History
Anything to do with History
Dayton
@Dayton -
about 1 year ago
The Death of St Francis of Assisi
St. Francis of Assisi showing his stigmata in an illustrated manuscript, c. 1490. National Library of the Netherlands. Public Domain.‘Why you?’ It was a good question. Brother Masseo repeated it three times. ‘What do you mean?’, Francis of Assisi replied. ‘You aren’t a ha...continued
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Jarod
@Jarod -
about 5 years ago
Travels Through Time: The Blackshirts vs. Lyons
By mid-1934, Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists was drawing large crowds to their rallies in London. Antisemitism was at the heart of Mosley’s political message, and his supporters included Viscount Rothermere, proprietor of the Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror. Amo...continued
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Zetta
@Zetta -
over 4 years ago
Arachne and Minerva | History Today
Arachne was a weaver, held in the highest regard by both gods and mortals. But as more and more praise was heaped upon her, she became somewhat arrogant, even daring to challenge Minerva, the god of war and art, to a weaving contest. Minerva, disguised as an old woman, tr...continued
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Sandrine
@Sandrine -
over 2 years ago
A Woman Runs for President
Victoria Claflin Woodhull, c.1870, photographed by Mathew Brady. Google Art Project/Wiki Commons.To her enemies, she was Mrs Satan. To Walt Whitman, she was ‘a prophecy of the future’. To Gloria Steinem, looking back from the 1970s, she was ‘the most controversial suffrag...continued
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Rowan
@Rowan -
almost 3 years ago
Statute of Kilkenny | History Today
Kilkea Castle, near Castledermot, County Kildare, was the site of the earliest known parliament in Ireland. From Antiquities of Ireland, 1792. Wiki Commons.In late medieval Ireland they had terms of abuse for one another. ‘Englishobbe’. ‘Irishdogg’. So deep was the antipa...continued
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Hulda
@Hulda -
about 1 year ago
Zambi of Palmares is Beheaded
A statue of Zumbi dos Palmares, in Alagoas, Brazil. Photograph by Gorivero (CC BY-SA 3.0).At first they were called mocambo: a word from the Mbundu of what is now Angola meaning ‘hideout’. They were small communities, perhaps 50-strong, of escaped slaves in 17th-century B...continued
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Rose
@Rose -
over 2 years ago
A Musical Riot | History Today
Igor Stravinsky, c.1920. Library of Congress.It should have been a triumph. The premiere of Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring on 29 May 1913 brought together the up-and-coming composer with Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballet Russe company and its star dancer, Vaslav Nijinsky, ...continued
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Kraig
@Kraig -
over 4 years ago
The End of a European Union
A decades-long union of European countries is supported by their respective national elites; but its destruction comes through the ruthless exploitation of popular nationalism by an autocratic leader. Does that sound familiar? It is, of course, the Kalmar Union between De...continued
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Jaydon
@Jaydon -
over 1 year ago
The Menin Gate is Unveiled
Sacred ground: the unveiling of the Menin Gate, Ypres at a ceremony on 24 July 1927. Chronicle / Alamy Stock PhotoIn the beginning, they did not even know how many dead were missing. When architect Reginald Blomfield started on the Menin Gate, a memorial to British and im...continued
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Rowan
@Rowan -
over 2 years ago
A Patriotic Murder | History Today
Charlotte Corday, painted just before her execution, by Jean-Jacques Hauer, 1793. Wiki Commons.She had planned to kill him in public. But the Parisian summer of 1793 was exceptionally hot and Jean-Paul Marat’s painful skin condition – a form of psoriatic arthritis – compe...continued
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Clarissa
@Clarissa -
over 1 year ago
A Test Case for Tolerance
Jean Calas with his family ahead of his execution, French coloured engraving, 18th century © Stefano Bianchetti/Bridgeman Images.It was the evening of 13 October 1761. Pierre Calas found the body of his older brother, 29-year-old Marc-Antoine, hanging in a downstairs door...continued
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Bart
@Bart -
over 2 years ago
A Medical Break Through | History Today
Detail from ‘An essay on the shaking palsy’, by James Parkinson. Facsimile of the original 1817 edition. Wellcome Collection.In 1794 the physician James Parkinson presented himself in Whitehall for interrogation by William Pitt and the Privy Council, who were investigatin...continued
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Alexie
@Alexie -
about 5 years ago
Augustus Closes the Temple of Janus
Following years of Civil War, Octavian, Julius Caesar’s grand-nephew and adopted son, was granted the title Augustus, Princeps Civitatis (First Citizen) of Rome on 16 January 27 BC. In this celebratory painting by Louis de Silvestre, Augustus orders the doors at both ends...continued
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Casper
@Casper -
over 4 years ago
Of Hair and Ale | History Today
This year, the Fourth of July, usually a date reserved for festivities on the other side of the Atlantic, was dubbed ‘Super Saturday’ by the UK government. Desperate to kick-start an economy that, as in so many countries, has all but ground to a halt, pubs and hairdresser...continued
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Cameron
@Cameron -
almost 2 years ago
Joan of Arc’s Trial Begins
Depiction of Joan of Arc, late 15th century. Courtesy Archives Nationales, Paris via Wikimedia/Creative Commons.She came from Domrémy in north-eastern France, where she was Jeannette. She signed her name Jehanne. But she called herself Jeanne la Pucelle, Joan the Maid.Sai...continued
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Alexander
@Alexander -
almost 3 years ago
An Oxford Resurrection | History Today
A Faithful Narrative and True Relation of One Anne Green pamphlet, 1651 © Bridgeman Images.It was Anne Greene’s great good fortune that, after she had been hanged in the castle yard at Oxford, her body was given to the university’s physicians for dissection.In the summer ...continued
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Kari
@Kari -
about 2 years ago
Death of Sultan Razia | History Today
Sultan Razia, 18th century. Alamy.Like much of her reign, the accession of Razia to the sultanate of Delhi is shrouded in mystery. The only contemporary chronicle is the Tabaqat-i-Nasiri of Minhaj Siraj Juzjani, whose career had thrived during her brief tenure and who was...continued
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Leda
@Leda -
about 4 years ago
End of the Edge of the World
The small archipelago of St Kilda, 50 miles west of Harris, has long attracted romantic attention for its remoteness, with the sense of strangeness and difference such isolation implies. It is the last and outmost isle, on the edge of the world: a place whose way of life,...continued
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Kristina
@Kristina -
almost 2 years ago
Ringing the Changes | History Today
The Ringers of Launcells Tower by Frederick Smallfield, c.1887. Royal Cornwall Museum/Wiki Commons.Ben Jonson called it ‘the poetry of steeples’. In his Bedfordshire youth, John Bunyan was seduced by, if not addicted to, its pleasures. So ubiquitous was bell ringing in En...continued
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Garnet
@Garnet -
over 4 years ago
The Liberator’s Saviour is ‘Buried’
A small group of armed men approached the presidential palace in Bogotá on the night of 25 September 1828. Inside, Simón Bolívar lay in bed asleep beside his mistress, Manuela Sáenz. El Liberator had led large parts of South America to freedom from imperial Spain, but his...continued
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Liliane
@Liliane -
over 2 years ago
The Nandi Bull | History Today
Scene from the Mewar Ramayana, 17th century, India © Bridgeman Images.The Ramayana is one of the two great ancient Sanskrit epics from India (the other being the Mahabharata) and is one of Hinduism’s foundational texts. Thought, in its earliest sections, to date from betw...continued
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Devin
@Devin -
over 4 years ago
Alexander the Great | History Today
Darius III, the last king of the Achaemenid Empire, was defeated at the Battle of Issus, in southern Anatolia, by Alexander the Great of Macedonia in 333 BC. Darius fled the scene of his defeat, but his mother Sisigambis, his wife Stateira I and daughters, Stateira II and...continued
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Nelson
@Nelson -
over 1 year ago
Cleansing the Causeway | History Today
James IV of Scotland, 17th century. Wiki Commons.The death of James IV at Flodden in September 1513 was a catastrophe for Scotland. He left behind a one-year-old son on the throne, and, as regent, his queen Margaret Tudor, sister of Henry VIII.Within a year, Margaret mar...continued
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Kari
@Kari -
over 4 years ago
The Flood | History Today
Noah was in his 600th year when, in its second month, ‘the windows of heaven were opened and rain fell for 40 days and 40 nights’. According to the Old Testament Book of Genesis, God, reflecting on man’s wickedness, ‘regretted ever having created him. He resolved to destr...continued
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Juliet
@Juliet -
over 4 years ago
Freyja the Token of Truce
Freyja, which means ‘lady’, was the Norse goddess associated with war, death, love, sex, beauty, fertility and gold. No wonder she was considered the most desirable and alluring of the gods. She is often depicted, as here by Nils Blommér, in a chariot pulled by two cats. ...continued
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