Portrait: Guy Fawkes and the Bonfire Night

5 November 2022 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: London, Portrait Reading Time:  17 minutes

by Crispijn van de Passe the Elder

by Crispijn van de Passe the Elder

Guy Fawkes, also known as Guido Fawkes while fighting for the Spanish, was a member of a group of provincial English Catholics involved in the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605. He was born and educated in York; his father died when Fawkes was eight years old, after which his mother married a recusant Catholic. Fawkes converted to Catholicism and left for mainland Europe, where he fought for Catholic Spain in the Eighty Years’ War against Protestant Dutch reformers in the Low Countries. He travelled to Spain to seek support for a Catholic rebellion in England without success. He later met Thomas Wintour, with whom he returned to England. Wintour introduced him to Robert Catesby, who planned to assassinate King James I and restore a Catholic monarch to the throne. The plotters leased an undercroft beneath the House of Lords; Fawkes was placed in charge of the gunpowder that they stockpiled there. The authorities were prompted by an anonymous letter to search Westminster Palace during the early hours of 5 November, and they found Fawkes guarding the explosives. He was questioned and tortured over the next few days and confessed to wanting to blow up the House of Lords. It is jokingly said in Britain that Guy Fawkes was the last man who ever walked into Parliament with honest intentions.   read more…

Portrait: Hamilton Disston, industrialist and real-estate developer

26 October 2022 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: Miami / South Florida, Portrait Reading Time:  8 minutes

Hamilton Disston © Florida Memory Archives

Hamilton Disston © Florida Memory Archives

Hamilton Disston was an industrialist and real-estate developer who purchased four million acres (16,000 km²) of Florida land in 1881, an area larger than the state of Connecticut, and reportedly the most land ever purchased by a single person in world history. Disston was the son of Pennsylvania-based industrialist Henry Disston who formed Disston & Sons Saw Works, which Hamilton later ran and which was one of the largest saw manufacturing companies in the world.   read more…

Portrait: David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s founder and first Prime Minister

21 September 2022 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: Portrait Reading Time:  10 minutes

David Ben-Gurion, 1968 © Fritz Cohen - National Photo Collection of Israel

David Ben-Gurion, 1968 © Fritz Cohen – National Photo Collection of Israel

David Ben-Gurion was the primary national founder of the State of Israel and the first Prime Minister of Israel. Adopting the name of Ben-Gurion in 1909, he rose to become the preeminent leader of the Jewish community in British-ruled Mandatory Palestine from 1935 until the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, which he led until 1963 with a short break in 1954–55.   read more…

Portrait: Britain’s longest-reining monarch, great and exemplary European, conciliator, beacon of stability, constancy, integrity, conscientiousness, Britishness, solid as a rock, institution, inspiration and companion of generations of people around the globe: Queen Elizabeth II and the end of an era

19 September 2022 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Portrait Reading Time:  31 minutes

Queen Elizabeth II in 2015 © Joel Rouse/Ministry of Defence

Queen Elizabeth II in 2015 © Joel Rouse/Ministry of Defence

Elizabeth II was Queen of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms from 6 February 1952 until her death in 2022. She was queen regnant of 32 sovereign states during her life and served as monarch of 15 of them at the time of her death. Her reign of 70 years and 214 days is the longest of any British monarch and the longest recorded of any female head of state in history.   read more…

Portrait: Leonardo da Vinci, Italian painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect

24 August 2022 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: Portrait Reading Time:  7 minutes

Leonardo da Vinci by Francesco Melzi

Leonardo da Vinci by Francesco Melzi

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially rested on his achievements as a painter, he also became known for his notebooks, in which he made drawings and notes on a variety of subjects, including anatomy, astronomy, botany, cartography, painting, and paleontology. Leonardo is widely regarded to have been a genius who epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal, and his collective works compose a contribution to later generations of artists matched only by that of his younger contemporary, Michelangelo.   read more…

Portrait: John Maynard Keynes, English economist

27 July 2022 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: Portrait Reading Time:  8 minutes

Assistant Secretary, U.S. Treasury, Harry Dexter White (left) and John Maynard Keynes © International Monetary Fund

Assistant Secretary, U.S. Treasury, Harry Dexter White (left) and John Maynard Keynes © International Monetary Fund

John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes, CB, FBA, was an English economist whose ideas fundamentally changed the theory and practice of macroeconomics and the economic policies of governments. Originally trained in mathematics, he built on and greatly refined earlier work on the causes of business cycles. One of the most influential economists of the 20th century, he produced writings that are the basis for the school of thought known as Keynesian economics, and its various offshoots. His ideas, reformulated as New Keynesianism, are fundamental to mainstream macroeconomics.   read more…

Portrait: Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, German-American architect and last director of Bauhaus

22 June 2022 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: Architecture, Portrait Reading Time:  23 minutes

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1934) by Hugo Erfurt

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1934) by Hugo Erfurt

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was a German-American architect. He was commonly referred to as Mies, his surname. Along with Alvar Aalto, Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius and Frank Lloyd Wright, he is regarded as one of the pioneers of modernist architecture. The European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award was created in 1987.   read more…

Portrait: Ludwig von Mises, Austrian School economist, historian, logician, and sociologist

25 May 2022 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: Portrait Reading Time:  21 minutes

© Krapulat/cc-by-sa-4.0

© Krapulat/cc-by-sa-4.0

Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises was an Austrian School economist, historian, logician, and sociologist. Mises wrote and lectured extensively on the societal contributions of classical liberalism. He is best known for his work on praxeology studies comparing communism and capitalism. He is considered one of the most influential economic and political thinkers of the 20th century. Mises emigrated from Austria to the United States in 1940. Since the mid-20th century, libertarian movements have been strongly influenced by Mises’s writings. Mises’ student Friedrich Hayek viewed Mises as one of the major figures in the revival of classical liberalism in the post-war era. Hayek’s work “The Transmission of the Ideals of Freedom” (1951) pays high tribute to the influence of Mises in the 20th century libertarian movement. Mises’s Private Seminar was a leading group of economists. Many of its alumni, including Friedrich Hayek and Oskar Morgenstern, emigrated from Austria to the United States and Great Britain. Mises has been described as having approximately seventy close students in Austria.   read more…

Portrait: Marcus Tullius Cicero, a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, and Academic skeptic

28 April 2022 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: Portrait Reading Time:  6 minutes

Bust of Cicero, Palazzo Nuovo, Musei Capitolini, Rome © Freud/cc-by-sa-3.0

Bust of Cicero, Palazzo Nuovo, Musei Capitolini, Rome © Freud/cc-by-sa-3.0

Marcus Tullius Cicero was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, and Academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the establishment of the Roman Empire. His extensive writings include treatises on rhetoric, philosophy and politics, and he is considered one of Rome’s greatest orators and prose stylists. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the Roman equestrian order, and served as consul in 63 BC.   read more…

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