Posted: March 9, 2009

Late in the 19th Century, the Government of Egypt divided a pair of Obelisks between the United States of America and Great Britain. One stands in Central Park, New York City, the other on the Thames Embankment in London. Although they are commonly known as Cleopatra?s Needles, they have no historical connection with the Egyptian Queen.

Of interest to us as Freemasons is the fact that there were discovered cemented within these obelisks? bases, a trowel, a lead plummet, a pure white stone. a rectangular stone rough on its upper and lower surfaces, and a recessed stone clearly showing the oblong square The outsides were inscribed with hieroglyphs and with the Mark of the creating Master of Masons. Unfortunately all the writing on the faces of the stone has been eradicated due to acid rain during the last 50 years.

A photograph of the New York obelisk may be seen as it stood in Alexandria before it came to the US may be viewed on Wikipedia.

Posted: January 3, 2009

What famous physician was Worshipful Master of Royal Faith and Friendship Lodge No. 270 in Berkeley, England in 1811, 1812, and 1813? The answer is Dr. Edward Jenner (1749-1823). After training in London and spending a short period as an army surgeon, he spent his career as a country doctor in his native county of Gloucestershire in the West of England. His research was based on careful case studies and clinical observation more than a hundred years before scientists could explain viruses that led to his inventing a serum from the blood of cows that prevented humans from contracting smallpox. So successful did his innovation prove that by 1840 the British government had banned alternative preventive treatments against smallpox. "Vaccination," the word Jenner invented for his treatment (from the Latin vacca, a cow), was adopted by Pasteur for immunization against any disease.

In the eighteenth century, before Jenner, smallpox was a killer disease, as widespread as cancer or heart disease in the twentieth century but with the difference that the majority of its victims were infants and young children. In 1980, as a result of Jenner?s discovery, the World Health Assembly officially declared ?the world and its peoples? free from endemic smallpox.

Posted: January 3, 2009

On A Sunday in July, 1863, General John H. Morgan and his Confederate cavalry rode into Versailles, Indiana, and captured Colonel James H. Cravens and the 300 militiamen under his command. The treasurer of Ripley County was imprisoned and $5,000 of public funds was confiscated. Versailles Lodge AFAM at that time occupied part of the second floor of the County office building. One solder entered the Lodge hall and helped himself to the Officers’ silver jewels. The next day, General Morgan learned of the theft of the Lodge Jewels and ordered them returned forthwith.

In returning the Lodge Jewels, technically spoils of war to which he and his troops had legitimate claim, General Morgan was practicing the principles of Freemasonry which he had learned in his progress through the Degrees, he having been Made a Mason in Davies Lodge No. 22 of Lexington, Kentucky some years before.