Our tour group gathered beneath a canopy at the Garden Tomb in Jerusalem, listening to our guide on a beautiful, shirt-sleeve day. To one side, we could hear the singing of another church group gathered near the tomb, and to the other side was the cacophony of the...
Hanging in our basement, next to a Lego model of the Apollo 11 lunar lander, is the front page of a Chicago Tribune, dated July 21, 1969. The headline: “GIANT LEAP FOR MANKIND.†Last year, the United States celebrated 50 years since that incredible day when Neil...
The life of a giant is no piece of cake. I recently listened to a book about the making of the classic movie, The Princess Bride, which featured a humongous actor known as André the Giant. André was a gentle giant, according to the book’s writer, Cary Elwes, who...
We had just stepped off of the bus at the Dan archaeological site in northern Israel when our guide told us to quickly turn around. So our tour group hustled back onto the bus because there had been an incident very close to this site at the border between Israel and...
By Doug Peterson It was pitch dark, it was storming, and Seth Kerlin had no idea if he was heading toward shore or if he was being sucked out to the open ocean. If his small boat capsized or if he was swept out to sea, Seth would not survive. The boat, just a small,...
Publishers Weekly, the main trade magazine for the publishing industry, recently featured a nice review for my latest book, The Call of the Mild. The book, which I co-wrote with Torry Martin, is a sequel to Of Moose and Men, and it continues the wild but true...
I made my way through the narrow passage, following a single-file line of tourists. But if this were the 1600s, I would be following a line of prisoners, and our friendly tour guide with the headset would most likely be our jailer. I reached one of the small windows...
The sky was as blue as the Aegean Sea when my wife and I left our hotel and hiked off to visit the Parthenon, the ancient ruins of a temple that has stood at the heart of Athens for about 2,500 years. Before we climbed the winding slope leading up to the Acropolis,...
"For the first time in centuries, scientists have exposed the original surface of what is traditionally considered the tomb of Jesus Christ," says an online article from National Geographic. "Located in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Old City of Jerusalem,...
Two Irish lads, Jim Quinn and Paddy Flanagan, were digging around in a potato field in 1878 when they struck silver. They dug up a hoard of stunning metalwork dating back to the 7th or 8th centuries—a treasure trove that included the famous Chalice of Ardagh. My...