History

Anything to do with History

Garnet @Garnet - over 3 years ago

There’s a World Out There

Both producers and consumers of history tend to divide roughly into two camps. There are those who seek to find the present in the past, using examples from history to confirm their current prejudices. And there are those who engage with the past on its own terms, howeve...continued

2 minutes read

Cynthia @Cynthia - over 2 years ago

Lucy and Lucretius | History Today

Sometime in the 1650s Lucy Hutchinson began her verse translation of Lucretius’ De rerum natura, ‘On the Nature of the Universe’. Written in the first century bc, and rediscovered in 1417 by the Italian humanist Poggio Baracciolini, Lucretius’ masterpiece was a sensual, w...continued

2 minutes read

Nestor @Nestor - over 3 years ago

Execution of the Tailor-King | History Today

Today, the spire of the church of St Lambert in Münster still has three unusual adornments: cages. They were first hung on 22 January 1536 to hold the mutilated bodies of Jan Bockelson and two other leaders of the Anabaptist sect that had ruled the north-west German city ...continued

2 minutes read

Jessika @Jessika - over 3 years ago

Birth of an Imperial Historian

Few, if any, historians have been so high born as Anna Komnene, eldest daughter of Byzantine emperor Alexios I, who came into the world on 1 December 1083.Alexios had seized the imperial throne and, on his death in 1118, Komnene herself plotted to take power instead of he...continued

2 minutes read

Gregoria @Gregoria - almost 3 years ago

Saint for All Seasons | History Today

James Comey, former director of the FBI, was questioned in June 2017 at a hearing of the US Senate Intelligence Committee by Senator Angus King. At issue was President Trump’s requests for Comey to drop an investigation into National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and his...continued

2 minutes read

Muriel @Muriel - about 2 years 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

2 minutes read

Anderson @Anderson - over 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

2 minutes read

Moises @Moises - almost 3 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

2 minutes read

Iva @Iva - almost 5 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

2 minutes read

Casper @Casper - over 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

2 minutes read

Iva @Iva - almost 5 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

2 minutes read

Angus @Angus - almost 3 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

2 minutes read

Elaina @Elaina - almost 2 years 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

2 minutes read

George @George - about 3 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

2 minutes read

Bart @Bart - over 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

2 minutes read

Erik @Erik - 3 months ago

The Original Bonfire of the Vanities

‘Piagnoni’, they were called: ‘weepers’. They were gangs of boys and young men – mostly middle class – who patrolled the streets of Florence in the 1490s, shouting abuse at the visibly impious: drunks, gamblers, women. They were called ‘pinzocheroni’, too: bigots. They, l...continued

2 minutes read

Jessika @Jessika - 4 months ago

India’s Kuka Revolt Ends in Death

Was it even a revolt? Afterwards, there were doubts. But in January 1872 the British Empire’s man in Punjab, deputy commissioner John Lambert Cowan, was sure.There had been unrest among the minority Namdhari Sikh population – ‘Kukas’, the British called them – in what was...continued

2 minutes read

Gregoria @Gregoria - over 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

2 minutes read

Torey @Torey - about 2 months ago

The Death of Einhard the Historian

They must have looked odd together, the Frankish king and the courtier who later memorialised him. Charlemagne was tall for the period, around six foot three. Einhard meanwhile, his friend Walahfrid Strabo wrote, was ‘despicable in stature’ – a ‘tiny manlet’, in Einhard’s...continued

2 minutes read

Devin @Devin - over 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

2 minutes read

Alvah @Alvah - about 3 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

2 minutes read

Jimmy @Jimmy - almost 3 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

2 minutes read

Teagan @Teagan - over 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

2 minutes read

Giles @Giles - about 1 month ago

The Vienna Secession is Founded

On 3 April 1897 a meeting between 19 artists in a Viennese coffee house yielded a new movement, the Vereinigung Bildender Künstler, better known as the Vienna Secession. At its head was a young Gustav Klimt.Art in Vienna was controlled by the Künstlerhaus, the artists’ pr...continued

1 minute read

George @George - almost 3 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

2 minutes read