Stranger Things Have Happened

A history blog, focusing primarily on the author's research and reading in American (particularly colonial, Revolutionary, and Native American) history.

Sunday, March 29, 2026

Our Overdetermined Future

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There is a joke about future expectations, and how they change within a society over time, and it goes like this: Baby Boomers often seem di...

Wednesday, December 24, 2025

Mormon Cocaine Pirates of the Caribbean

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Everything old is new again. The United States appears to have entered an undeclared naval war with Venezuela, much as it fought an undeclar...

Thursday, November 27, 2025

The Cloth-Wine Context

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David Ricardo (1772-1823), in his musings on the benefits of free trade, used the relationship between Portugal and Britain to demonstrate t...

Friday, October 31, 2025

The Yellowing-Trees Month, in Brief

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What I’ve been reading : The True True Story of Raja the Gullible , by Rabih Alameddine. A biography of modern Lebanon, from the perspecti...

Wednesday, July 23, 2025

Footnote of the Month

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"Yes, one has to wonder: where did they get a monkey? I can provide no answer." So wrote John Belshaw in an endnote to his boo...

Tuesday, July 01, 2025

Pushing the Limits

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Geographical facts tend (I find) to lodge quite firmly in one's mind after one teaches them to students. I've taught Native Americ...

Saturday, May 17, 2025

And When There Was No Crawdad to Be Found

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The annals of the poor may be short and simple, but they need not remain so. The methodologies of social history, pioneered by the French An...

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Dave Nichols

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