What Robert Benney did on Saipan 80 years ago
Serendipity led me to finding digital files of Robert Benney's sketches that he did while he served on Saipan 80 years ago.
Continue ReadingMabuhay!
Welcome to this humble corner of the web, where stories bloom and conversations flourish.
Here are some articles that you'll find entertaining, or even perhaps, enlightening.
Featured articles
Below is a smorgasbord of articles on a variety of topics I am deeply invested in
-
-
'Omang'
Bernice Museum field staffer and amateur archaeologist Hans Hornbostel had been traveling in the Marianas collecting specimens. In one of his trips to Tinian, he asked his Carolinian guide to get him "omang" that led to a hilarious miscommunication.
Continue Reading -
King Sejong and his transformative legacy
Korea's King Sejong left a lasting legacy: Hangul. His revolutionary alphabet system democratized literacy, making learning within reach of the social classes other than the nobility.
Continue Reading -
A treaty oak on a postcard from 1909
A serendipitous finding of a 1909 postcard tucked in an old book led a reporter to locating the photo's subject and found to her amazement and amusement that the treaty oak was still standing.
Continue Reading -
Filipinos outnumber locals, other Asians in the CNMI
For two consecutive censuses, there were more Filipinos than local residents in the Northern Mariana Islands.
Continue Reading -
The silent knitters of Camp Holmes
Women were asked to knit pairs of socks and little did they know they were making them for WWII guerrillas. 32 pairs of socks for 32 men serving the guerrilla movement against the Japanese.
Continue Reading -
In Memoriam: Princess Taiping
As Princess Taiping embarked on its transpacific crossing, it carried with it the hopes of a historic voyage. However, its journey was cut short by the unexpected encounter with a freighter near its destination, marking the end of a remarkable endeavor.
Continue Reading -
Vanderbilt, Roosevelt, Kennedy and Grand Central Terminal
As I embarked on my journey from Queens to Manhattan, thoughts of the Gilded Age swirled in my mind: Vanderbilt, J.P. Morgan, Rockefeller, Carnegie—names echoing through time with the weight of history.
Continue Reading -
Relics of warring daimyos
Travel back in time at the Metropolitan Museum in New York City and be fascinated by an assemblage of shogunate period artifacts, most especially, swords and armors.
Continue Reading -
A confederacy of pirates and ronins against Hispanic Manila
Some 6000 Chinese-Japanese pirates led by Limahong attempted to wrestle control of Manila from the Spaniards who had to beef up their defenses to quell the staunch confederacy of pirates.
Continue Reading -
A Navy nurse's fortitude, grit tided her over during 3-year-captivity
In the midst of chaos in war-ravaged Manila, US Navy nurse Laura Cobb served as anchor of her fellow Navy nurses as they responded to emergencies in the aftermath of the Japanese bombings of the city. Subsequently, left behind in the mad rush to retreat, Cobb kept her team of Navy nurses together as they went from one makeshift hospital to another until they ended up in internment camps of Santo Tomas and Los Banos.
Continue Reading -
Who wore this cabasset?
Entombed in a glass casing was a cabasset, perhaps belonging to a set of armor of a sentinel, caught my attention as I was winding my way inside the museum in Cumberland Park. I read cabassets were usually worn by Italians, and not by Spanish guards who had set up a garrison on Cumberland island centuries earlier. But the answers to my questions continued to tantalize me for I am not a trained archaeologist nor a historian. Bereft for answers, I left the museum with a consolation: a snapshot of this helmet with the promise of discovery of the helmet's provenance sometime in the future.
Continue Reading