History

Anything to do with History

Muriel @Muriel - over 1 year ago

Medusa | History Today

The Greek myth of Perseus decapitating Medusa is probably over 3,000 years old. Although Medusa is first mentioned in Greek literature in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, it is the fuller narrative, as told in Hesiod’s Theogony, that is portrayed in this limestone metope – a re...continued

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Anderson @Anderson - about 2 years ago

Birth of ‘Typhoid Mary’ | History Today

The way George Soper told it, it might have been a case for Sherlock Holmes. ‘The typhoid epidemic that broke out in the summer home of Mr George Thompson at Oyster Bay was a puzzling affair’, he told the New York Times. It was 1906 and typhoid was rampant in the city; ne...continued

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Moises @Moises - over 2 years ago

Amelia Earhart goes Missing | History Today

Aged 40, Amelia Earhart disappeared with her plane and her navigator on 2 July 1937 on the longest leg of what was intended to be the first circumnavigation of the world by a woman in an aeroplane. How does that fact change how we read her life?She was, her high school ye...continued

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Iva @Iva - over 4 years ago

The Wild Hunt of Odin

Odin (Woden, or Wotan), the principal pre-Christian deity of the Germanic peoples and the Norse god of the wind and the dead, raises a sword in command of his Wild Hunt across the midwinter sky. Among the other figures in the procession is Thor, son of Odin and the god o...continued

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Casper @Casper - about 2 years ago

Last Stand of Dahomey’s Female Army

Founded in the 17th century, the West African kingdom of Dahomey was a bellicose, expansionist state. The king’s main duty was to ‘make Dahomey always larger’. King Agaju boasted that, whereas his grandfather had conquered two countries and his father 18, he had conquered...continued

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Iva @Iva - over 4 years ago

Antoine Lavoisier Guillotined | History Today

Born into a noble family, the son of an attorney at the Parlement de Paris, Antoine Lavoisier invested his fortune in the Ferme générale, a tax-farming company that collected tax and customs on behalf of the royal government in return for a handsome cut. With his finances...continued

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Angus @Angus - over 2 years ago

The Feast of the Gods

Every other winter the Roman deities gather in honour of Bacchus, the god of wine. The elderly Silenus, tutor to Bacchus, arrives on an ass and at his feet, in blue, is his pupil collecting the wine he has provided and which is served by fauns and naiads. The gods sit at ...continued

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Elaina @Elaina - over 1 year ago

Gold Llama | History Today

The Inca Empire emerged out of Peru’s Andean highlands in the 13th century and, at its greatest extent, stretched for about 3,500 miles down the western flank of South America. It was then the largest empire in the world, ruling a population of around 11 million. The Inca...continued

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George @George - over 2 years ago

Prometheus | History Today

Peter Paul Rubens opened his studio in Antwerp in 1610 and Prometheus Bound was one of his first works to be produced there – though the eagle was painted by Frans Snyders, a colleague renowned for his depictions of the natural world. The scene is that of the Titan Promet...continued

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Bart @Bart - about 2 years ago

Christ and the Doctors | History Today

The only biblical account of an event in Christ’s youth is found in St Luke’s Gospel. Aged 12, he accompanied his parents, Mary and Joseph, to Jerusalem for the Feast of the Passover. When his parents set out to return home to Nazareth, the boy lingered behind. Mary and J...continued

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Gregoria @Gregoria - about 2 years ago

Galvani Discovers ‘Animal Electricity’ | History Today

Would Mary Shelley have conceived of her novel of 1818, Frankenstein, without the work of the Italian scientist Luigi Galvani? Looking back at its creation, she recalled long conversations with Lord Byron and her husband, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, about Galvani’s ide...continued

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Devin @Devin - almost 2 years ago

Publication of A Christmas Carol

‘Marley was dead: to begin with.’ It is perhaps the finest opening to a ghost story. But where did A Christmas Carol begin for Charles Dickens?The answer seems to be a report from the Children’s Employment Commission, published in February 1843. On 6 March Dickens offered...continued

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Alvah @Alvah - over 2 years ago

Death of an Occultist | History Today

The problem with theosophy, W.B. Yeats said, was that its followers wanted to turn a good philosophy into a bad religion. Its founder, Madame Blavatsky, seems to have agreed. ‘There are about half a dozen real theosophists in the world’, she told the great Irish poet. ‘An...continued

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Jimmy @Jimmy - over 2 years ago

The Murder of an Emperor

In the late afternoon of 26 July 1533, Atahualpa, the last true emperor of the Incas, was led out into the public square of Cajamarca in Peru’s Andean highlands. Francisco Pizarro, his conquistador captor, had decided that he must die.Atahualpa had initially impressed the...continued

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Teagan @Teagan - about 2 years ago

Pius X ends use of Castrati

Eunuchs had long sung in the Byzantine church, but it isn’t until the 1550s that castrati appear in western Europe. The first known to enter the Sistine Chapel choir was a Spaniard in 1562; Pope Sixtus V authorised their recruitment in 1589. By the end of the 17th century...continued

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George @George - over 2 years ago

Birth of a Trailblazer | History Today

Gone with the Wind, the 1939 film adaptation of Margaret Mitchell’s novel, which valorises the antebellum South, was always controversial. When producer David O. Selznick announced the production, his decision was widely condemned by Civil Rights organisations. African Am...continued

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Jarod @Jarod - over 2 years ago

Inventor of Jigsaw Puzzle Dies

Thanks to lockdown, UK sales of jigsaw puzzles grew nearly 40 per cent in 2020 and are now worth £100 million. It’s a far cry from their humble origin in a printmaker’s shop off London’s Drury Lane.Children’s publishing emerged slowly across the 18th century. In the early...continued

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Moises @Moises - over 2 years ago

Discovery of the Periodic Table

It came to him in a dream, Dmitri Mendeleev told a friend. He hadn’t slept for three days worrying how to classify the elements. Exhausted, he fell asleep and the answer came.Sadly, this may not be true. To begin with, Mendeleev – born in Siberia in 1834 – had been think...continued

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Madalyn @Madalyn - over 1 year ago

Birth of an Ottoman Traveller

Evliya Çelebi was born in Istanbul on 25 March 1611. He is best known in the Anglophone world through the 19th-century translations of Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall and, more recently, Robert Dankoff. His ten-volume Seyahatname is perhaps the longest piece of travel writing...continued

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Alexie @Alexie - almost 3 years ago

The Edict of Thessalonica | History Today

Emperor Constantine the Great authorised Christianity across the Roman Empire in 313, but it was Theodosius I, half a century later, who put the brute force of the imperial state behind the faith.Policy had vacillated through the fourth century. The emperor Julian had bee...continued

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Manley @Manley - almost 3 years ago

Baptism of Leo Africanus | History Today

For the first English translation of his most influential work, The Description of Africa, he is John Leo. His baptismal name was Joannes Leone de Medici, although he preferred its Arabic form, Yuhannah al-Asad. His birth name was al-Hasan Ibn Muhammad Ibn Ahmad al-Wazzan...continued

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Grayce @Grayce - about 3 years ago

Execution of a Feminist | History Today

The year before Mary Wollstonecraft wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, another writer, Olympe de Gouges, published a comparable call for equality during the turmoil of revolutionary France.De Gouges’ Déclaration des droits de la femme et de la citoyenne, publishe...continued

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Madalyn @Madalyn - over 2 years ago

The Battle of Cannae | History Today

By 216 BC, Hannibal’s Carthaginian army had already won victories against the Romans in the Second Punic War at Ticinus, Trebia and Lake Trasimene. But then came Cannae.According to Polybius, the Senate, terrified by Hannibal’s successes, sent eight legions against him. I...continued

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Angus @Angus - over 1 year ago

France’s Kyivan Queen | History Today

Ukraine has been part of European history since before the Norman Conquest. Remarkably, in the middle of the 11th century, the queens of Norway, Hungary, France and Poland were all Kyivan Rus princesses. The first three were daughters of Yaroslav, Grand Prince of Kyiv and...continued

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Teagan @Teagan - almost 3 years ago

The First Performance of ‘Silent Night’

Silent Night, or Stille Nacht in its original German, is one of the best known songs in the world, but few know anything of its authors.Its lyrics were written in 1816 by a somewhat loose-living Austrian priest named Joseph Mohr. On Christmas Eve 1818, Mohr – then at St N...continued

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