Last month, a charismatic media personality gave an unusual rendering of Paul Revere's late night ride.  There is not going to be a recounting of that even here, but it is interesting that some of her fans began to edit the Paul Revere article in Wikipedia to reflect her telling. You must be familiar with Wikipedia, an editable encyclopedia.  Anyone can edit it, and it is a good place to begin research but sometimes suffers from pranks and political leanings.

And just the other day, another certain politician claimed that John Quincy Adams was a founding father.  Of course, it soon followed that the John Quincy Adams article at Wikipedia was changed.  In their editing notes, someone wrote, "Please don't edit an historical article based on current events."  Wikipedia is a good place to go for information about music or television shows, but it has its limits.

If you're looking for an authoritative resource to learn about history, and you don't want to be at the mercy of someone with a bias, check out our unique web resource Salem History.  Every time the Library purchases a reference book from Salem Press in the field of history, we get an online version of it for free.  What's special about this is that while most Reference books cannot be checked out for long, the online version is available to you anywhere you have access to the Internet and your Library card. 

The specific volumes we have in Salem History include the decades from the 1930s to the 90s, a biographical dictionary of great athletes, a series of encyclopedias about great events from history including a set about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender events.  And if you're interested in health, environmentalism, the solar system, and literature, there are Salem databases for these as well.  You can see the listing here.

So if you want an authoritative website to get your history from, check out Salem History.  Here, at least, you know you're getting quality material that isn't influenced by someone's spontaneous wish to "change history" to suit the political climate.