History
Anything to do with History
Zetta
@Zetta -
14 days ago
Paracelsus: Revolutionary or Mystic? | History Today
Thanks to Joseph Goebbels, the film director Georg Wilhelm Pabst luxuriated in a massive budget for the dramatised documentary he shot in occupied Prague during the autumn of 1942. Commissioned to celebrate the long history of Germanic culture, its central character was a...continued
8 minutes read
Zetta
@Zetta -
8 months ago
Sabbatai Sevi: The Lost Messiah
In late 1665 the Jewish community in Venice was amazed to learn that their long-awaited messiah had come and was living with his wife in Smyrna.Any other time, they’d have greeted the news with disbelief. After all, there had been plenty of people who’d claimed to be the ...continued
9 minutes read
Raoul
@Raoul -
about 1 year ago
Signs of the Zodiac: The Dendera Dating Controversy
What does it mean?: the Dendera Zodiac on the ceiling of the Grand Temple at Dendera, Egypt, c.1826. From Descriptions of Egypt by Jean-Baptiste Prosper Jollois and Édouard de Villiers du Terrage. Heritage Images/Contributor via Getty Images.Hungry for power, in 1798 Nap...continued
8 minutes read
Zackery
@Zackery -
over 4 years ago
Summer Reading List | History Today
‘We are living through extraordinary times’ Kim Ghattas, Author of Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Forty Year Rivalry that Unraveled the Middle East (Wildfire) While I was writing Black Wave, I was completely focused on my research and gorged on books about the Mid...continued
8 minutes read
Rex
@Rex -
2 months ago
‘After the Flying Saucers Came’, ‘Think to New Worlds’ and ‘How to Think Impossibly’ review
In June 1947 Kenneth Arnold was flying a small plane over Mount Rainier in Washington when nine bright objects began tracking him at high speed. People have always seen signs and wonders in the skies, but once Arnold identified these things as ‘saucer-like’, he inaugurate...continued
8 minutes read
Sandrine
@Sandrine -
over 2 years ago
Ukrainian Tales | History Today
Ben JonesIn January 1787 Catherine the Great travelled south from St Petersburg to survey some new imperial possessions. Crimea had been taken from the Ottoman Empire, the partitions of Poland were underway and the last vestiges of Cossack autonomy in the Ukrainian steppe...continued
9 minutes read
Grayce
@Grayce -
12 months ago
The Lost Years of Jesus
Amid the excitement of Christmas, it is sobering to think how little we know about Jesus’ early life. Only two of the four canonical gospels – Luke and Matthew – say anything at all about it; and even they leave much unsaid or unclear. Apart from mentioning that Jesus was...continued
9 minutes read
Raoul
@Raoul -
about 3 years ago
Bulgaria’s Traumatic Revival | History Today
Ben JonesBulgaria has the single largest Muslim minority population of any country in the European Union. Around 15 per cent of its roughly seven million citizens identify as Muslim (compared with less than five per cent in the UK). The group is ethnically diverse – Bulga...continued
9 minutes read
Wilmer
@Wilmer -
almost 5 years ago
Securing Antarctica | History Today
On 1 December 1959 a new treaty was signed by 12 countries, including the US, the Soviet Union, France and the UK. It was revolutionary. For the first time, in the midst of the Cold War, the then three nuclear-weapon states agreed to transform a continent into a nuclear-f...continued
9 minutes read
Hannah
@Hannah -
almost 3 years ago
In the Shadow of the Poor Law
Shortly before the 1979 general election the Labour Prime Minister Jim Callaghan presciently warned of a ‘sea- change in politics’ in favour of Margaret Thatcher’s anti-welfare agenda. Today there is much speculation of a similar shift away from the small state, austerity...continued
9 minutes read
Teagan
@Teagan -
about 3 years ago
The Death of Liberal South Africa
Ben JonesOn 4 July 1964, a month after the Rivonia Trial, which saw Nelson Mandela and other members of the African National Congress (ANC) sentenced to life imprisonment, police in Cape Town knocked on the door of Adrian Leftwich, a suspected communist sympathiser. On be...continued
9 minutes read
Alvah
@Alvah -
about 4 years ago
Colonial Mentalities | History Today
According to the historian Hilary Beckles, British colonial state forces killed more Black people when suppressing revolts in the Caribbean in the 50 years after slave emancipation in 1838 than in the 50 years leading up to it. Emancipation brought compensation for former...continued
9 minutes read
Garnet
@Garnet -
7 months ago
Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin and the Making of Stars
In December 1871 the Prince of Wales lay dangerously ill with typhoid, the disease that had killed his father. Taking advantage of modern technology, the Archbishop of Canterbury despatched telegraph messages around the country ordering special prayers to be read for his ...continued
8 minutes read
Muriel
@Muriel -
over 4 years ago
Pandemics: Now and Then | History Today
The Greek roots of endemic, epidemic and pandemic give them a patina of scientific precision, which is misleading. The uses and connotations of the terms have changed radically over time and even today they lack crisp definition. In ancient Greek, pandemic meant ‘relating...continued
9 minutes read
Elliott
@Elliott -
about 4 years ago
Body and Mind | History Today
The Spanish Flu is thought to have killed 50 million worldwide between 1918 and 1919, but there was a hidden impact on mental wellbeing. A century later, as the Covid-19 virus took hold in the early months of 2020, health organisations and mental health service providers ...continued
9 minutes read
Alexander
@Alexander -
5 months ago
The Theft of the Ghent Altarpiece
Early on the morning of 11 April 1934 the sacristan of St Bavo’s Cathedral in Ghent stumbled on a crime scene. The Ghent Altarpiece – a vast polyptych, painted by Hubert and Jan van Eyck – was in its usual place in the Vijd chapel; but where one of the panels depicting th...continued
9 minutes read
Rahsaan
@Rahsaan -
about 2 months ago
US President or American Caesar?
The prospect of a second Donald Trump victory in November’s US election has widely been seen – at least by liberal commentators –as an apocalyptic threat to democracy. Indeed, the coming election is sometimes framed as a binary clash between democracy and autocracy. Some ...continued
8 minutes read
Leda
@Leda -
about 4 years ago
Trust in Change | History Today
A leader in the Daily Telegraph, published on 25 September and headlined ‘The National Trust needs to drop its woke nonsense’, propounded a series of theses about what the National Trust, the charity for heritage conversation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, exists...continued
9 minutes read
Liliane
@Liliane -
almost 4 years ago
Belarus Remembers | History Today
The Belarusian authorities described as ‘war’ the protests that have gripped the country since the fraudulent presidential elections of August 2020. This was more than a crude attempt to misrepresent the reality of the police and the army attacking peaceful protesters wit...continued
9 minutes read
Alexzander
@Alexzander -
almost 3 years ago
Barbados and the End of Monarchy
Ben JonesAs a child in the 1960s in Barbados, the symbols of the monarchy and of the island’s connection with Britain were so omnipresent that one took them for granted. Portraits of the Queen and Prince Philip adorned the front covers of our exercise books. The Queen app...continued
9 minutes read
Zetta
@Zetta -
about 1 year ago
The Bruneri-Canella Case
A 1927 mugshot of the Collegno amensiac at the heart of the Bruneri-Canella Case. Public Domain.On 9 February 1927, Giulia Canella opened the morning edition of La Domenica del Corriere to discover that her dead husband had come back to life. She could hardly believe her ...continued
9 minutes read
Cyril
@Cyril -
over 4 years ago
Finding Wonderful Things | History Today
‘Yes, wonderful things,’ was the publicised response of Howard Carter when asked what he could see inside the tomb of King Tutankhamun. These ‘wonderful things’ were ‘strange animals, statues, and gold – everywhere the glint of gold’. In the century since Carter’s discove...continued
9 minutes read
Immanuel
@Immanuel -
over 1 year ago
Was Richard III a Bad King?
Richard III, oil on panel, late 16th century. National Portrait Gallery‘Richard resolved to be a good king and even a reformer’Michael Hicks, Professor Emeritus of History, University of Winchester and author of Richard III: The Self-Made King (Yale University Press, 2019...continued
8 minutes read
Alexzander
@Alexzander -
over 1 year ago
How Have Conspiracy Theories Changed History?
Queen Mary of Modena with Prince James Stuart, by Benedetto Gennari II, 1690s. Wikimedia Commons‘Walpole clung to power by shrieking about treacherous schemes cooked up by his rivals’Joseph Hone, author of The Paper Chase: The Printer, the Spymaster, and the Hunt for the ...continued
8 minutes read
Colin
@Colin -
over 3 years ago
Rotting Among the Tsetse | History Today
In the years before Britain’s former colonies – from Ghana to Malaysia – gained independence, thousands of documents were quietly removed from the record to safeguard the ‘honour’ of the British Empire. A decade has now passed since the British government was forced to ad...continued
9 minutes read