History

Anything to do with History

Torey @Torey - 10 months ago

Pet Monkeys in Victorian Britain

In December 1900 distressed animal lover ‘V.E.N’ informed fellow readers of The Bazaar magazine about a disturbing incident involving his pet marmoset, Binkie. A recent purchase, the marmoset, ‘a common white-eared specimen’, appeared ‘thin and badly fed’, so was ‘tied to...continued

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Priscilla @Priscilla - almost 3 years ago

Dido and Aeneas | History Today

Dido, founder and queen of Carthage, falls in love with the Trojan hero Aeneas and they conduct a passionate affair. Dido’s sister Anna is pleased by the coupling; she believes Aeneas and the warriors alongside him will increase the might of Carthage. Jupiter thinks other...continued

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Marjory @Marjory - about 1 year ago

Christianity’s Bloody History in Japan

Early in 1638, Japan’s Tokugawa shogunate found itself mired in a combination of embarrassment and crisis. Requests were coming into its headquarters in Edo – present day Tokyo – for troops to lay siege to a castle on the coast of Kyushu, Japan’s southernmost main island....continued

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Wilmer @Wilmer - 6 months ago

The Appian Way: Rome’s Greatest Achievement?

As viewers of Monty Python know, in the long list of things the Romans did for us, ‘the roads go without saying’. Among the many roads constructed and reconstructed across Europe and around the Mediterranean, the most famous is the Via Appia. The ‘queen of the roads’ (acc...continued

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Jeffrey @Jeffrey - 6 months ago

Jack the Ripper: Dark Tourism and the Gutter Press

In 2020 Britain’s official mapping body, the Ordnance Survey, removed from its library of maps a three-mile walking tour of London salaciously entitled ‘Guts and Garters in the Ripper’s East End’. The tour, as the name suggests, had guided tourists around the sites of the...continued

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Manley @Manley - about 4 years ago

Before Empire | History Today

The English East India Company’s settlement of Madras was gripped by a ‘spirit of ffactious madnesse’ in late 1652, which led to months of rioting and looting. The city’s two main castes – the Left and the Right Hand – strived for dominance over the cultural and commercia...continued

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Jerrold @Jerrold - 29 days ago

The Road from East Germany to North Korea

In November 1954 the East German author Max Zimmering travelled from the GDR to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). His route was arduous. From East Berlin he flew to Warsaw, then on to Vilnius, in what was then the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic. From...continued

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Elian @Elian - 7 months ago

Britons Caught in the French Revolution

On 14 July 1789 an insurgent Paris crowd captured the Bastille, a venerable fortress which had long symbolised royal despotism. A schoolboy from London who was sojourning in the French capital wrote up these events in his diary, describing what would become known as the f...continued

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Myles @Myles - 29 days ago

The Tudor War on Libel

In April 1605 the Court of Star Chamber – the Privy Council sitting in its judicial capacity – heard a curious case. As in all cases tried in this prerogative court, evidence was produced by means of petitions, interrogatories and depositions drawn from plaintiffs and def...continued

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Grayce @Grayce - almost 3 years ago

The Judgement of Paris | History Today

Zeus, king of the gods, threw a banquet to celebrate the marriage of Peleus and Thetis, the parents of Achilles. Eris, the goddess of discord, was not invited, for obvious reasons, but turned up anyway, hurling a golden apple into the assembly, inscribed with the words: ‘...continued

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Marlon @Marlon - about 4 years ago

Why Study the Past? | History Today

History matters; that much we know. Evidence of its importance is all around us, in cinemas, bookshops, days of remembrance, political discourse and, as has been underlined recently, statues. But why does it matter? Here there is less consensus. Many different justificati...continued

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Myles @Myles - almost 4 years ago

The Best Articles of 2020

Trust in ChangePeter MandlerHistorians and curators in heritage organisations, such as the National Trust, do not invent the past, they uncover it. Leading Ladies Annalisa NicholsonThe French tradition of the royal mistress gave new opportunities for women at the court ...continued

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Pablo @Pablo - 3 months ago

Putting Mothers on Death Row

In 1778 the commonwealth of Massachusetts executed a pregnant woman. Bathsheba Spooner had insisted all the way to the execution grounds that she was with child, but a jury of matrons, a group of married women empowered by the court to examine potentially pregnant women, ...continued

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Erik @Erik - about 1 year ago

The Beer Hall Putsch: What Hitler Learnt

On 8 November 1923, Adolf Hitler, leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party, attempted to take control of the Bavarian state government. It was his movement’s first step towards seizing power and destroying the democratic Weimar Republic. But it did not go as ...continued

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Wilmer @Wilmer - 12 months ago

Volcanoes on Tour: Recreating Vesuvius

On YouTube, you can join the nearly 29 million viewers who have watched Zero One Animation’s dynamic reconstruction of the devastating eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79. The nine-minute-long video imagines the eruption’s various stages as seen from Pompeii, culminating in a t...continued

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Colin @Colin - 2 months ago

Muslim Modernisers on the Silk Road

On 27 October 1924 the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic came into being as part of the Soviet Union, four years after a group of Muslim modernisers had formed an unholy alliance with a cohort of communist revolutionaries to wipe the ancient Emirate of Bukhara off the map. ...continued

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Hulda @Hulda - almost 4 years ago

Contested Legacy of the Conquistadors

In the autumn of 1520 Hernán Cortés, the conqueror of Mexico, was busy asserting control over a strategic region of central Mexico dominated by a mountain-top fortress. He had recently captured it with the help of thousands of indigenous allies, after suffering a humiliat...continued

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Juliet @Juliet - 2 months ago

The Last Testaments of Richard II and Henry IV

On 7 June 1376 the Black Prince, heir to the throne of England, made his will. He had been ill for eight years, but still, on what would prove to be the day before his death, he was as preoccupied as ever with both magnificence and control. He specified the lavish design ...continued

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George @George - 7 months ago

Kapo Trials: How Israel Judged the Jewish Collaborators

In September 1960 Hirsch Barenblat – a 45-year-old conductor at the Israeli Opera – gave a performance at the Tel Yitzhak Kibbutz auditorium. As Barenblat sat, fingers poised over the piano’s keyboard, he was interrupted by a voice from the back of the room: ‘Kapo! Nazi! ...continued

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Abbie @Abbie - 8 months ago

Challenging the ‘Ugliness’ of Anne of Cleves

When Henry VIII’s third wife, Jane Seymour, died after giving birth to the long-wished-for prince in 1537, Thomas Cromwell immediately began enquiries into the marriageable ladies of the French royal family. The rapidity of this search reflected the reality of the situati...continued

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Jimmy @Jimmy - almost 5 years ago

The History Today Podcast | History Today

In this new series, leading historians share insights and stories in conversation with Paul Lay, editor of History Today.These discussions will be interspersed with long reads: articles specially selected from the magazine for an eclectic, fascinating and informative mix....continued

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Anderson @Anderson - 11 months ago

Syphilis and Scurvy: Diagnosing Henry VIII

In his younger days Henry VIII was something of a heartthrob. He sang like a troubadour, wrestled (though unsuccessfully) with Francis I of France at the Field of Cloth of Gold and enjoyed vigorously dangerous jousts, hunting and falconry. Encountering Henry in his heyday...continued

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Leda @Leda - 9 months ago

The First Anglo-Burmese War | History Today

In March 1824 the first in a series of three conflicts between Britain and Burma broke out. At the outset of hostilities Burma was an independent state ruled from Amarapura by the Konbaung dynasty; by 1886, following the conclusion of a brief, three-week war (the ‘Third’)...continued

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Grayce @Grayce - about 4 years ago

The Last Sikh Queen | History Today

John Newmarch, a British solicitor, published a letter in the week before Christmas 1848 in the widely read Calcutta newspaper, The Englishman. It contained a searing indictment of East India Company policy. He was addressing none other than the Company’s Governor-General...continued

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Marlon @Marlon - about 3 years ago

The ‘Stans’ Turn 30 | History Today

A horde of whooping warriors hurtled through a craggy mountain pass and galloped down onto an enemy encampment on the plain below. With a thunder of hooves and a shower of arrows, the horsemen burst through the fortifications and, swinging their swords, hurled themselves ...continued

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