon B. Johnson appointed a commission to investigate the murder of his predecessor. The Commission was chaired by Earl Warren (1891-1974), Chief Justice of the United States. Besides…
The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy – part 1: On a Sunny Day in Dallas
Reading time: 15 minutes On the morning of November 22 it had been raining in Dallas, but gradually the weather had improved. On his election tour in Texas, Kennedy would also pay a visit to Dallas, the second largest city of Texas with some 700,000 inhabitants. Having arrived at the airport, Kennedy’s motorcade drove to…
Samuel Sewall: a Witch Judge Who Repented?
Reading time: 9 minutes Samuel Sewall: a Real Hero? Samual Sewall (1652-1730) was a businessman, a landowner and a member of a strict Puritan church community. His marriage had made him a rich man. For more than 30 years, he was also a judge in Boston, a port in one of the British colonies in…
Loving Parents? Part 2: Samuel Sewall (1652-1730)
Reading time: 7 minutes Around 1575, the French philosopher Montaigne remarked that he had lost two or three children as babies “if not without grief, yet without much repining.” He has often been reproached for using these words: how could anyone show so much indifference about the death of his children that he did not…
Loving Parents? Part 1: Cotton Mather (1662-1728)
Reading time: 9 minutes Around 1575, the French philosopher Montaigne remarked that he had lost two or three children as babies “if not without grief, yet without much repining.” He has often been reproached for using these words: how could anyone show so much indifference about the death of his children that he did not…
The Powerless Church in the Netherlands in the 17th and 18th Centuries
Reading time: 9 minutes How could a potentially revolutionary Christianity (“love your neighbor as yourself”) become a travesty of itself? Amsterdam in 1740: the Chilliness of a Christian Society The winter of 1740 was very harsh, it was freezing cold. As a result, there was also a great shortage of drinking-water. At the beginning of…
Culture of Poverty: a Rich Man’s Idea
Reading time: 6 minutes Oscar Lewis and the “Culture of Poverty” Some twenty years ago I did some research into poverty in the Netherlands around 1900. Somehow the question arose whether there was a marked difference between the way of life of the poor as compared to society as a whole. This question was dealt…
To Heaven
Reading time: 2 minutes I. An 88 year old woman decided to learn Hebrew and when a vicar asked her why, she answered: “In the fullness of time I want to be able to greet your Boss in his native tongue.” From: H.V. Zimmermann, Geluksbegrip. Een verkenningstocht door de wereldliteratuur (Bussum 1972), p. 296. II.…
Charity?
Reading time: 2 minutes Some time ago, a friend of mine cycled from the town of Venray to a small village, in the southern part of the Netherlands. He rode along a wide sandy road across the desolate countryside. After a while, he met a pedlar, who carried a small case on his back, containing…
The Scientist and the Cannibal
Reading time: 2 minutes A few years after the Great War a scientist tried to convince a cannibal that western civilization was far superior, because western culture had never known canniblism. After a short discussion the cannibal conceded that cannibalism was wrong. He was not entirely convinced though, and he wanted to know whether white…
‘Cannotunderstand’ and the Idea of Memento Mori
Reading time: 4 minutes The following story was written by J.P. Hebel (1760-1826) in 1811 and is set at the end of the 18th century when German craftsmen were traveling abroad to find work. I first met it in a book written in 1927 by B.W. Willemsen. The orignal story can be found in the…
About a Boy Who Slept Near Corpses
Reading time: 6 minutes It seems obvious that in a time when deaths were very much in the public eye, children were more accustomed to the sight of a corpse. Nowadays, children hardly ever see a dead body. The activities of Gerrit Mulder at the beginning of the 19th century illustrate this vision. Later on,…
Playing With Skulls
Reading time: 7 minutes Playing with skulls, does that still happen? Well, people have done so for centuries. Historians often assume that the attitude towards death and dying has changed, especially during the 20th century. In previous centuries, so it is assumed, people felt closer to death and were therefore more familiar with mortal remains.…
Joyful Funerals?
Reading time: 7 minutes Has Maria Ever Been Happy? Maria Meinertzhagen was born in Cologne in 1712, moved to the Netherlands and married there in 1735. In the 13 years after that, she produced no fewer than eleven children, six of whom died in those same 13 years, and one was stillborn. One baby born…