Welcome to this week’s History Thread! Today marks the 50th anniversary of the Days of Rage protest in Chicago. While other antiwar organizers prepared for the National Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam, a radical splinter of the Students … Continue reading The History Thread is All the Rage
Nobody had created this yet, so here’s a last-second version. Sludge requested Minshew, so here he is. Have fun and don’t hog the beer nuts. Continue reading The Emergency NFL Thread
Welcome to this week’s History Thread! Today’s picture: October 1, 1975 was one of the most famous boxing matches in modern history: the third fight between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier in Manila, appropriately dubbed the “Thrilla in Manila.” This … Continue reading The Thrilla in the History Threada
Welcome to the History Thread! I didn’t have time to prepare a header today, but that doesn’t mean we can’t discuss history in the thread below. Continue reading The Weekly History Thread
The early ’70s offered one explosion after another. Investigative reporters released world-historical bombshells: Seymour Hersh’s reporting on the My Lai Massacre; Daniel Ellsberg leaking the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times; Jack Anderson exposing Richard Nixon’s relationship with ITT. … Continue reading The Paranoid Style in Cinema: The Parallax View (1974, Alan J. Pakula)
This week’s History Thread falls on two seminal days in American history: the signing of the Constitution in 1787, and the Battle of Antietam seventy-five years later. The former created the document which remains, with a number of amendments, the … Continue reading A History Thread, if You Can Keep It
The shadow of assassination, even as it haunted America, seemed a perennial threat in postwar Europe. The ’60s and ’70s saw France, Italy, West Germany and Spain wracked by leftist terror groups and rightist paramilitary organizations, with government repression and … Continue reading The Paranoid Style in Cinema: The Day of the Jackal (1973, Fred Zinnemann)
Welcome to this week’s History Thread! My apologies for missing last week, I have no good excuse other than being otherwise occupied. This week’s picture: on September 10, 1897 a miner’s strike at Lattimer, PA turned violent. After the usual … Continue reading The Striking Weekly History Thread
November 22, 1963 was a defining event for a generation of Americans. John F. Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas, Texas became a national trauma, experienced collectively through media as a later generation endured 9/11. Nor did the event offer catharsis: Lee … Continue reading The Paranoid Style in Cinema: Executive Action (1973, David Miller)
Welcome to The Paranoid Style in Cinema! This will be a (hopefully) weekly column chronicling the subgenre of ’70s conspiracy thrillers. We will begin, however, with their antecedents, focusing particularly on the best-known and probably most important. We start with … Continue reading The Paranoid Style in Cinema: Z (Costa-Gavras, 1969)
Welcome to this week’s History Thread! Today is the 136th anniversary of the eruption of Krakatoa, one of the largest and most destructive volcanic events in modern history. After several months of gas emissions and preliminary explosions, the volcano (located … Continue reading The Loud Weekly History Thread
Sixth in a series of articles on McCarthyism and the Red Scare; see Parts One, Two, Three, Four and Five. By any standards, Ruth A. M. Schmidt was a remarkable woman. Born in Brooklyn in April 1916, Schmidt became interested … Continue reading How We Got Here: Ruth Schmidt Browses the Washington Bookshop
Welcome to this week’s History Thread! It’s the 51st anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, which crushed the Prague Spring and its reformist government under Alexander Dubcek. Continue reading The Weekly History Thread With a Human Face
Welcome to this week’s History Thread! Today is the anniversary of Cortes’s conquest of Tenochtitlan and the fall of the Aztec Empire. Discuss what you will, it is an open thread today. Continue reading The Weekly History Thread
Welcome to this week’s History Thread. Today is the 400th anniversary celebration of the opening of the Virginia General Assembly, the first European-led legislative body in the New World. Naturally, it has sparked controversy, from discussions about the acknowledgment of … Continue reading The 400th Anniversary History Thread
Welcome to this week’s History Thread! This week’s discussion question is judging the past through modern eyes. It’s hard not to look at past events without using our own lens of judgment. How much are you willing to forgive, or … Continue reading The Judgmental History Thread
Welcome to this week’s History Thread! Today’s the anniversary of the exploding of the first atomic bomb at White Sands, outside Alamogordo, New Mexico (July 16, 1945). Continue reading The Explosive Weekly History Thread
Welcome to this week’s History Thread! Today we can discuss historical distortions; events or people who are commonly misrepresented. We’ve talked a lot about things like the American Founding Fathers and the Lost Cause in this thread before, feel free … Continue reading The Defeated History Thread
Welcome to this week’s History Thread! It’s the anniversary of one of the most decisive battles of the Brazilian Independence War, the fall of Salvador after a 16 month siege, and I wish I knew more about the subject so … Continue reading The Shortest Weekly History Thread Yet
Welcome to this week’s History Thread! Today is the anniversary of (among other things) George Custer’s defeat by the Sioux and Cheyenne at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, a classic case of tactical ineptitude that became celebrated, for many … Continue reading The Weekly History Thread’s Last Stand
Welcome to this week’s History Thread! Today’s picture: June 18, 1940 saw two of the most famous speeches of the Second World War. With France virtually overrun by Nazi Germany and the British military in humiliating retreat, Winston Churchill gave … Continue reading The Appealing Weekly History Thread
