History: January 2018 Archives
Did the fabled Phoenicians ever actually exist? | The Spectator
"In Search of the Phoenicians explores the links that connected these people, language and religion foremost among them, while emphasising the absence of ties based on nationhood and ethnicity. To the extent that we can gauge how Phoenicians looked at themselves, ties and communities were more based on cities, families and religious practices than on anything else. The cult of the Tyrian god Melqart, for instance, known to Greeks as Herakles, tied together Phoenician settlements throughout the Mediterranean, in addition to the Greek diaspora. The child-sacrifice cult of Baal Hammon (Kronos in Greek, generally Saturn in Latin) seems not to have caught on to the same degree.
"No one called themselves 'Phoenician' in Phoenician, not least because phoenix is a Greek word -- for palm tree. From all the available evidence, the first person to identify himself as Phoenician was the writer Heliodorus from Emesa (in what is today the Syrian city of Homs) in the 4th century."
Andrew Roberts's guide to Churchill on screen | The Spectator
"Still the best depiction of Churchill on a screen is in the eight-part TV series The Wilderness Years (1981), in which Robert Hardy inhabited the part of Churchill to such a degree that it affected everything else he did to a greater or lesser extent. (Can one see something of Churchill in Hardy's depiction of the Minister of Magic in Harry Potter?) Hardy's profound reading about Churchill, and friendship with Sir Martin Gilbert, Churchill's biographer, helped make the series the success it was, and set the standard for everything that followed."
Bill Clinton lost president's nuclear codes, and nobody found out - Business Insider
"However, around 2000, according to [Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Hugh] Shelton, a member of the department within the Pentagon that is responsible for all pieces of the nuclear process was dispatched to the White House to physically look at the codes and ensure they were correct -- a procedure required to happen every 30 days. (The set of codes was to be replaced entirely every four months.)
"That official was told by a presidential aide that President Bill Clinton did have the codes, but was in an important meeting and could not be disturbed.
"The aide assured the official that Clinton took the codes seriously and had them close by. The official was dismayed, but he accepted the excuse and left....
"Shelton and [Secretary of Defense William] Cohen feared the saga would reach the press and become an embarrassing story. But word of the missing codes never made it out, and Shelton's recounting of it in his 2010 book was, to his knowledge, the first time it had been shared publicly."
