History

Anything to do with History

Moises @Moises - about 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

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Iva @Iva - over 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

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Casper @Casper - almost 3 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 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

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Angus @Angus - about 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

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Elaina @Elaina - over 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

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George @George - over 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

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Bart @Bart - almost 3 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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Erik @Erik - 7 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

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Jessika @Jessika - 8 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

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Assunta @Assunta - about 1 month ago

Britain’s First Milk Bar Opens

His name was Hugh Donald McIntosh. An Australia-born entrepreneur, he had been a fight promoter, theatrical producer and newspaper magnate. By 1935, however, he was bankrupt. Attempts to resurrect his fortune included an angora rabbit farm and a cake shop. Now, the man th...continued

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Gregoria @Gregoria - almost 3 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 - 3 months ago

Death of a Samurai Legend

Miyamoto Musashi played with time. In 1612 he fought a duel with Sasaki Kojiro, the ‘Demon of the Western Provinces’, on an island in the Straits of Shimonoseki. Kojiro arrived on time; Musashi arrived hours late, carrying a long wooden sword he had just carved from an oa...continued

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Torey @Torey - 6 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

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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

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Alvah @Alvah - over 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

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Jimmy @Jimmy - about 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

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Teagan @Teagan - almost 3 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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Giles @Giles - 5 months 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

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George @George - about 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

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Jarod @Jarod - over 3 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 3 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 2 years 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 - over 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 - over 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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