History

Anything to do with History

69ab36bf73ce82cc3579c8f2504f3bac Gregoria @Gregoria - over 2 years ago
Go with the Flow | History Today
Terje Tvedt’s study of the Nile is a mixture of history, journalism and travelogue. Originally published in Norwegian in 2012, now translated into English for the first time, the author seeks to show how the river has exerted a significant influence on the lives of those ...continued
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2cb2f1cf49e001b23749fba977acd24a Casper @Casper - about 2 years ago
Beware the Milkmen | History Today
When wiretaps were first used in British military campaigns in the 1880s, soldiers called the practice ‘wire milking’ and the tappers themselves were known as ‘milkmen’. By 1955 the technology had developed substantially, spreading to domestic use. In that year an anonymo...continued
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0dc07c0d4e39afa6eb19dda76eb11879 Kristina @Kristina - over 3 years 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
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56a34dc91390858efd1999c86a89c348 George @George - over 3 years ago
Grim Outlook | History Today
On the eve of its demise after the First World War, the Ottoman Empire could still claim to be one of the largest empires in the world. It owed its impressive size not to the feats of its most famous sultan, Suleiman the Magnificent, but rather to his father, Selim the Gr...continued
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61d3ff630fa6a556085f59f9ba20938e Assunta @Assunta - over 2 years ago
Y Byd Newydd | History Today
Wales’ relationship with the United States is less obvious and far less culturally celebrated than that of Ireland or Italy, but, as Vivienne Sanders reveals in Wales, The Welsh and the Making of America, Welsh migrants also had a part to play in the country’s development...continued
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7094e9deddcf03241ed9894017ba09bc Rose @Rose - over 2 years ago
Ultimate Sacrifice | History Today
When Ethel Rosenberg was awaiting trial at the Women’s House of Detention in 1951, she would often, after lights were out, belt out songs in her high soprano voice. Miriam Moskowitz, a fellow prisoner, recalled that Ethel was treated ‘like a lady’ and well liked, even by ...continued
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Efd687c46d03677522c615b86a341217 Emmie @Emmie - over 2 years ago
Hitler’s Men in the States
Frederick the Great once said that his French military opponent, Marshal de Soubrise, was always followed by a hundred cooks: ‘I, on the other hand, am always followed by a hundred spies.’ The Nazis, inspired by the Prussian king, constructed a spy ring in the United Stat...continued
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61d3ff630fa6a556085f59f9ba20938e Assunta @Assunta - almost 2 years ago
No Dinner Party | History Today
As Mao Zedong put it, a revolution is ‘not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture’, but ‘an act of violence by which one class overthrows another’. Lenin would not have disagreed but preferred to extol revolution as ‘the festival of the oppressed and t...continued
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13026bc1164d1ff880b91138506d70e7 Ismael @Ismael - over 2 years ago
Strength and Guile | History Today
The Special Boat Service is Britain’s original and most secretive special operations unit. Its present incarnation is part of the UK’s Tier 1 Special Forces, which, along with the intelligence services, enables the UK to punch above its weight as a global power, especiall...continued
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B32a14d6694cf7df7a187f69ad01ace5 Patrick @Patrick - over 3 years ago
Poking Fun | History Today
According to one of online mythology’s most oft-repeated truisms, if you can conceive of something, there’s porn of it on the internet. To which we might add: if you can imagine something, then someone in history has carved, drawn, painted, etched, handwritten, collaged a...continued
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192059156a7075f96be3d979645bdbcc Zackery @Zackery - about 3 years ago
Long Division | History Today
The British Empire is often presented as an endeavour that conquered territory, carried out atrocities and looted resources. Max Siollun’s What Britain Did to Nigeria provides some evidence to support that case. But Siollun also provides much-needed nuance: British coloni...continued
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422f200971248def7ffc1673a54fa3cb Grayce @Grayce - over 2 years ago
Inside Outsider | History Today
Hella Pick was one of Britain’s most successful foreign correspondents at a time when prejudice against women in journalism was strong. Over 60 tumultuous years she covered most of the major events of world history. It was by any standards a glittering career. Yet it is n...continued
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9c02f74a2060b9a7d8d9cd41fd6c26ed Clarissa @Clarissa - almost 5 years ago
I'm A Believer | History Today
‘Why was it virtually impossible not to believe in God in, say, 1500 in our Western society, while in 2000 many of us find this not only easy, but even inescapable?’ This question, posed by Charles Taylor in A Secular Age (2007), is popular with historians these days. Eve...continued
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Eb0f1753654cff1630386503eeba7c5d Bobby @Bobby - about 2 years ago
Bad with the Good | History Today
In 1791 Edmund Burke, ‘the father of British conservatism’, commented that: We have in London very respectable persons of the Jewish nation whom we will keep: but we have of the same tribe, others of a very different description – housebreakers and receivers of stolen goo...continued
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0e8bbdb1e225a468900a861824b0da05 Hannah @Hannah - over 2 years ago
Royal Rubble | History Today
Last summer Black Lives Matter protests were widespread in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis and statues seen as symbols of racism or colonialism were torn from their pedestals, daubed with graffiti or quietly removed by the authorities in response. Fa...continued
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6ede9b368e706f8b5e5082140d4d45d9 Moises @Moises - almost 3 years ago
Treacherous Waters | History Today
Britain’s intelligence agencies have come in from the cold. Scholars of the secret state have, over the past years, enjoyed several weighty, authoritative works on the secret services and their coordinating machinery in Whitehall. Fascinating though these contributions ar...continued
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54935a891902e2aabfc16d0ef9ab31da Americo @Americo - about 3 years ago
Open Secrets | History Today
This authorised history of the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), otherwise the official version of Signals Intelligence (Sigint) in Britain, has been a while coming. It should have been published in 2019 to coincide with the organisation’s centenary, but requ...continued
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2f3192374c3e88221a336dc5d319c4a3 Zetta @Zetta - about 2 years ago
Get in the Sea | History Today
After hundreds of years of habitation, what causes a village, town or city to disappear? In the case of Capel Celyn in north Wales, it was water. In the late 1950s Liverpool was in need of a new reservoir to serve its growing population. In 1960 – bypassing the Welsh plan...continued
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Cc9f6ece4882994c85a7dc0305a4b841 Marjory @Marjory - over 3 years ago
The Central Problem | History Today
In recent years concerted efforts have been made to ‘globalise’ the study of the ancient and medieval worlds and to ‘de-centre’ the role of Europe in pre-modern history. Students of the period between the third and seventh centuries have every reason to regard such trends...continued
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A59a299a48e660a4cad891f05afdefa8 Geovany @Geovany - almost 3 years ago
Just a Book? | History Today
Ensconced in his Virginia estate, Thomas Jefferson had a secret project. It called for Enlightenment values, biological adhesives and a penknife. For decades Jefferson, the primary drafter of the Declaration of Independence, set his mind to producing another text: his own...continued
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C8fdc7c246b9dd38f4ef160727d6eec5 Monserrat @Monserrat - almost 3 years ago
Breaking Time’s Arrow | History Today
‘Historians were key architects of empire’, writes Priya Satia, in her meditative, intensive and sweeping critique of the discipline of history. Questions of agency and intention have long been at the heart of historical explanation and critique, but Satia wishes to expos...continued
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1adaf62f6727e453ef8e84f05a069975 Oren @Oren - over 3 years ago
‘Manless Climbing’ | History Today
Shiela Grant Duff was 21 and fresh out of university when she witnessed the violence that followed the Saar plebiscite in 1935. ‘The Nazis can tell their enemies by their eyes’, she wrote in her report for the Observer, warning of the German people’s growing support for N...continued
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5f2a5d252075b249ec8e8890761ce609 Arvid @Arvid - almost 3 years ago
New Year’s Revolutions | History Today
For the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) 1949 was the year of liberation from foreign oppression and feudal backwardness: the beginning of New China, an optimistic vision shared by many non-communists. For their opponents, the year represented the loss of China, as Chiang Ka...continued
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A6c0c46e61817f7ae594dd513e06b21d Elliott @Elliott - about 3 years ago
An Odious Story | History Today
Some 75 years after their demise, Hitler and the Third Reich are arguably bigger business now than they have ever been. Their story still dominates television history, while popular history publishing is seemingly as dependent as ever on repackaging and reselling the bale...continued
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041490c94bd26a3efdf85d49d9b013ba Alexie @Alexie - over 3 years ago
The Spy who Loved | History Today
In 1989, as the twice-decorated KGB agent Colonel Ursula Kuczynski shored up the floundering GDR at public rallies in East Berlin, British spy writers turned to tired cliches. ‘Agent Sonya’, wrote Chapman Pincher, had ‘no doubt, obliged her comrades with some easy sex.’ T...continued
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