The Sidney Sun-Telegraph - Serving proudly since 1873 as the beautiful Nebraska Panhandle's first newspaper

The two books that Abraham Lincoln read often and loved the most throughout his life were the King James Bible, published in 1611, and William Shakespeare's works, first published as the First Folio... Full story

Edward Muir is president of the American Historical Association. In the May issue of that non-profit's magazine, "Perspectives on History," he wrote a column he entitled, "The United States Needs... Full story

This past week I listened to Craig Wortmann's book, What's Your Story: Using Stories to Ignite Performance and Be More Successful. Craig encourages readers to place their stories into a matrix of sixt... Full story

Last time in these pages, I mentioned Jonathan Winthrop's "city on a hill" sermon, "that all the eyes of all people are upon us." Winthrop considered himself a type of Moses who was leading his people... Full story

In recent days, I have begun reading John Barry's book, "Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty." Although published in 2012, Barry tells the... Full story

On February 17, 2023, David Remnick of the New Yorker podcast interviewed Steven Kotkin, history professor at Stanford, and biographer of Joseph Stalin. Kotkin said, "Let's think of a house with ten...

We celebrated St. Valentine's Day two days ago, February 14, a day when we reflect upon our good fortune that we have that special person in our life, our Valentine.  Next Monday, February 20,... Full story

On February 4, 1977, the band Fleetwood Mac released their record-selling "Rumours" album. Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie sang one of its songs, "Don't Stop." "If you wake up and don't want...

 The crooner Bing Crosby first sang "White Christmas" live on the "Kraft Music Hall" radio show on December 26, 1941, nineteen days after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. It was a frightening time...

Elias Boudinot, a member of Congress in the new Federal Government, introduced a resolution in 1789, to form a joint committee that asked President George Washington to call for a day of prayer and...

Gaston Leroux published his novel, “Le Fantome de l'Opera,” or “Phantom of the Opera,” in 1911. Earlier he had worked as a theatre critic for a French newspaper, the “L'Echo de Paris,...

News broke early this month that school officials at New York University fired an adjunct organic chemistry professor named Dr. Maitland Jones, after 82 of his class of 350 students signed a...

In the year 2000, the horror fiction writer Stephen King came out with a different kind of book, a nonfiction book that he entitled, “On Writing: a Memoir of the Craft.” He begins with a series...

Queen Elizabeth passed away last week, Thursday, September 8, 2022, at 96. She was born on April 21, 1926, and had one sibling, a younger sister named Margaret, born August 21, 1930. When ten,...

Vaclav Smil was born in 1943, during World War II, in Czechoslovakia, in the German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. As a teenager, Smil's parents expected him to chop wood, every four hours, to...

Three weeks ago, on July 31, 2022, the former Boston Celtics’ imposing center, Bill Russell, passed away, at age eighty-eight. Over thirteen seasons at Boston, from 1957 to 1969, he collected a...

In the early days of World War II, 1939 to 1940, the Nazi German war machine advanced across eastern Europe, until its soldiers stood on the outskirts of Moscow, deep into the Soviet Union, poised...

On June 26, 1284, officials in a German town called Hamelin hired a musician to rid the town of its rats. The “rat-catcher’s magical flute” hypnotized the rats that followed the piper out of...

The logo for the Broadway musical “1776” features an eaglet inside a broken egg shell, biting down on a flagpole. The small flag atop the pole shows its colors: red and white stripes, and a blue...

The Native American tribes had pet names for George Armstrong Custer. The Crow called him Child of the Morning Star, the Cheyenne labeled him Yellow Hair, but the Lakota Sioux referred to him as Long...

Steve Jobs gave the commencement address at Stanford University on June 14, 2005. In it, he told three stories. The first was how he dropped out of Reed College, in Portland, Oregon. The second was ho...

Tony Hillerman grew up in Oklahoma, and attended St. Mary’s Academy, a boarding school intended for Native American girls. One of the few boys permitted to attend, he developed a sensitivity for the...

In recent days, I have re-read David L. Lindsay’s novel, Body of Truth. In it, he describes a cruel and gruesome civil war that terrorized the people of Guatemala for 36 years, from 1960 until...

Maritime disasters can happen during either war or peace, but either way the loss in terms of human lives hits hard. A bomb, an explosion, a torpedo, a missile, an iceberg, no matter the cause, each...

It might be fabricated, but a story I heard years ago was that Bill Cosby warned a young Oprah Winfrey, to “always balance your own check book.” In other words, he cautioned her to trust only...