Blogs about History

There is a passage in Democracy in America that has appeared in many of my essays." In the United States,” Tocqueville reports, “there is nothing the human will despairs of attaining through the free action …

You’ve heard of the movie “Death at a Funeral,” but what about “Arrest at a Funeral?” While conducting a funeral in Woodgrane Park Cemetery, Joseph Barker, an undertaker, of Shoreditch, was arrested. Yesterday he was …

An 1851 San Francisco paper described a city of immigrants… I found a lovely line in an 1851 San Francisco newspaper that celebrates the diversity of Gold Rush San Francisco—a boom town whose residents included …

Lisa Haushofer’s Wonder Foods: The Science and Commerce of Nutrition aims to provide a “new perspective on the development of the nutrition sciences and their intensifying relationship to the world Read more The post John …

Berlin is cold and dark, there’s snow on the ground and the supermarkets are full of Lebkuchen and testy shoppers, so … it must be time for Secret Satan! Here we go with our annual …

Readers who have been paying attention to the news may have seen that a group of researchers led by Graziano Ranocchia of the University of Pisa in Italy have recently used modern technology to read …

Thanks to the diligent and hard work of Clonehenge, we have a really good understanding of Stonehenge replicas and pastiches from across the world. There are a surprisingly large number of these, over 100 (!!), …

The latest Vidocq’s reincarnation in the movie The Emperor of Paris starring Vincent Cassel (2018) . In the heart of Paris lies a tale as complex as the city itself: the story of Paris Sûreté …

In November, 1906, three women began a month-long apprenticeship in preparation for the Prefecture of Police examination that would qualify them to drive horse cabs in Paris. Several other women were accepted into the apprenticeship …

In Japan, riding a steam train through outer space is a melancholy symbol of the human journey. Like the gentle drift of the sakura petal, the whistle of a train means a transition in life. …

Recently I have been very fortunate to be given access to a superb collection of Old Walton photographs .More than one hundred new images of Walton have now been added to my Old Walton Archive …

Michael Grasso / February 21, 2024 Near the end of Richard Nixon’s first term, the forces of conservatism and reaction were in the ascendancy in America. This public resurgence of “traditional values” was itself a …

May 1981: an infamous moment in baseball history — when Lenny Randle made a ball foul by blowing on it. Randle later swore he simply yelled at the ball, but in the video it sure …

I’ve been writing these posts since 2015, and, especially in recent years, I keep asking the same question: what is time anyway? This year is no different. Or, it is different because there are new …