History
Anything to do with History
Kari
@Kari -
about 12 hours ago
Death of a Medieval Polymath
The visions began when Hildegard of Bingen was young – perhaps just three. The visions did not come in dreams or ecstatic states; ecstasy, she thought, was a defect. They came like a cloud of light inside her, on which forms and shadows moved while her eyes were open and ...continued
2 minutes read
Grayce
@Grayce -
about 12 hours ago
Making Massacre | History Today
Dunblane, Manchester Arena, Sandy Hook: the place names evoke grief and horror, a cry of anguish pinned to a map, each the site of a massacre. Such atrocities might seem as old as time, but the word itself is not. Massacre worked its way into the English language in the l...continued
6 minutes read
Marlon
@Marlon -
4 days ago
Why Study the Past? | History Today
History matters; that much we know. Evidence of its importance is all around us, in cinemas, bookshops, days of remembrance, political discourse and, as has been underlined recently, statues. But why does it matter? Here there is less consensus. Many different justificati...continued
1 minute read
Grayce
@Grayce -
5 days ago
The Last Sikh Queen | History Today
John Newmarch, a British solicitor, published a letter in the week before Christmas 1848 in the widely read Calcutta newspaper, The Englishman. It contained a searing indictment of East India Company policy. He was addressing none other than the Company’s Governor-General...continued
1 minute read
Alexzander
@Alexzander -
6 days ago
The First Blind Medical Trials
In his satirical poem, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809), Lord Byron mocked medical charlatans who repeatedly introduced new gimmicks in order to extort large sums of money from gullible customers:What varied wonders tempt us as they pass!The Cow-pox, Tractors, Ga...continued
1 minute read
Joe
@Joe -
7 days ago
No Such Thing | History Today
The title of The Invention of China, and of each of its chapters that address sovereignty, the Han race, Chinese history, language, national territory and maritime claims, echo The Invention of Tradition. That seminal collection, edited by Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger...continued
5 minutes read
Assunta
@Assunta -
8 days ago
Judith and Holofernes | History Today
Abra, the maidservant of Judith, a Jewish widow renowned for her beauty and charm, wraps the severed head of the Assyrian general Holofernes in a bag. He has been murdered, brutally, by Judith, immediately after she had seduced him. In doing so, she has saved Israel from ...continued
3 minutes read
Elvie
@Elvie -
8 days ago
The Western Gaze | History Today
Over the past hundred years, foreign correspondents have been central to the West’s understanding of Russia’s political and cultural turning points, the revolutions, wars and changes in political power. James Rodgers’ Assignment Moscow focuses on the stories of those jour...continued
3 minutes read
Erik
@Erik -
11 days ago
First Among Equals | History Today
‘I am Toussaint Louverture, you have perhaps heard my name. You are aware, brothers, that I have undertaken vengeance, and that I want freedom and equality to reign in Saint-Domingue.’ Few historical figures can have made their introduction to the public sphere in quite s...continued
5 minutes read
Devin
@Devin -
13 days ago
How To Get Away with Murder
In 176 BC a strange but revealing murder case came before the Roman praetor, M. Popillius Laenas. A woman, unnamed in the sources, was brought before the court on the charge of murdering her mother by bludgeoning her with a club. The woman happily confessed to the monstro...continued
5 minutes read
Bobby
@Bobby -
14 days ago
The Case of the Cursed Charter
In a report for the Archaeological Survey of Ceylon from 1949, the epigraphist Senarath Paranavitana announced the discovery of the ‘most valuable historical document that Ceylon possesses – the oldest known Sinhalese copper-plate charter’. With this announcement, Parana...continued
6 minutes read
Jaydon
@Jaydon -
15 days ago
City and Centre | History Today
The mosaics of the Emperor Justinian and Empress Theodora in the church of San Vitale in Ravenna have featured on the covers of books and have inspired jewellery, perfume, fashion and theatre. Karl Lagerfeld based his 2011 collection for Chanel on Theodora; her very name ...continued
5 minutes read
Anderson
@Anderson -
15 days ago
Intensity of the Idler | History Today
‘I can excuse anything but boredom’, said the Hollywood actor Hedy Lamarr, whose pioneering work on the frequency-hopping technology that gave us secure wi-fi has done much to rid us of ennui. Until lockdown, that is, which has forced many to become reacquainted with bore...continued
1 minute read
Cameron
@Cameron -
18 days ago
The First Svengali | History Today
Whenever Dominic Cummings makes the headlines, commentators reach for the same word to describe his relationship with the prime minister: he is Boris Johnson’s Svengali. But who was the original Svengali? Svengali is one of those rare literary creations that becomes short...continued
2 minutes read
Zackery
@Zackery -
18 days ago
On the Spot: Susan-Mary Grant
Why are you a historian of the United States?It seemed fresh and exciting when I was an undergraduate, and the lecturers at Edinburgh, especially George Shepperson, were very inspiring. What’s the most important lesson history has taught you? That there’s always someone m...continued
2 minutes read
Kristina
@Kristina -
18 days ago
Family Chemistry | History Today
Richard Boyle, 1st Earl of Cork (1566-1643), the ‘Great Earl’ as he was known, was not only immensely powerful in Irish politics but was constantly active in seeking advantageous marriage alliances for his numerous offspring. Profuse evidence concerning the affairs of his...continued
4 minutes read
Alexie
@Alexie -
20 days ago
The Lives of Others | History Today
‘One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other’, says the heroine of Jane Austen’s Emma, playfully trying to reassure her ever-anxious father that other people can enjoy amusements he would never himself like. In Austen’s novel, Emma is often wrong, b...continued
4 minutes read
Nestor
@Nestor -
21 days ago
Is the Story of ‘The Few’ More Myth Than Reality?
‘British industry outproduced German fighter output by a wide margin’ Richard Overy, Professor of History at the University of Exeter Embedded in British popular memory of the Second World War is the image of ‘the Few’ of the Royal Air Force in the Battle of Britain. It i...continued
8 minutes read
Jaydon
@Jaydon -
25 days ago
The Jellyfish Problem | History Today
After turning 30, Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) couldn’t look at a jellyfish without seeing his fiancée’s face. He had first become fascinated with medusae ten years before, while on a fishing trip in Heligoland. Hauling them into his boat, he had been captivated by their str...continued
10 minutes read
Marie
@Marie -
25 days ago
Portrait of the Portrait Artist
In Augsburg’s Staatsgalerie Altdeutsche Meister there is a three-panelled painting illustrating the life of St Paul, painted by Hans Holbein the Elder in 1504. Commissioned for the city’s Dominican convent of St Katherine, it includes a self-portrait of the artist with hi...continued
4 minutes read
Leda
@Leda -
27 days ago
End of the Edge of the World
The small archipelago of St Kilda, 50 miles west of Harris, has long attracted romantic attention for its remoteness, with the sense of strangeness and difference such isolation implies. It is the last and outmost isle, on the edge of the world: a place whose way of life,...continued
2 minutes read
Muriel
@Muriel -
27 days ago
Frankenstein: Between Two Worlds | History Today
Few texts are better known and more widely read than Frankenstein: I have a dozen modern editions on my shelves. But every one of their editors has failed to grasp what Mary Shelley was up to when she wrote it. Mary Godwin, as she was, aged 18, her lover Percy Shelley an...continued
2 minutes read
Jerrold
@Jerrold -
28 days ago
The Lessons of Shell Shock
Free mental health care began 100 years ago, after the First World War, when a handful of doctors and voluntary workers established clinics and hospitals that drew on the ‘talking therapies’ used to treat shell-shocked soldiers. One of the first outpatient psychotherapy u...continued
5 minutes read
Alvah
@Alvah -
29 days ago
Colonial Mentalities | History Today
According to the historian Hilary Beckles, British colonial state forces killed more Black people when suppressing revolts in the Caribbean in the 50 years after slave emancipation in 1838 than in the 50 years leading up to it. Emancipation brought compensation for former...continued
9 minutes read
Abbie
@Abbie -
about 1 month ago
Museum or Mosque? | History Today
Mehmet the Conqueror converted the cathedral of Hagia Sophia to a mosque after the conquest of Constantinople in 1453. It was a symbolic move. The conversion involved minimal physical transformation and even the name remained the same: Ayasofya Camii. Since its constructi...continued
5 minutes read