Several famous people narrowly missed boarding the Titanic. One of them was John Raleigh Mott. He was an influential evangelist and a YMCA official who shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1946. He and a colleague were offered free passage on the Titanic by a White Star Line official interested in their work, but they declined and instead took a humbler liner named Lapland. 

Have you ever laughed at God? Your first instinct might be to reply, “Of course not!” Perhaps you haven’t chuckled out loud, but have you dismissed certain claims of Scripture as being ridiculous or impossible?

There is something very special about someone visiting your home and sharing a meal with you. During the global pandemic, we knew what it was to miss out on visiting others in their homes—and on having them visit us for special occasions like Thanksgiving or birthdays. 

In 1897, Adolph S. Ochs, the owner of the New York Times, adopted for his paper the motto, “All the news that’s fit to print”. It was a declaration of his intention to maintain high standards of journalism, as well as to hold to good taste and integrity in the advertising he would permit in the paper. 

The Library of Parliament in Canada is the only part of the building that survived the great fire of 1916—and that dates back to the Victorian Era. The library is a very striking room—a great open rotunda with galleries spanning the circumference. Rising in the centre of the library, in the place of absolute preeminence, is a towering statue of Queen Victoria. The point is that the Queen is at the centre of everything in Victorian Canada. The institution of government—the Dominion itself—is grounded in her rule and exists at her good pleasure. The symbolism is powerful and inescapable.