Paul Luvera Journal

Did you know that last shots of the American Civil War did not take place in the continental United States but rather in Alaska? It's true. http://www.nps.gov/cwindepth/StateByState/Alaska.html It was about hundred and 50 years ago that supposedly neutral Great Britain secretly transferred to the Confederate Navy at a rendezvous off the coast of Africa a ship, the Sea King, that was renamed the Shenandoah. Built in Great Britain as a supposed troop transport, Great Britain, who claimed to be neutral in the war, constructed…

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I was coming out of a store in my home town of Gig Harbor when I was stopped by middle-aged man who was with a couple of other men selling poppies to support veterans. I told him I would contribute if he could tell me why we celebrated Veterans Day with poppies. He paused and told me that he thought it had to do something with flowers during the Civil War. I gave him money and told he had failed the test. I said it…

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The recent nuclear disaster in Japan and the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the Ukraine are certainly not the first nuclear disasters. But, Chernobyl was the worst nuclear accident in  history. The attempt to contain the  contamination involved some 500,000 workers and cost an estimated 18 billion Rubles which crippled the soviet economy. We had our own nuclear diaster in March of 1979 when a nuclear power plant failure happened at Three Mile Island in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. There was radiation contamination…

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This is a an unusual true story from history about a lawyer who died while defending a client in a murder case under peculiar  circumstances. Clement Vallandigham was an Ohio politician and lawyer. He was the leader of the copperhead faction of the antiwar Democrats during the American civil war. He was a strong supporter of constitutional state’s rights. He believed the states had the right to withdraw from the union and was anti Lincoln. During the Civil War he…

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Allan Island is located just west of Fidalgo island. It is a 292 acre private island. It was named by Charles Wilkes who led the first United States Navy expedition assigned to explore the Pacific Ocean in 1838. He surveyed Puget Sound and named dozens of landmarks including Elliott Bay. Wilkes obsessive behavior and harsh code of discipline was the inspiration for Herman Melville's Ahab in the book Moby Dick. Wilkes named it in 1841 after Capt. William H Allen…

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For many years people would use the phrase "A Hobson's choice" in referring to a situation where they only had one option. The orgin of the phrase is based on actual historical fact. Around the turn of the 17th century Thomas Hobson ran a carrier and horse rental business in Cambridge, England. He rented horses much as cars are rented today. While he had a large number of horses to rent he would require customers to chose the horse in…

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I thought these photos were of interest that I found on the website stumbleupon.com.This is a photo of African American doctors and nurses working to save a Klu Klux Klan member in the ER:  I can't imagine it being cold enough to freeze Niagra Falls, but it did happen and here's the photo of it:

J. Frank Norfleet was a 54-year-old Texas cattle rancher in 1919 when he traveled to Dallas for business involving his ranch. He ended up being swindled out of $45,000 by a group of confidence men which left  him broke. But, that was not the end of the story about the swindle. Behind the swindle was Lou Blonger who had started his career as a saloon owner in Denver Colorado. Blonger established the largest conference ring in the history of the…

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In 1925 France had  recovered from the war and Paris was booming. It was a perfect environment for a scam artist like Victor  Lustig (1890-1947) who became known as The man who sold the Eiffel Tower – twice. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Lustig  One day in May 1925 he saw an article in the newspaper that the city was having trouble paying for the cost of maintaining the Eiffel tower. He was inspired with a new scam. He had fake government stationary printed and…

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As we Americans view with concern the path our country seems to be taking and the resulting fallout on employment, jobs and the homeless, perhaps we might be able to learn from history. While not a perfectly accurate comparison, it is hard to ignore the history of the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. An empire which was such a glorious, wealthy and powerful one for many hundreds of years but, which ended with a whimper. How could that…

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