Articles by Steven Gilchrist

S ince its creation in the 19th century, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has worked to help people during humanitarian conflicts and natural disasters. The origins of the Red Cross date back to 1863. In that year a five-member committee established the ICRC in Geneva, Switzerland. Jean Henry Dunant, a Swiss businessman, was one member of the committee. In 1862, Dunant wrote A Memory of Solferino . In the book, Dunant recollected his experiences on an Italian battlefield in 1859. He witnessed the pain of warfare first-hand and this motivated him to advocate for the establishment of war relief organizations. For more than a century, the ICRC has amassed about 110,000 pictures into a photo archive collection. Close to 90 of these photographs were featured in an exhibition in Boston. The exhibit, “A Memory of Humanity: From Solferino to Guantanamo – 145 Years of Red Cross Photography,” was on display in the Adams Gallery at Suffolk ...

A pril 6, 2009 marked the 100th anniversary of the discovery of the North Pole. Matthew Alexander Henson was one of the members of the original team that discovered the North Pole on April 6, 1909. Henson was born on August 8, 1866 in Charles County, Maryland. When Henson was 13 years old he became an orphan after his parents died. In order to support himself Henson became a cabin boy on a ship. Eventually he sailed to different places around the world. During this time he became a skilled navigator. In 1887, while working in a Washington, D.C. hat store Henson met U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Robert Edwin Peary. Later, Peary hired Henson as an assistant and soon brought the young man with him on sailing expeditions. The first was a survey trip to Nicaragua in 1887. Peary thought that Henson would be an indispensable part of his quest for discovering the North Pole. Between 1891 and 1909 Admiral Peary and Henson went on seven expeditions to the Arctic. Henson’s primary task was to learn ...