Anti-abortion activists who recently released a series of covertly filmed videos have contended that Planned Parenthood officials sought profits from their programs providing post-abortion fetal tissue to researchers. Planned Parenthood said the videos were deceptively edited and denied seeking any payments beyond legally permitted reimbursement of costs.
Unlike many American cities, Boston's celebration of Columbus Day is a major event. With big parades and brass bands, the city's tributes to Christopher Columbus celebrate Boston's rich Italian-American immigrant history by honoring Italy's most famous explorer. So why is there a huge monument to Leif Erikson on Commonwealth Avenue?
In 1887, Harvard Professor and philanthropist Eben Horsford commissioned this bronze statue from sculptor Anne Whitney. Horsford believed that Erikson founded his legendary settlement Vinland in Massachusetts 500 years before Columbus landed in the Americas. Like the other prominent Brahmins of his time, Horsford adopted Danish historian Carl Christian Rafn's theories that Erikson arrived in New England. Rafn's ideas gained momentum when the American professor and diplomat, Rasmus Anderson, published America Not Discovered by Columbus in 1874.
