From The Washington Post by Linda M. Chervinsky author of The President’s Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution: Washington, the first in the pantheon of American military heroes to become president, refused pomp and circumstance as the… Read More ›
From We’re History by John Bardes: When did America desegregate public transportation? Most people would probably answer 1955, when Rosa Parks’s refusal to surrender her seat ignited the Montgomery Bus Boycott. But the story begins at least 88 years before… Read More ›
From History Extra by Marc Morris author of William I: England’s Conqueror (Penguin Books, 2016) 1. No one at the time called William ‘the Conqueror’ The earliest recorded use of that nickname occurs in the 1120s, and it didn’t really… Read More ›
In case you missed any of them, here are all of the articles we highlighted in April. Why Did American Colonists Become United Against England? The untold story of ordinary black southerners’ litigation during the Jim Crow eraHow Did Easter Become an… Read More ›
We think today that an effective judicial system is necessary for any society to function and provide justice to its citizens. The concept of justice, in fact, has evolved from very early written history, showing some similarities early on with… Read More ›
The defeat and destruction of the Spanish Armada in 1588 is seen by many as the high point of Elizabeth I’s of England’s reign. If the Armada had been successful, it could have changed the course of English and world… Read More ›
From Atlas Obscura by Anne Ewbank: ON APRIL 20, 1868, A dozen women filed into Delmonico’s. The New York restaurant was the most famous in America, and the women were all middle- and and upper-class. But many of the women… Read More ›
From O Say Can You See: Stories from the National Museum of American History by Alexandra Piper: A civil rights protest often invokes the vivid images of sit-ins, boycotts, and marches, but the fight for racial equality took many different… Read More ›
From Smithsonian.com by Lorraine Boisseault: The new law came mere weeks after the Anschluss, Nazi Germany’s annexation of Austria. On April 26, 1938, the “Decree for the Reporting of Jewish-Owned Property” issued by Hitler’s government took effect, requiring all Jews in… Read More ›
Plant domestication, which led to agriculture, arguably has had among the deepest or most profound impacts on modern societies relative to all other human innovations. Not only did it lead to greater availability of food, allowing societies to grow in… Read More ›
From Aeon by Thomas White: Can one do evil without being evil? This was the puzzling question that the philosopher Hannah Arendt grappled with when she reported for The New Yorker in 1961 on the war crimes trial of Adolph Eichmann, the Nazi operative responsible for… Read More ›
From The Diplomat by Shin Kawashima: For Japan, 2018 marks the 150th anniversary of the Meiji Restoration; the name given to the events of 1868, which saw the downfall of the Tokugawa shogunate (or bakufu) and the creation of a new… Read More ›
From OUP Blog by Philip Walker the author of Behind the Lawrence Legend: the Forgotten Few who Shaped the Arab Revolt (Oxford University Press, 2018): The aftermath of the Arab Revolt of 1916-18 and the settlement in the Middle East after the… Read More ›
From Nursing Clio from R. E. Fulton: Several times a day, several days a week, I stand with a group of strangers in the parlor of a Lithuanian immigrant family who arrived in New York’s Lower East Side in 1901…. Read More ›
From History Extra by David Musgrove: The Bayeux Tapestry tells one of the most famous stories in British history – that of the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, particularly the battle of Hastings, which took place on 14 October… Read More ›
Lynching is often described as a form of extralegal, vigilante violence or justice; however, its meaning has evolved over time—from the tarring and feathering of individuals in the Colonial period to the lethal, racial violence that proliferated in the South…. Read More ›
From The New Republic by Caleb Gayle: When it comes to the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow, there are two kinds of monuments in America. There are memorials that seek to honor this country’s fitful march toward civil rights…. Read More ›
From Smithsonian Magazine by William Finnegan: The Unabomber cut a swath both deep and narrow through the country’s psyche. His attacks were frightening and unpredictable, but, in the later stages of his 17-year terror campaign, he emerged from the shadows… Read More ›
From The Atlantic by Suzy Swartz: In her book Why You Eat What You Eat, the neuroscientist Rachel Herz explains the science behind Americans’ food choices. Comfort foods, she says, are “usually foods that we ate as children because, when it comes to… Read More ›
The pyramids of Egypt are among the most recognizable and enduring monuments of the ancient world. Long after they were built, other ancient peoples, such as the Greeks and Romans, wrote about them with as much awe as people do… Read More ›