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News online for Encinitas, Calif.

North Coast Current

News online for Encinitas, Calif.

North Coast Current

News online for Encinitas, Calif.

North Coast Current

U.S. Olympic sprinters (from left) Jesse Owens, Ralph Metcalfe and Frank Wykoff do a light warm-up on the deck of the S.S. Manhattan before they sail for Germany to compete in the 1936 Olympics. (Public Domain image)

Historically Speaking: Olympic gold and what ‘could have been’

Tom Morrow July 31, 2024
The 2024 Olympics opened last week in Paris, but a lot of history has taken place during the last century that is worthy of note. Here are two stories I told you about in past columns.
Jack White, who grew up in Oceanside, is among San Diego’s noteworthy broadcasters, having worked for KGTV Channel 10 for more than three decades. (Courtesy photo)

Historically Speaking: The night one magic master met another

Tom Morrow April 10, 2024
For those who don’t know it, the late KGTV Channel 10 news anchor Jack White not only was a class act as a news reporter, but he was a master magician as well.
Holiday presents. (Photo by Clint Patterson via Unsplash)

Historically Speaking: Christmas of yesteryear in the Middle West

Tom Morrow December 14, 2023
Thoughts of the approaching 2023 Christmas take me back more than eight decades of my life. I recall the anticipated booty that never appeared on the dreamscape during my 1940s and early ’50s. Of course, in those days, what toy land wonders we didn’t know about weren’t missed.
Performer and philanthropist Danny Thomas founded St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in 1962. (St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital photo)

Historically Speaking: Danny Thomas, a man behind the fight against cancer

Tom Morrow June 3, 2023
For television viewers, the name “Danny Thomas” appears on-screen at least once daily. The name appears during St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital commercials in a plea for donations. You’ll see his name on the side of the hospital building as “Danny Thomas, Founder.”
A Sears catalog cover from the early 1960s. (Goodwill image)

Historically Speaking: The nation’s first mail order general stores

Tom Morrow May 10, 2023
Before there were roads connecting the Atlantic to the Pacific and Mexico to Alaska, you could buy goods delivered via railroad freight and/or the U.S. mail. This was more than a century before the Internet, all courtesy of the mail-order catalogs of the Montgomery Ward and Sears & Roebuck companies. It was the Amazon of yesteryear.
Tom Morrow, then a young writer from Iowa, at the world's largest Buddha in Japan. (Tom Morrow photo)

Historically Speaking: Confessions of a writer

Tom Morrow April 16, 2023
Each of us has or will experience a good amount of history as life takes us from one day to the next. Do an assessment of your own life ... you might be surprised.
A portrait of American financier John Pierpont (J.P.) Morgan, painted by Fedor Encke in 1903. (Creative Commons image)

Historically Speaking: The banker who saved America 

Tom Morrow March 22, 2023
In lieu of today’s current financial climate in Washington, D.C., reviewing a bit of national banking history seems to be in order. Today, as it was yesterday, there always seems to be light at the end of a very long financial-ladened tunnel.
Part of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial in Washington D.C., pictuted in December 2018, represents the depths of the Great Depression. (Photo by Sonder Quest via Unsplash)

Historically Speaking: From riches to rags to world leadership

Tom Morrow March 11, 2023
As “dire” as you think things are today in 2023 with our inflation-ridden life, in general could be worse ... and they were just throughout the 1930s. Hopefully, we won’t repeat those days, but somehow history has a way of repeating itself.
The Robert E. Lee mansion, pictured in March 2022, forms a backdrop at Arlington National Cemetery. (Photo by Chad Stembridge via Unsplash)

Historically Speaking: The mansion above Arlington National Cemetery

Tom Morrow February 23, 2023
High on a bluff overlooking Arlington National Cemetery is the southern mansion of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. As Union casualties mounted during the Civil War, officials in nearby Washington, D.C., thought it fitting that fallen Federal soldiers be laid to rest on General Lee’s estate. However, the story is a bit more involved.
The Palomar Observatory, located in northeast San Diego County. (Photo by Kevin Hudnell, iStock Getty Images)

Historically Speaking: The eye on the sky right in our back yard

Tom Morrow February 4, 2023
There’s little doubt that among our younger generations there are a great many who are unaware that the one-time world’s largest astronomical telescope is located on nearby Palomar Mountain, which is less than an hour’s drive from the North San Diego County communities of Oceanside, Vista, San Marcos or Escondido.
Holiday presents. (Photo by Clint Patterson via Unsplash)

Historically Speaking: Christmas of yesteryear in the Midwest

Tom Morrow December 27, 2022
Another Christmas has come and gone, which takes me back more than eight decades of my life. I recall the anticipated booty that never appeared on the dreamscape during my 1940s and early ’50s. Of course, in those days, what toy land wonders we didn’t know about weren’t missed.
Election Day. (Photo by Element5 Digital, Unsplash)

Historically Speaking: 2024 could amount to another election debacle

Tom Morrow November 12, 2022
Former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden should retire and step aside for fresh talent from the Republican and Democratic parties. Such leaders would pump fresh air into a present-day stodgy political atmosphere.
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