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Menstruation is rarely a topic that comes to mind when we think about the Holocaust. But this shared experience was a source of both shame and salvation for the Nazis’ female victims.
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2K
Congratulations to
@OlivetteOtele
on becoming the first black woman to be made a professor of history in Britain. Here she is 'On the Spot' earlier this year.
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2K
Elizabeth Garrett Anderson passed her medical exams
#OnThisDay
in 1865.
The following year she opened a hospital solely for women, staffed solely by women, which drew crowds of patients.
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@Joanne_Paul_
@cath_fletcher
@rain_later
David Starkey is no longer a member of the History Today editorial advisory board.
– Andy Patterson, Publisher.
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#OnThisDay
in 1865, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson passed her medical exams.
The following year she opened a hospital solely for women, staffed solely by women, which drew crowds of patients.
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635
Cat wearing jetpack in 16th century drawing baffles historians
http://t.co/04rzLY1Bc3
via
@DeathAndTaxes
http://t.co/N9OfxkFlMX
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‘More than a third of the city’s population now immigrants.’ Today that reads like a shock tabloid headline, but 450 years ago in Norwich, refugees were welcomed.
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The Romans introduced at least 50 new species of plant foods to Britain. These included fruits, such as peach, pear, fig, mulberry, sour cherry, plum, damson, date and pomegranate, along with almond, pine nut, sweet chestnut and walnut.
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Indonesia’s bloody past has produced a country populated with ghosts.
Now, they are sharing their stories on YouTube.
✍️
@Tito_Ambyo
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Middle-aged women of the 18th century were seen as extremely erotic – though it may surprise historians fixated on spinsters and widows.
History Today-
@RoyalHistSoc
2019 Undergraduate Dissertation Prize:
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The blood-soaked uniform Archduke Franz Ferdinand was wearing when he was assassinated in on this day in 1914
http://t.co/568WjFqu11
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A former slave who led a revolution and became Napoleon’s foe, Toussaint Louverture’s destruction by the French state was not forgotten.
From the forthcoming June issue:
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Boudica, Boudicca, Boadicea, Boudicea, Buddug. Who was she?
8
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219
The Byzantine emperor Justinian I died in Constantinople on 14 November 565.
3
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Why is the idea of suffragette violence so contentious?
@FernRiddell
on how perceptions of the suffrage movement have been sanitised.
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A page from a Welsh-English dictionary created by Eliza Pughe (1831-c.1850), a profoundly deaf 12-year-old from Caernarfon.
#DyddG
ŵylDewiHapus
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'Studying history becomes impossible if we think it is ever enough to say we ‘can’t imagine’ why anyone would feel or act differently from us.'
@ClerkofOxford
in the September issue:
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By Toutatis! Asterix and Obelix creator René Goscinny was born on this day in 1926.
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A brief history of Salisbury Cathedral, which has overawed visitors from around the world since it was built in the 13th century.
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People have been eating pizza, in one form or another, for centuries.
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The year's best history books, as chosen by
@edithmayhall
,
@holland_tom
,
@katemond
,
@bridget_heal
,
@peterfrankopan
,
@ClerkofOxford
and others.
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200
The opening of the London Underground wasn't welcomed by all. One minister had denounced the railway company for trying to break into Hell.
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A selection of our favourite articles from 2017 are now free to read until the end of the year. You're welcome.
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‘The collective noun for a group of historians is ‘an argument’ – you wouldn’t think it if you only watched history documentaries.’
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177
Middle-aged women of the 18th century were seen as extremely erotic, although it may surprise historians fixated on spinsters and widows.
The winner of the History Today &
@RoyalHistSoc
Undergraduate Dissertation Prize 2019, in the November issue:
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#OnThisDay
in 1812, the 'lost' city of Petra was found by a 27-year-old Swiss explorer called Johann Ludwig Burckhardt.
Before travelling about in Syria, Lebanon and Palestine, he studied the Koran and Muslim law, and took lessons in Arabic in Aleppo.
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The word 'wyrdwritere', meaning ‘historian’, was coined towards the end of the Anglo-Saxon period.
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Constantinople fell to the invading Ottoman Turks on this day in 1453.
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We live our days by the clock and our lives by the calendar. But our ancestors had a completely different relationship to times, dates and years than we do, writes
@sixteenthCgirl
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From the perspective of England the rise of Welsh nationalism might feel parochial, but it may yet contribute to the very end of the UK.
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31 October 1517: Martin Luther nails his Ninety Five Theses to the door of Wittenberg’s castle church.
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Does the 'Life in the UK' test use history to project and protect a certain view of ‘Britishness’?
@Joanne_Paul_
writes in our October issue:
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In 1940, a Polish Army captain volunteered to be sent to Auschwitz, from where he would report back to the Polish underground.
A review by
@Roger_Moorhouse
on the recent award-winning book on the life of Witold Pilecki:
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162
The Liverpool street immortalised by the Beatles in their song ‘Penny Lane’ takes its name from the slave trader James Penny, who was vocal in his opposition to the abolition movement.
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To celebrate
#IWD
we'll be sharing pieces from our archive by female historians highlighting women's history, all free to read today only.
The Weaker Sex?
@FernRiddell
on violence and the suffragette movement
#InternationalWomensDay
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1
141
156
Early modern sleep was seldom taken in one long stretch. Is it time to bring back the forgotten practice of ‘segmented sleep’?
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In 1938 Charlie Chaplin started writing the script of a film in which he would mercilessly mock Adolf Hitler. He wanted to ridicule Nazi anti-semitism and ‘their mystic bilge about a pure-blooded race’.
#OnThisDay
in 1940 'The Great Dictator' premiered.
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Arrested over 400 times, Annie Parker found redemption in intricate cross-stitch and crochet using her own hair.
✍️ This new article by
@IsabellaRosner
is exclusive to the website and is free to read at
#victorians
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Why does England only have two medieval universities?
3
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Elizabeth Garrett Anderson passed her medical exams
#OnThisDay
in 1865.
The following year she opened a hospital solely for women, staffed solely by women, which drew crowds of patients.
1
60
142
Despite progress since the 1970s, female historians are still treated unfairly, writes
@sixteenthCgirl
.
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We put the incredible
@bettanyhughes
... on the spot
Read the full interview at
#bronzeage
#history
#archaelogy
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Sometimes referred to as ‘the Albanian Braveheart’, for centuries Skanderbeg was lauded throughout Europe.
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A brief history of Catalonia, Spain’s Biggest Problem.
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In his 'Journal of a Plague Year', Daniel Defoe described the mounting chaos as enforced isolation proved counterproductive. Too often, he argued, ‘private mischief’ won the battle against ‘general benefit’.
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'In the Byzantine Empire in the second half of the 11th century, an adviser who was too clever and cunning for his own good polarised polite society, compromised the leader and helped wreck the economy.'
@peterfrankopan
in the July issue:
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Apropos nothing in particular.
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Why do the British know so little about Irish history?
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George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four was first published
#OnThisDay
in 1949.
The idea for the book had come to him in 1943. Themes in an early outline included 'the nightmare feeling caused by the disappearance of objective truth'.
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How did Portugal, a small, poor, thinly populated country, create the age of globalisation?
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'When you know places to be ancient, they become powerfully imbued with a sense of their past inhabitants and those unknown people feel so close as to be almost within reach.'
@ClerkofOxford
writes in the January issue:
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135
The story of Lady Jane Grey, pronounced queen on this day in 1553, is perhaps the most poignant personal tragedy in British political history.
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'Wrinkled, dirty, brown, magnificent':
@katemond
reviews
#BLAngloSaxons
, a new exhibition at
@britishlibrary
.
1
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'The past and the present talk to each other continually. As a historian, I tend to obsess over this communication.'
–
@sixteenthCgirl
writes in the August issue:
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‘Ireland has four saints who are recorded as openly and miraculously carrying out abortions: Ciarán of Saigir, Áed mac Bricc, Cainneach of Aghaboe and Brigid of Kildare.
Abortion is shown in medieval literature as a miraculous but also practical act.’
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The work of military nurses at Passchendaele transformed the perception of women’s war service.
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'Wearing Tudor clothes felt like serious and proper historical research. It taught me more than reading about them had ever done.'
@sixteenthCgirl
writes in the June issue:
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Early medieval libraries lent books often and lending books for copying was seen as an act of Christian charity.
These lending lists preserve a unique window into the communities created by monastic libraries.
From the October issue:
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Pliny the Elder observed that those responsible for processing at the silver mines in Spain tied masks made from animal bladders over their noses and mouths to prevent them from inhaling the dust and damaging their lungs.
Ancient work hazards:
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119
From Greek goddesses and Hindu asparas to Norse Valkyries, Islamic Sufis and international swan-maidens, aerial women are a recurring trope across history and culture.
5
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The ‘death of the expert’ throws up two challenges to the historian, writes
@sixteenthCgirl
.
9
52
119
Histories of the world have traditionally seen Mesopotamia as the area in which cities, law and agriculture first developed.
4
55
117
George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four was first published
#OnThisDay
in 1949.
The idea for the book had come to him in 1943. Themes in an early outline included 'the nightmare feeling caused by the disappearance of objective truth'.
3
61
113
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was an authority on Old English and Middle English.
Fascinated by the myths and legends they enshrined, it inspired him to create a whole mythological world of his own.
The Hobbit was first published
#OnThisDay
in 1937.
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38
119
Witold Pilecki would be perennially dismayed by the unwillingness of Poland’s allies to bomb Auschwitz. Such were the conditions in the camp, he wrote, that even if prisoners were to die in the attack, ‘it would be a relief’.
Review from our August issue:
3
88
111
The Hydra, a magazine produced by shell shock patients, was pioneering as a mental health care treatment.
5
86
117
China is a nation of many languages. In the 20th century it was decided that a united country should speak just one.
From the January issue, and one of our picks of the year:
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Between 1558 and 1709 around 165 parish libraries were established in England.
An early ancestor of today’s public libraries, founders dictated who could access them, what they contained and where they were located.
1
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117
The British Museum opened on 15 January 1759. Entry was to be free and the staff were not allowed to accept tips.
0
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Everything that women have achieved throughout history has been achieved in the context of a struggle to continue the human race at the cost of their bodies and hearts, writes
@sixteenthCgirl
.
1
42
110
After Thomas Bodley retired in 1597, he worked to rebuild the library at Oxford University, persuading friends to give books or money.
The collection was reopened in 1602, with some 2,000 volumes, as the Bodleian Library.
Bodley died
#OnThisDay
in 1613:
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51
113
The 17th century was not as violent and brutal as is often perceived.
4
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107
Announcing the winner of the Longman-History Today Trustees' Award 2019: Claire Breay, Head of Ancient, Medieval and Early Modern Manuscripts at the British Library
@britishlibrary
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The landmarks of Victorian London, painted onto a fashionable leather glove.
1
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Marie Skłodowska Curie, the world’s most famous female physicist, was born 150 years ago, on 7 November 1867.
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107
A brief history of Catalonia (and how it became Spain's biggest problem):
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99
Amelia Bloomer launched the world’s first all-female newspaper, liberated fashion and brought together two of America’s most prominent suffragists.
3
56
104
'The most distinctive legacy of European imperialism was also its most paradoxical: the doubt that empire can ever be justified.'
@holland_tom
We asked four historians if empires are 'always bad'. From our July issue:
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A non-definitive selection of our favourite articles published in the past year, all free to read until the next one.
1
46
102
We are pleased to announce the shortlist for the Longman-History Today Book Prize for 2019.
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104
Our Complete History of the French Revolution by
@ProfDaveAndress
is free to read for
#BastilleDay
.
1
99
106
Charters and place-names not only allow us to see how ordinary Anglo-Saxons interacted imaginatively with the world around them but even how they mapped it.
From the February issue:
0
37
104
Weekend reading: Latin was not the only language of the Roman Empire.
0
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101
It's Pablo Picasso's birthday. Read how his most famous work warns against the danger of ‘alternative facts’.
0
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102
We are pleased to announce the shortlist for the Longman-History Today Book Prize 2017.
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101
The trial of Charles I stands out as one of the most remarkable, and certainly one of the most dramatic, events in the early modern history of the British Isles.
The trial began
#OnThisDay
in 1649:
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41
104
'We erase lives from history not by rewriting history, but by failing to rewrite it.'
From the February issue:
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99
The more we look, the more we see that there are many more women who have been instrumental in building up our knowledge of the past, but who have been politely edited out of the story of archaeology.
This week's pick from the archive (free to read):
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97
The Battle of Hastings took place
#onthisday
in 1066.
The Bayeux Tapestry, with its English origins, decidedly Norman story and claims by later audiences to have inherited the history it portrays, continue to make the Tapestry a subject of fascination:
5
41
96
The traditional story of archaeology obscures the discipline's female pioneers. Free to read for a limited time.
3
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98
Marcus Aurelius’ reign saw the empire menaced by threats and invasions, by persistent outbreaks of plague, and a type of smalllpox, which took millions of lives.
He came to power as Emperor of Rome
#OnThisDay
in AD 161.
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26
99
Charles I’s death warrant. The king was executed on January 30th, 1649.
7
165
98
Rasputin grew up as a drunken, illiterate narcissist, who seems to have eagerly cherished a delusion that he was the most important being in the universe.
7
40
96
A guide to men’s hair. By W.K. Haselden, published in the Daily Mirror, January 1909.
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95