History

Anything to do with History

Muriel @Muriel - over 1 year ago

An Edict of Toleration | History Today

Susenyos depicted in an Ethiopian scroll, 17th century. Wellcome Trust.When the Jesuits arrived in Ethiopia in 1557 they encountered a Christian society whose antiquity rivalled Rome’s. The region had converted in the fourth century; its royal family claimed descent from ...continued

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Elvie @Elvie - almost 2 years ago

Jukurrpa | History Today

Wantapiri by Malcolm Maloney Jagamarra, 1994 © Malcolm Maloney Jagamarra. Photo: Heini Schneebeli/ Bridgeman Images.For Aboriginal Australians, Jukurrpa is fundamental to how the world came into being. The word has its origins in the Warlpiri language, spoken in the vast ...continued

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Emmie @Emmie - over 2 years ago

The Grunwick Dispute Begins | History Today

Jayaben Desai, leader of the Grunwick strike, 1977. Alamy.It was, one activist said, ‘the Ascot of the Left. It is essential to be seen here’. But the Grunwick dispute, which escalated into one of the defining industrial conflicts of the late 1970s, had small beginnings.T...continued

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Anderson @Anderson - almost 2 years ago

The Finnish Club War | History Today

Charles IX of Sweden. Bridgeman Images.Sweden was on a war footing in the late 16th century. Taxes fell disproportionally on the peasantry, who in Finland – then under Swedish dominion – had to accept the billeting of troops in their villages. Soldiers were allowed to plu...continued

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Jimmy @Jimmy - over 4 years ago

Urban Values | History Today

The historian Diarmaid MacCulloch once told me, only half jokingly I think, that the London Underground was evidence of some kind of divine entity. Here were masses of people of all shapes, sizes, colours and creeds, submerged together in rapidly moving cans, who despite ...continued

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Marie @Marie - almost 2 years ago

Discovery of a Living Fossil

Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer and coelacanth, c.1938 © East London Museum.It was the morning of 22 December 1938. A call came through to the East London Museum in South Africa’s Eastern Cape for its curator, Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer. She had asked the local trawlermen to a...continued

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Rex @Rex - almost 5 years ago

The Journey of the Magi

According to St Matthew’s Gospel: ‘Wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, saying, “Where is he who has been born King of the Jews? For we have seen His star in the East and have come to worship Him”.’ The three wise men who sought the infant Christ represented the enti...continued

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Devin @Devin - over 4 years ago

Earthly Delights | History Today

During lockdown, many people, at least those fortunate enough to have access to some kind of outside space, found solace in gardening. Germans refer to gardening as the ‘English art’ and it is telling that the nation’s garden centres were among the first institutions to r...continued

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Meggie @Meggie - about 5 years ago

Static Versus Active | History Today

Commodore Richard Powell, commander of HMS Topaze, landed on Easter Island in November 1868. He returned to Britain with a four-tonne statue made of lava rock, one of the 1,000 or so moai that are unique to the island, which lies in the Pacific Ocean more than 2,000 miles...continued

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Raoul @Raoul - over 5 years ago

Longman-History Today Awards 2019: The Winners

This year's awards were presented by History Today editor, Paul Lay, and were held at the Victorian Bathhouse near Liverpool Street. There have been baths on this site since 1817, and the building that still exists today opened in February 1895, and was designed by archit...continued

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Moises @Moises - about 5 years ago

Politics Past and Present | History Today

If the study of history cultivates anything, it should be the ‘long view’, the ability to consider questions that affect our future from the deep perspective of the past, to take account of who we are, where we’ve come from and where we might be going. It is fair to say t...continued

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Marie @Marie - about 5 years ago

A Grecian Harvest Home | History Today

Young men and women dance around the combined figures of Sylvanus and Pan to the sound of pipes and tabors, in a scene rooted in the Georgics of Virgil. Sylvanus, meaning ‘of the woods’ in Latin, is represented as an ageing male figure, watching over forests, fields and t...continued

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Priscilla @Priscilla - over 4 years ago

Mind Your Language | History Today

There’s a general consensus (at least among the people I speak to) that too many history books are too long. Reasons cited include a lack of editors, the desire to give readers value for money if they are shelling out £30 or more, and the influence of potboiler historical...continued

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George @George - almost 5 years ago

Sacred Spaces | History Today

Uluru, the giant sandstone inselberg, formerly and widely known as Ayers Rock after a 19th-century Chief Secretary of South Australia, dominates the ochre landscape of the southern Northern Territory. It is sacred to the Pitjantjatjara Ananga people, to whom it represents...continued

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Elody @Elody - over 5 years ago

Matthew Webb swims the English Channel

Matthew Webb first came to prominence while working as Second Mate on the Cunard Line’s Russia. After a man fell overboard mid-Atlantic he dived in to try and rescue him. Despite failing (the man was never seen again), Webb was awarded the first Stanhope medal for the mos...continued

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Juliet @Juliet - over 4 years ago

Don’t Be Evil | History Today

The Palazzo Pubblico, which curves around Siena’s shell-like Piazza del Campo, was built at the end of the 13th century when the Tuscan city was a pioneer in the new industry of banking. It was a role it shared with its northern Italian neighbours and bitter rivals, such ...continued

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Colin @Colin - over 5 years ago

Hungary’s Holy Trinity | History Today

The broadcaster and historian Matthew Sweet, who recently debunked in a very public manner the claims of Naomi Wolf that there were widespread executions of gay men in Victorian Britain, drew my attention to one of the most extraordinary autobiographies of the 20th centur...continued

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Joe @Joe - over 5 years ago

Seeds of Conflict | History Today

John Lambert is one of the most remarkable yet neglected figures in British history. The author of the country’s only written constitution, the Instrument of Government of 1653, he had proved himself a brilliant commander at the Battles of Dunbar in 1650 and Inverkeithing...continued

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Eleanora @Eleanora - over 4 years ago

First in Her Field (Work)

The pioneering archaeologist Dorothy Garrod was elected to the Disney Chair of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge on 6 May 1939. She was the first woman to be a professor either there or at Oxford; women were still not admitted to full degrees at Cambridge, despit...continued

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Elody @Elody - almost 5 years ago

Triumph of Galatea | History Today

Ovid, in his Metamorphoses, tells the story of the mortal peasant shepherd, Acis, who falls in love with Galatea, a Nereid or water nymph, whose Greek name translates as ‘she who is milk white’. The jealous Cyclops, Polyphemus, bludgeoned Acis with a boulder and, in respo...continued

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Dayton @Dayton - almost 5 years ago

The Art of War | History Today

The death of Michael Howard in November at the age of 97 was widely marked. To describe him as a military historian is true – indeed he was one of the very greatest – but to do so hardly captures the breadth and depth of a man who, before establishing the War Studies Depa...continued

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George @George - almost 5 years ago

Academic Debts | History Today

The political commentator Jenni Russell, in a column in The Times published last November, compared the popularity of history as a subject for books and TV – citing Yuval Noah Harari, Amanda Foreman and The Crown – with the decline in the numbers of students studying hist...continued

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Adelia @Adelia - over 4 years ago

State of the Nation | History Today

Sometimes history accelerates, and it can do so in reverse. Much has been written and will be for a long time to come about the crisis caused by Covid-19, but one thing is certain: the nation state is back and, judging by the scale of intervention, at its most Leviathan, ...continued

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Elody @Elody - over 4 years ago

The Combat of the Thirty

In early 1351, with the war to control the Duchy of Brittany grinding to a stalemate, Jean de Beaumanoir, a leader of the French-supported Blois faction, challenged Robert Bemborough, a senior knight of the English-backed Montfortist faction, to combat. Bemborough suggest...continued

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Abbie @Abbie - about 5 years ago

Man for a Crisis | History Today

Churchill considered him ‘by far the most distinguished man that the Labour Party has thrown up in my time’. Attlee, Churchill’s wartime deputy, reflecting on his political allies, declared: ‘There’s the man I miss.’ Despite their different temperaments, Churchill and Att...continued

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