WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - This Week in Western Civilization: March 9-15

Episode Date: March 9, 2026

This week, Olivia Finch discusses the anniversaries of the birth of Albert Einstein, the death of Harriet Tubman, and Eli Whitney's receiving a patent for the cotton gin.

Welcome to this week in Western Civilization on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm your host, Olivia Finch, bringing new snapshots of history in context. Hello, everyone. Today we'll be covering one important birth, one important death, and one notable event that happened between March 8th and March 14th in Western Civ. On March 14th, 1879, German theoretical physicist Albert Einstein, was born in Ulm, Wurttemberg, Germany. Einstein is best known for developing the theory of relativity, dealing with space-time and gravity, and the mass-energy equivalence formula equation

E equals mc-squared, saying that an object's energy equals its mass times the speed of light squared. It followed from the special theory of relativity that mass and energy are good, are by different manifestations of the same. On March 10th, 1913, American abolitionist and suffragette Harriet Tubman died of pneumonia at the age of either 90 or 91 in the Harriet Tubman home for the aged in Auburn, New York, which she founded to fulfill her dream of opening a home for poor and elderly African Americans. Tubman is best known for escaping from slavery during the Civil War and either directly helping or providing instructions for escape to up to one.

130 other former slaves. In her later years after the end of the Civil War, she also traveled to speak in favor of women's right to vote. I've heard Uncle Tom's cabin read, and I tell you, Mrs. Stowe's pen hasn't begun to paint, what slavery is as I have seen it in the far south. I've seen the real thing, and I don't want to see it on no stage or in no.

No theater. On March 14th, 1794, American inventor Eli Whitney was granted a patent for his invention the cotton gin, one of the key inventions of the Industrial Revolution. This device would separate the fibers of cotton blossoms from their seeds far more expeditiously than by hand, with a combination of a wire screen and small wire hooks. Oh, things were rotten in the land of cotton until Whitney made the cotton gin. Now old times there will soon be forgotten for it gets the work of a hundred men. You've been listening to This Week in Western Civilization with Olivia Finch on Radio Free Hillsdale, 101.7 FM.

I hope you enjoyed this episode, and I'll see you next week.