A short history of voluntary death: The ancients accepted it, Christians rejected it and now a post-Christian elite is half in love with easeful death again. [MercatorNet]
World’s First Telephone Book Surfaces: The phone book contained information useful to 391 subscribers within the New Haven, Conn., area who were obviously still learning their way around the new communication device. “Should you wish to speak to another subscriber you should commence the conversation by saying, ‘Hulloa!’” it instructs. [Discovery]
The Berlin Airlift: 40 years on former RAF aircraft electrician Geoffrey W. Smith recalls his experiences while stationed in Berlin during the Soviet Blockade. [New Statesman]
June 3rd, 2008 at 10:01 am
This article is filed under Blog, History.
Did Lincoln’s assassin escape? Science may finally lay debate to rest: Pop! A shot was fired and, 143 years ago today, John Wilkes Booth - assassin of Abraham Lincoln - collapsed to the ground, mortally wounded in the neck. That’s what history says. But two local Booth family descendants - Joanne Hulme of Philadelphia’s Kensington section, and her sister, Virginia Kline of Warminster - aren’t convinced. They think that another man was killed and that Booth, who they believe was the president’s assassin, lived to a ripe old age. [Philadelphia Inquirer]
How the Black Death Changed the World: Seven thousand people died per day in Cairo. Three-quarters of Florence’s residents were buried in makeshift graves in just one macabre year. One third of China evaporated before the rest of the world knew what was coming. By the time the tornado-like destruction of the 14th-century bubonic plague finally dissipated, nearly half the people in each of the regions it touched had succumbed to a gruesome, painful death. [LiveScience]
April 29th, 2008 at 9:43 am
This article is filed under Blog, History.
The Archimedes Codex unpeeled by modern technological sleuthing: This is about an ancient book called The Archimedes Codex, bought for $2.2 million in October, 1998, at an auction in New York City by an anonymous collector who sent it to the Walters Art Museum, here to be restored, conserved, and probed for its content. It was thought to contain mathematical theses conceived by the genius of Syracuse (287-212 BC), whose name it bears, ideas not found anywhere else in the world. [CSM]
Andre Zucca’s photographs of gay Paris at war paint an uneasy portrait of city collaboration: An unusual warning has been added to a Paris exhibition that has shocked some visitors and media, despite the absence of sex, violence or religion. The photographic show has caused offence by depicting the French capital in the Second World War as a sunny place, where people enjoyed life alongside their Nazi occupiers. [Times]
April 18th, 2008 at 9:50 am
This article is filed under Blog, History.
Wife-beating in Ancient Rome: For all the glory and glamour of its art and literature, classical antiquity produces household statistics that make the heart sink. Greek and Roman girls were normally married in their mid-teens to men twice their age. Until menopause, if they were lucky enough to survive that long, they could expect to give birth at least six times, probably more. [TLS]
DNA tests could force a rewrite of city’s history book: On the record, the ‘Father of Glendale’ had no children. But did L.C. Brand have a secret life and 2 sons? [LA Times]
Vanished: A Pueblo Mystery: Some 700 years ago, as part of a vast migration, a people called the Anasazi, driven by God knows what, wandered from the north to form settlements like these, stamping the land with their own unique style. [NYT]
April 9th, 2008 at 10:09 am
This article is filed under Blog, History.
Ian Fleming’s novel plan to outwit the Nazis: A secret mission cooked up by Ian Fleming in September 1940, more than a decade before he created James Bond, appears as preposterous as any adventure that he devised for his fictional creation. Fleming, in his role as a naval intelligence officer in the Second World War, was the architect of Operation Ruthless, a daring scheme to seize a German codebook that may have inspired From Russia with Love. [Times]
Ancient world: Five out of 12 Roman skeletons uncovered in a group burial site near Cambridge were found to have a spinal deformity. Meanwhile, an examination of 4th century AD skeletons at a Cirencester cemetery has revealed that 80 per cent suffered from osteoarthritis (a painful condition that can cause deformity and virtual paralysis). Julius Caesar mentions almost casually that in a single incident during the civil war, four out of the six centurions in one cohort were blinded. We can tell a lot about a culture’s values by the language it uses. Neither the Greeks or the Romans had a word equivalent to ‘disabled’ but the term that they often use is ‘teras’ (for the Greeks) and ‘monstrum’ (for the Romans). [New Statesman]
The day the beer flowed again: Seventy years ago, legal beer returned to the U.S. and provided a spark of hope for a country in a depression. [LA Times]
April 7th, 2008 at 10:11 am
This article is filed under Blog, History.
Oldest Bling Found in Peru: The earliest known gold jewelry made in the Americas has been discovered in southern Peru. The gold necklace, made nearly 4,000 years ago, was found in a burial site near Lake Titicaca [Discovery]
How the Battle of Actium Changed the World: The Battle of Actium in 31 B.C. was an epic showdown that pitted Mark Antony and Cleopatra against spurned former ally Octavian. When Octavian eventually reigned supreme in battle, it meant the end of the Roman Republic for good and the beginning of the Roman Empire, whose influences were ultimately felt throughout the world. [LiveScience]
Aztec Math Used Hearts and Arrows: The Aztecs had more numbers than we do, or at least symbols denoting numerical concepts. When it came to measuring land—critical for levying the proper tax or tribute—these medieval Mesoamericans used arrows, hearts, hands and other units representing fractions, according to a new study in Science. [Scientific American]
April 4th, 2008 at 8:54 am
This article is filed under Blog, History.
Australian Warship Found After 66-Year Search: The 1941 sinking of the HMAS Sydney was Australia’s worst naval disaster ever. For six decades, Australians have been wondering how the pride of its navy could have been sunk by a lightly-armed German cruiser. Now, that mystery might finally be solved. [Spiegel]
How the Greek Agora Changed the World: It was the heart of the city – where ordinary citizens bought and sold goods, politics were discussed and ideas were passed among great minds like Aristotle and Plato. Who knows where we’d be without the “agoras” of ancient Greece. Lacking the concept of democracy, perhaps, or the formula for the length of the sides of a triangle (young math students, rejoice!). Modern doctors might not have anything to mutter as an oath. [Live Science]
In U.S. Politics, Party Rule Flips Like Clockwork: If history is any judge, party power in American politics seems to switch back and forth at consistent, predictable intervals. [Discovery]
March 17th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
This article is filed under Blog, History.
Little about the official explanation of the events at the Ambassador Hotel on June 5 1968 makes sense. Now a new forensic analysis of the only audio recording of the fatal shots has given new weight to a controversial theory that there were in fact two shooters, and that the man convicted of Kennedy’s killing — Sirhan Sirhan - did not fire the fatal shots. [Guardian]
Apparently, the New World isn’t all that intrepid explorer Christopher Columbus discovered; seems we may also have him to thank for spreading the pathogen that causes syphilis—along with news of the Americas—to Europe. [Scientific American]
March 5th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
This article is filed under Blog, History.
