Author: James Wesley Rawles

April 16, 1746: Battle of Culloden, the last battle on British soil: Royalist troops under the Duke of Cumberland defeat the Jacobite army of Charles Edward Stuart. The Jacobite Rising — which began a year before — was an attempt by Charles Edward Stuart to regain the British throne for his father, James Francis Edward Stuart. April 16th is the birthday of two notable novelists– the late J. Neil Schulman (pictured) and Samuel Youd. Agorist-Libertarian activist J. Neil Schulman (born April 16, 1953, died 2019) was best known as author of the novel Alongside Night. The late Samuel Youd (born …

On April 15, 1989, a small group of students initiated a pro-democracy protest on Tiananmen Square in Beijing. The death of reformer Hu Yaobang triggered the demonstrations, which grew in size and were brutally dispersed in the Tiananmen Square Massacre on June 4. April 15th is traditionally Tax Day, but I prefer to remember it as Roy Clark‘s birthday. He was born April 15, 1933. April 15th, 1912, is the anniversary of the sinking of the “unsinkable” Titanic. 1,517 people lost their lives on the maiden voyage. As research into the incident has progressed over the last 100 years, it …

On April 14, 1902, James Cash Penney opened his first store, The Golden Rule Store, in Kemmerer, Wyoming. His enterprise eventually grew into a large chain of J.C. Penney stores. — On this day in 1865, just after the effective end of the American Civil War, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth while attending a production at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., and died the next morning. — On April 14, 1828 Noah Webster published An American Dictionary of the English Language; based on the principle that word usage should evolve from the spoken language, the …

On April 13, 1943, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial was dedicated in East Potomac Park on the south bank of the Tidal Basin in Washington, D.C..  Jefferson was born April 13, 1743. (He died on July 4, 1826 just a few hours before the death of John Adams. How patriotic of both of them to pass away on the Fourth of July.) — SurvivalBlog Writing Contest Today we present another entry for Round 112 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. The prizes for this round include: First Prize: The photovoltaic power specialists at Quantum Harvest LLC  are providing a store-wide 10% …

On April 12, 1861, Fort Sumter, one of the few military installations in the South still in Federal hands, came under fire from Confederate guns in Charleston, South Carolina, thus initiating the American Civil War. April 12th is the birthday of the late novelist Tom Clancy. (Born 1947, died October 1, 2013). It was Clancy who almost single-handedly created the modern techno-thriller genre, with his first novel, The Hunt For Red October. Coincidentally, Tom Clancy’s first literary agent is now my agent, Robert Gottlieb. — Joshua at Ready Made Resources wrote to mention:  “For the month of April, anyone placing …