History
Anything to do with History
Eleanora
@Eleanora -
over 2 years ago
Fools at Court | History Today
The family of Henry VIII, c.1545. The figure on the far left is thought to be Jayne Foole. Royal Collection Trust © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, 2022/Bridgeman Images.In the Tudor court disabled people were hidden in plain sight and are often forgotten in histories of ...continued
5 minutes read
Maida
@Maida -
over 4 years ago
Life in the Time of Plague
Nearly 30 years after his accession to the throne and following a long struggle to provide a healthy male heir, Henry VIII had finally produced the legitimate son he craved. At around 2am on Friday 12 October 1537, Prince Edward, the future Edward VI, was born at Hampton ...continued
5 minutes read
Alvah
@Alvah -
over 1 year ago
Messy Beginnings | History Today
Mughal emperor Jahangir holding a portrait of his father, Akbar the Great, 17th century. Bridgeman Images.Nandini Das’ captivating new book about Sir Thomas Roe’s embassy to the court of Mughal emperor Jahangir in 1615-19 begins with a map. With its detailed coastlines, u...continued
5 minutes read
Anderson
@Anderson -
almost 3 years ago
Crimes of Fashion | History Today
A public washing ground. English 17th-century engraving. Alamy.Could something as mundane as a shirt ever be the motive for murder? What if clothing were more expensive than rent or a mortgage? In 1636 a maidservant, Joan Burs, went out to buy mercury. A toxic heavy metal...continued
5 minutes read
Allene
@Allene -
almost 5 years ago
The Best Articles of 2019
Another year and what have we learned? That the Dutch Golden Age was bookish, what it was like inside a medieval brothel, the root of the Nazi obsession with witches, how fans worked in British India, why Iran overthrew the shah and lots more. As usual, we’ve chosen a sel...continued
3 minutes read
Jarod
@Jarod -
over 4 years ago
A Hospital ‘Manned by Women’
The speed with which the government created NHS Nightingale Hospitals to tackle the coronavirus pandemic has prompted awe – even if they haven’t proved as necessary as expected. Yet just over 100 years ago women moved with similarly remarkable speed to set up emergency ho...continued
5 minutes read
Delia
@Delia -
over 4 years ago
Revolutionary Domesticity | History Today
Spinning yarn from cotton or flax is careful, necessary work which has become invisible in modern life. But at the dawn of the American Revolution, it was revolutionary. Women across the colonies organised spinning bees to protest British regulations and altered their pur...continued
5 minutes read
Minnie
@Minnie -
over 1 year ago
The Indelible Hulk | History Today
Prison hulks on the Thames, by William Henry Pyne, 1805. The Print Collector / Alamy Stock Photo.In three couplets, American revolutionary Philip Freneau lambasted a new type of prison:The various horrors of these hulks to tellThese Prison Ships where pain and horror dwel...continued
5 minutes read
Zackery
@Zackery -
almost 3 years ago
A Peach of a Project
Lawrence du Garde Peach’s Ladybird book on Charles II. Alamy.The playwright Lawrence du Garde Peach (1890-1974) is remembered today as the author of most of the books in the Ladybird Adventures from History series. These were a series of inexpensive, colourfully illustrat...continued
5 minutes read
Ezequiel
@Ezequiel -
over 1 year ago
Writing Wrongs | History Today
Harp of Erin: Frances Browne, late 19th century. The History Collection / Alamy Stock PhotoNews travelled slowly in the 1840s. Newspapers that were often printed just once or twice a week had to be carried overland by horse-drawn coaches and overseas by vessels that took ...continued
5 minutes read
Hank
@Hank -
almost 5 years ago
Rewriting History | History Today
In 1810, during his first Grand Tour of Europe, Byron carved his name into a column base of the Temple of Poseidon on the Aegean coast. Although Byron himself might not have actually written the name that is left there, the story has become part of the history of the monu...continued
6 minutes read
Patrick
@Patrick -
about 5 years ago
County Lines | History Today
Gillian Darley embraces several disciplines. She is variously historian, anthropologist, topographer, geographer – but on no account psychogeographer: she is courteously dismissive of edgelands expressionism, perhaps too hastily dismissive given the sympathetic hearing sh...continued
5 minutes read
Bart
@Bart -
almost 2 years ago
The Madman of the North
Charles XII at the Battle of Narva, David von Krafft, c.1700 © Fine Art Images/Bridgeman ImagesFrom his childhood Charles XII of Sweden dreamed of being a second Alexander the Great, to the extent that, when questioned about why he would want to emulate a king who died in...continued
5 minutes read
Jimmy
@Jimmy -
about 3 years ago
Swimming in the Sahara | History Today
In the far west of Egypt, in one of the harshest stretches of the Sahara desert, is a remarkable cave. On its walls are hundreds of figures: all enigmatic, some plainly oblique. Human bodies, out of proportion, travel in processions, popping in rich ochres on the light wa...continued
5 minutes read
Angus
@Angus -
over 2 years ago
Are You Not Entertained? | History Today
Wilson Barrett and Maud Jeffrie in The Sign of the Cross, 1932. Chronicle/Alamy.The chariot scene from Ben Hur (1959) remains one of the most spectacular moments ever committed to celluloid. Costing around a quarter of the film’s total budget and shot using a team of 70 s...continued
5 minutes read
Torey
@Torey -
about 2 years ago
Military State | History Today
Said Bay, emir of the Yazidis (centre), in Sinjar, northern Iraq, 1932. Alamy.On 3 October 1932 Iraq joined the League of Nations. Symbolically, the assembly’s vote to admit Iraq, which terminated Britain’s mandate over the country, marked its independence. But true sover...continued
5 minutes read
Felicita
@Felicita -
over 4 years ago
The Rules of Drinking | History Today
In England and parts of Germany, extreme drinking at universities often looks much the same as in the US. But in countries where wine is more popular than beer, such as Italy, France, Spain and Greece, bingeing and drinking games are rarer and generally frowned on. Yet i...continued
5 minutes read
Torey
@Torey -
almost 2 years ago
How Angels Found their Wings
The Ladder of Divine Ascent, fresco at Suceviţa Monastery in Moldavia, Romania, 16th century © Yvan Travert/ akg-images.Angels did not always have wings. It was only in the fourth century that the familiar image of the winged angel emerged. In the Roman church of Santa Pu...continued
5 minutes read
Kari
@Kari -
over 4 years ago
Full Circle | History Today
In school we learn there are 360 degrees in a circle, but where did the 360 come from? When it is pointed out that the Babylonians counted to base-60, rather than base-10 as we do, people often ask if there is a connection. The short answer is no. The longer answer involv...continued
5 minutes read
Bobby
@Bobby -
over 4 years ago
Rough Roads for Travellers and Gypsies
The UK government’s current plan to ‘tackle unauthorised traveller camps’ and ‘give the police new powers to arrest and seize the property and vehicles of trespassers who set up unauthorised encampments’ follows a long line of legislation aimed primarily at Travellers and...continued
5 minutes read
Bart
@Bart -
about 5 years ago
The Golden Ages | History Today
The succession of great cities which emerge in Justin Marozzi’s superbly crafted book were all too often assembled, designed, demolished and rebuilt at the command of just one man. In most cases, fragments of their glory days (the Great Mosque of Córdoba or that of Damasc...continued
5 minutes read
Jaydon
@Jaydon -
over 1 year ago
Top Cop, Bad Cop | History Today
J. Edgar Hoover, 16 May 1932. Wikimedia CommonsJ. Edgar Hoover believed the United States was God’s chosen nation. Hoover, who was director of the FBI from 1924 to 1972, thought the Bureau’s mission was to defeat the godless forces of liberalism, feminism and civil rights...continued
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Erik
@Erik -
about 4 years ago
First Among Equals | History Today
‘I am Toussaint Louverture, you have perhaps heard my name. You are aware, brothers, that I have undertaken vengeance, and that I want freedom and equality to reign in Saint-Domingue.’ Few historical figures can have made their introduction to the public sphere in quite s...continued
5 minutes read
Rahsaan
@Rahsaan -
over 5 years ago
Speaking her Mind | History Today
Until the last century, Lal Ded had remained almost unknown beyond the niche corners of Bhakti resistance and poetry. The Bhakti movement, which began in south India in the eighth century and spread north until the 17th, started as a resistance against the caste system an...continued
5 minutes read
Geovany
@Geovany -
about 1 year ago
The Meaning of Lore
Birdlore: ‘De avibus’ (On Birds), from De proprietatibus rerum (On the Properties of Things), by Bartholomaeus Anglicus, 1240. World History Archive/Alamy Stock Photo.Lately I’ve been thinking about the word lore. As someone interested in language history, I’m always plea...continued
5 minutes read