History
Anything to do with History
Rahsaan
@Rahsaan -
26 days ago
US President or American Caesar?
The prospect of a second Donald Trump victory in November’s US election has widely been seen – at least by liberal commentators –as an apocalyptic threat to democracy. Indeed, the coming election is sometimes framed as a binary clash between democracy and autocracy. Some ...continued
8 minutes read
Giles
@Giles -
about 1 month ago
Aliens and the Enlightenment | History Today
For millennia everybody knew that human beings enjoy a privileged, unique position at the centre of the universe. That self-confidence began to crack after Nicolaus Copernicus suggested that the Earth goes round the Sun and an exciting but frightening possibility emerged:...continued
8 minutes read
Rex
@Rex -
about 1 month ago
‘After the Flying Saucers Came’, ‘Think to New Worlds’ and ‘How to Think Impossibly’ review
In June 1947 Kenneth Arnold was flying a small plane over Mount Rainier in Washington when nine bright objects began tracking him at high speed. People have always seen signs and wonders in the skies, but once Arnold identified these things as ‘saucer-like’, he inaugurate...continued
8 minutes read
Muriel
@Muriel -
19 days ago
Solving the Victorian Housing Crisis
In 1866 James Hole, a writer from Leeds, called for ‘a little wholesome despotism’ in tackling the problems of housing the urban working classes. He was not alone in favouring a no-nonsense, top-down approach. ‘You must have little short of a despotism with respect to the...continued
6 minutes read
Bart
@Bart -
about 1 month ago
Free French Bombers Over France
During the Second World War the Allies waged a bombing campaign over occupied France that cost the lives of more than 57,000 civilians. As the raids intensified in 1944 they provoked a fierce backlash from the French population. Among the bombers, however, were French squ...continued
5 minutes read
Anderson
@Anderson -
5 days ago
The Ballad of the Inquisition’s Greatest Witch Trial
Like all legal institutions, the Spanish Inquisition recognised that justice needed not only to be done but also to be seen to be done. Its public judgments were solemn occasions, as befitted a religious body concerned with the salvation of souls. An auto de fe, or ‘act o...continued
6 minutes read
Rex
@Rex -
about 1 month ago
The Roman Catholic War on Wigs
A rather unusual petition from October 1716 is tucked away in the pope’s diocesan archives in the basilica of San Giovanni in Rome:Antonio Piervenanzi, parish priest of San Benedetto in Piscinola, has found himself in poor health since the month of September on account of...continued
5 minutes read
Marlon
@Marlon -
about 1 month ago
The French Resistance: Fantasy and Failure
In the summer of 1940 millions of French men and women were beginning to grasp the reality of the Armistice signed by Marshal Pétain on 22 June that year. The elderly First World War veteran – known as the ‘Lion of Verdun’ and now in his mid-80s – had become the head of t...continued
1 minute read
Juliet
@Juliet -
about 1 month ago
The Last Testaments of Richard II and Henry IV
On 7 June 1376 the Black Prince, heir to the throne of England, made his will. He had been ill for eight years, but still, on what would prove to be the day before his death, he was as preoccupied as ever with both magnificence and control. He specified the lavish design ...continued
1 minute read
Teagan
@Teagan -
11 days ago
How Did the First World War Change the Arts?
‘What the war released above all was a spirit of ephemerality’Mark Polizzotti is Head of Publications at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and author of Why Surrealism Matters (2024)The First World War and its aftermath are often paired with the rise of modernism, that moral...continued
8 minutes read
Madalyn
@Madalyn -
over 2 years ago
The Roma Holocaust | History Today
Robert Ritter, head of the Racial Hygiene and Demographic Biology Research Unit of Nazi Germany’s Criminal Police, conducting an interview with a Romani woman, 1936 © Galerie Bilderwelt/Hulton Getty Images. In 1944, I was deported to the concentration camp in Terezín, whe...continued
18 minutes read
Kraig
@Kraig -
over 5 years ago
Doctoring the Ladies | History Today
One might assume that an account of how 18th-century women participated in the life of the English universities (at that point restricted to Oxford and Cambridge) would be a very short one. After all, women’s colleges only began to open their doors at end of the Victorian...continued
18 minutes read
Assunta
@Assunta -
about 1 year ago
Why Egypt Went to War in 1973
Anwar Sadat raises the Egyptian flag over Sinai, 26 May 1979. William Karel/Getty Images.Fifty years ago, on 6 October 1973, 32,000 Egyptian soldiers crossed the Suez Canal to hoist Egypt’s flag over the Sinai Peninsula, following six years of Israeli occupation. The surp...continued
17 minutes read
Izaiah
@Izaiah -
almost 2 years ago
Heirs and Spares | History Today
Louis XIV and his brother Philippe d’Orléans with their governess, the marquise de Lansac, French, 1643 © Akg-images.Rumours flew across Paris in the summer of 1658 that the 19-year-old Louis XIV was seriously ill, perhaps near death. Senior courtiers rushed to form a new...continued
18 minutes read
Raoul
@Raoul -
over 4 years ago
Removing That Little Knot | History Today
Using chloroform, scissors and a hot iron, the surgeon Isaac Baker Brown sought to cure the nervous conditions and emotional disorders of middle- and upper-class Victorian women. At his clinic in Notting Hill, west London, he excised the clitoris, an operation in which he...continued
18 minutes read
Eleanora
@Eleanora -
almost 5 years ago
Empire and Celebrity | History Today
On 7 November 1777, a letter in the London Morning Post described a ‘strange monster’ being driven in a phaeton along Fleet Street. Notwithstanding the creature cannot be old; its eyes looked something like those of a dead cod, – its mouth rather large, and it grinned not...continued
17 minutes read
Nelson
@Nelson -
almost 5 years ago
Beyond Bletchley: GCHQ and British Intelligence
This year, the UK’s signals intelligence, cyber and security agency, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), marks its centenary. Formed in 1919, GCHQ – the largest, yet least understood, of Britain’s intelligence agencies – has been at the forefront of securit...continued
17 minutes read
George
@George -
almost 5 years ago
Misery in the Head | History Today
Migraine affects one in seven of the world’s population – approximately a billion people. The World Health Organisation calculates it to be the seventh most disabling among all global diseases, more prevalent than diabetes, epilepsy and asthma combined. Virtually everyone...continued
17 minutes read
Minnie
@Minnie -
over 1 year ago
The King Who Wasn't There
Prester John on his throne in Ethiopia, from a map of East Africa in the Queen Mary Atlas, by Diogo Homem, Portuguese, 1558. © British Library Board. All Rights Reserved/Bridgeman Images.Early in 1145, worried about the growing threat of Muslim forces intent on reconqueri...continued
14 minutes read
Myles
@Myles -
8 days ago
Euripides’ Lost Plays | History Today
Surprises aren’t something you normally associate with the study of ancient Greek drama. Yet in September 2024 scholars meeting at the University of Colorado Boulder were treated to just that. Two academics based at the university presented what they believe to be portion...continued
9 minutes read
Alvah
@Alvah -
about 5 years ago
Beyond Good and Evil | History Today
It was not the front, but the journey to the front that was the worst: ‘There was some shit in people’s pants, I tell you.’ Two years into the war, Otto Dix had seen it all. In 1914 he had signed up enthusiastically to the field artillery. Back then, people had assumed th...continued
17 minutes read
Garnet
@Garnet -
about 2 years ago
‘The Vote is of the People’
The MCP’s Livro de Leitura para Adultos, 1960s. Courtesy of Courtney J. Campbell.In 1960 Norma Porto Carreiro and Germano Coelho – a couple from the northeastern state of Pernambuco – created a social movement designed to teach Brazil’s poorest people to read. The Popular...continued
15 minutes read
Sandrine
@Sandrine -
about 5 years ago
Life on the Mississippi | History Today
For over 2,000 miles, the Mississippi River snakes through the heart of America along the course it has followed more or less since the last Ice Age, drawing in most of the water between the Rocky and Appalachian Mountains. It is a contrary river, too, shifting its delta ...continued
16 minutes read
Ryleigh
@Ryleigh -
11 months ago
Best New History Books of 2023
‘This is how economic history should be done’Peter Brown is Philip and Beulah Rollins Professor of History, Emeritus at Princeton University and author of Journeys of the Mind: A Life in History (Princeton, 2023)Meticulously researched and written with flair, Ekaterina Pr...continued
11 minutes read
Geovany
@Geovany -
over 4 years ago
The Great Rabbit Hoax | History Today
On a Friday two weeks before Christmas 1726 news reached Exeter of a curious theatrical performance which had taken place in London the previous Saturday night, on 10 December. An Exeter newspaper reported that, at the end of the main play at the Lincoln’s Inn Fields thea...continued
15 minutes read