History

Anything to do with History

3c59b35923f7f5e6a11c533088a15138 Jessika @Jessika - 10 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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69ab36bf73ce82cc3579c8f2504f3bac Gregoria @Gregoria - about 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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61d3ff630fa6a556085f59f9ba20938e Assunta @Assunta - 4 months 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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498be12662c1d913d0cbee6108a66520 Torey @Torey - 8 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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C0c3cfe5664cc7e6deb04e9e150ccd98 Devin @Devin - 5 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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C0c3cfe5664cc7e6deb04e9e150ccd98 Devin @Devin - almost 3 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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367ec04c80b95de4cfdf036599b35350 Garnet @Garnet - 9 days ago
The St Brice’s Day Massacre
The sums are eye-watering. In 991 the English king Æthelred paid the Vikings £10,000 to stop them sacking the east coast of England. Three years later a sum variously recorded as £16,000 or £22,000 was given. In 1002 they were back: this time they got £34,000. No one coul...continued
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0da67bf7aa16c0b7dda10df8b0c1a695 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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B2ab4609b89b7e7c7408477bb01daf27 Jimmy @Jimmy - over 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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25dc49998970e9ad413d98493dfe5d6c 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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B9fae85d63d3cf084c4f15cdbd0ccaba Giles @Giles - 8 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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6fbf27ec08c2f7663e39dc017353475e Josiah @Josiah - about 1 month ago
The Wreck of the Vrouw Maria
When the connoisseur Gerrit Braamcamp died in 1771 the auction of his collection was one of Amsterdam’s events of the year. Some 20,000 people saw it; 2,000 copies of the catalogue were sold.The two most valuable paintings – a triptych by Gerard Dou known as The Nursery a...continued
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56a34dc91390858efd1999c86a89c348 George @George - over 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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222d8c41bd81f4a6d7b47e2341f0ffca 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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6ede9b368e706f8b5e5082140d4d45d9 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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C1e15b7459468dc79542fc656b7a9fa2 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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041490c94bd26a3efdf85d49d9b013ba 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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62b830bbc5092803336a4f6bb9370281 Manley @Manley - almost 4 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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422f200971248def7ffc1673a54fa3cb Grayce @Grayce - about 4 years ago
Execution of a Feminist | History Today
The year before Mary Wollstonecraft wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, another writer, Olympe de Gouges, published a comparable call for equality during the turmoil of revolutionary France.De Gouges’ Déclaration des droits de la femme et de la citoyenne, publishe...continued
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A2a551348d8c100384339e6c21255e06 Abbie @Abbie - 2 months ago
The Great Fire of Smyrna
It was, Strabo said, ‘the finest city in Asia’. But ruin was in Smyrna’s bones. It was destroyed by Lydia and Persia, and later by the Seljuks and the army of Timur. In the Book of Revelation it is one of Asia’s seven churches – known for its tribulations, St John said.To...continued
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C1e15b7459468dc79542fc656b7a9fa2 Madalyn @Madalyn - over 3 years ago
The Battle of Cannae | History Today
By 216 BC, Hannibal’s Carthaginian army had already won victories against the Romans in the Second Punic War at Ticinus, Trebia and Lake Trasimene. But then came Cannae.According to Polybius, the Senate, terrified by Hannibal’s successes, sent eight legions against him. I...continued
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E5a600388a4be6ed5b515081737d8445 Angus @Angus - over 2 years ago
France’s Kyivan Queen | History Today
Ukraine has been part of European history since before the Norman Conquest. Remarkably, in the middle of the 11th century, the queens of Norway, Hungary, France and Poland were all Kyivan Rus princesses. The first three were daughters of Yaroslav, Grand Prince of Kyiv and...continued
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25dc49998970e9ad413d98493dfe5d6c Teagan @Teagan - almost 4 years ago
The First Performance of ‘Silent Night’
Silent Night, or Stille Nacht in its original German, is one of the best known songs in the world, but few know anything of its authors.Its lyrics were written in 1816 by a somewhat loose-living Austrian priest named Joseph Mohr. On Christmas Eve 1818, Mohr – then at St N...continued
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6b970372434ca9c9def5abb121107916 Rex @Rex - about 3 years ago
Battle of Hastings | History Today
It is strange to think that after Harold died at Hastings the English crown might have gone to a man born in Hungary. Edgar Ætheling was the son of Edward, nephew of Edward the Confessor, who had been driven into distant exile by Cnut. ‘Ætheling’ was an honorific bestowed...continued
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1a914154cd263fa68f1b8d6529ef63dd Sandrine @Sandrine - 12 months ago
Saint Nicholas Becomes a Myth
Saint Nicholas was dead, to begin with. On 6 December 343, to be precise, in Myra, in present-day Turkey. But, as is the way with saints, death was no hindrance to miracles. Indeed it was an accelerator. Myrrh flowed from his tomb from the moment of interment. Solving pro...continued
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