American Minute

August 1

"There she blows!" cried the lookout, sighting Moby Dick.

Captain Ahab and his chief mate Starbuck sailed the seas to capture this great white whale.

But as fate would have it, when the harpoon struck, the rope flew out entangling Ahab, pulling him under.

This classic was written by Herman Melville, born AUGUST 1, 1819.

Grandson of a Boston Tea Party Indian, Melville's father died when he was 12.

Raised by a mother who inspired his imagination with biblical stories, Herman Melville shipped out as a cabin boy on a whaling ship and later sailed the South Seas with the Navy.

He fell among Typee cannibals in the Marquesas Islands.

Rescued, he wrote in an account:

"These disclosures will...lead to...ultimate benefit to the cause of Christianity in the Sandwich Islands."

In his classic novel, Moby Dick, Herman Melville wrote:

"With this sin of disobedience...Jonah flouts at God...He thinks that a ship made by men will carry him into countries where God does not reign."

In 1983, The U.S. District Court stated in Crockett v. Sorenson:

"Better known works which rely on allusions from the Bible include Milton's Paradise Lost...Shakespeare...and Melville's Moby Dick...Secular education...demands that the student have a good knowledge of the Bible."

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