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Welcome to A Bit of History

Bits of history, as they come...

This is the blog of Jeremy A. Stern, Ph.D. I am an independent historian and history education consultant. I will be adding content here whenever I have a piece or a historical observation to share.

Keeping memory alive: a family remembrance of persecution and the Holocaust

This year’s Holocaust Memorial Day sparked not only reflection and commemoration, but also rising concerns about the persistence of...

The Salem that wasn't: part two

Part Two. Elizabeth makes the ultimate confession… Knapp’s failed December 7 accusation of a neighbor was her last attempt to throw blame...

The Salem that wasn’t: Elizabeth Knapp, Samuel Willard and the Groton possession crisis of 1671.

Part One. Willard and the Knapps. Two decades before the Salem witchcraft panic, the new town of Groton, Massachusetts, had its own brush...

A lesson from the present: people in the past didn't know the future any more than we do

There is a historical lesson in the social and political turmoil now roiling the United States – even beyond the many historical...

Addendum: Bateson didn't exist, but fear of premature burial did!

The facts show that George Bateson and his belfry were an invention of novelist Michael Crichton. Yet he certainly did not invent the...

A cautionary tale: the myth of George Bateson and his Belfry

An earlier version of this piece appeared on the History News Network in 2013. Secondary sources (the proverbial “history books” and...

A Red Scare in the family

When my uncle Walter ‒ my mother’s brother, twenty years her elder ‒ died in 1998, I found a plain brown envelope long since tossed aside...

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