Author Archives: Richard Joltes

The US Civil War and Historical Revisionism

It’s very common these days to hear claims that the US Civil War, often referred to by southerners as “The War of Northern Aggression,” was not in fact caused by a debate over slavery. It was, so modern apologists claim, a matter of states’ rights and resistance to the “tyranny” of the Federal government by […]

Yellow Journalism, Sensationalism, and the Decline of American Reason

The conversation on Facebook started innocently enough, when an old friend posted a link to an article expressing disgust at a recent “revelation” that the Planned Parenthood group was “selling aborted fetal body parts on the open market.” I’d seen a link about this on another site, and decided to take a quick look at […]

The Word from the Front, 25 June 1915

RUSSIANS HURL GERMANS BACK ON THE DNIESTER Some of Linsingen’s Army, After Terrific Four-Day Battle, Are Driven Across the River. LOSSES CALLED ENORMOUS Army from Lemberg Also Halted in Attempt at Great Flanking Movement. GERMANS ADMIT REVERSES Say Foe is Sacrificing Troops with Desperate Recklessness in Bessarabia as Well as Galicia Special Cable to THE […]

The Word From the Front, 23 June 2015

From the New York Times, 24 June 2015 FIRED THIRTY-SIX TONS OF SHOT INTO DUNKIRK But Germans’ Bombardment at 20-Mile Range Caused No Panic. DUNKIRK,  June 23.  (via Paris, June 24.)–Thirty-six  tons of explosives and metal ,were  fired into  Dunkirk yesterday from the German position somewhere behind Dixmude. Several  civilians  were  killed   or wounded, and […]

The Year of the Money Pit

It seems the “History” channel, after having already broadcast one short series on the Money Pit in 2014, decided once was not enough and is running another series on the same subject. Different bat-time, but the same bat-channel and equally bad bat-material, with the usual parade of “theories” (read: “guesses”) and faux science. I guess […]

Oak Island: back in the news again

“in 1795, three boys went on an adventure to visit an island reputed to be the site of a pirate lair…” This is, more or less, how typical accounts of the Oak Island legend begin. And over the last month, the latest in a series of TV “docudramas” about the story has been playing on […]

Thanks, Veterans

In 2002, I received a contact email from a gentleman in Connecticut regarding my work at Oak Island. He was appreciative of my efforts at demystifying the Money Pit tale, and we kicked off a lively correspondence about history, mythology, and folklore. He was very interested when he found out my father had trained as […]

Art Imitates Life

From time to time, someone manages to write an article that, while fictional in terms of context, contains a lot of very solid facts. I happened across one of these today and wanted to share it with all and sundry, because it’s total gold in terms of its content. Here’s the link: Archaeologists Officially Declare […]

Creating Lies for Fun and Profit

I’m not going to sugar coat this. We all know, or at least I hope we do, that the Internet is a sewer. One of the major issues with an free-form setup like the ‘Net, where anyone can open a website and publish anything they want, is that, well, they can publish anything they want. […]

Researching Internet Claims for Fun and (no) Profit

On a fairly regular basis, email appears in my inbox asking about some Internet rumor or other that’s “going around” and whether I have any information on it. The same happens on Facebook, since most of my friends know I’ve been researching legends and folklore for a long time and generally have a good handle […]