Blogs about History

That's right... ... I'm going on a research trip... ... to the UK! (I suppose this post should technically be called Archivwochen, but that's a little too pedantic even for me.) It's been nearly a …

Recently I was going through some old family photos at mom's house in Huntsville and found a batch that included the ones below. Dad probably took them in the late 1950s or early 1960s. In …

April 17 – July 22, 1520 Ferdinand Magellan was a restless sort of captain general, who was forever wondering what the grass was like on the other side. Puerto San Julián had seemed a gift …

The remains of The Cluniac Priory of Our Lady of Thetford The Cluniac Priory of Our Lady, Thetford, was first founded on the Suffolk side of the Little Ouse river by Roger Bigod in the …

Updated July 2024 When I first adapted a version of this text (The Holocene Catastrophe) for my blog seven years ago, I was reading about the US government pulling out of the Paris climate accord. …

Clown with young child in bed, ? hospital Biomedical ScienceMedical clowns in a U.S hospital health-care team started when a professional clown at NY’s Big Apple Circus founded Clown Care in 1986. Cl­own­ing became a …

This popular annual event returns to KCL on 17th May 2024. This one day event features a range of papers of original research in all areas of film culture in Britain and areas affected by …

Chris starts our new podcast episode (Mermaid 101) with this question (see title) and I answer ‘yes’. Mermaids (which have featured for over a decade on this site) are social supernatural beings who happen to …

This month's fun antique garment is from LACMA:Two-piece silk dress, c. 1853-5. LACMA.The color scheme of this dress is what caught my eye. To date, both original prints a la disposition that I've handled were …

MOVIE REVIEW: DEADPOOL AND WOLVERINE (no plot spoilers) The Marvel Studios summer film Deadpool and Wolverine opens today, starring Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman. It is no surprise that this film has the requisite mindless, …

Many apologies to subscribers who received a notification of a new post earlier today. Unfortunately this was an error on my part. I was working on an upcoming essay and managed to hit the “publish” …

Well, on Canada Day I was attending “As You Like It” at Craigdarroch Castle but lets not be too literal! The blessing and curse of being a writer in the 21st century is that there …

The Newberry Library in Chicago is hosting a Digital Humanities workshop on Frederick Douglass during Black History Month. Undergraduate and graduate students in History at Northern Illinois University may be interested in participating in this …

As the 2024 Paris Olympics begin, we at the British Newspaper Archive could not help but look back at the 1924 Paris Olympics, with the same city playing host to the summer Olympic Games exactly …

This is the first half of the second part of our three part look at Paradox Interactive’s Hellenistic-era grand strategy game Imperator: Rome. I had hoped to do this part in a single post, but …

At home all the morning, and walking met with Mr. Hill of Cambridge at Pope’s Head Alley with some women with him whom he took and me into the tavern there, and did give us …

This post was inspired by the Turba philosophorum lecture on the 4th Feb 2022 An athanor is an alchemical furnace, but what exactly does it mean in practise? And I really do mean practise because …

Travel today is often portrayed as a healthy activity, good for body, mind…and what’s left of the spirit! A good holiday is generally viewed as a tonic, and holiday company advertisements extol the virtues of …

This blog is twenty years old. It’s not going away any time soon, but it’s not likely to become a hive of activity either. Not many academic history/humanities blogs I knew in 2004 are still …