Welcome to this week’s History Thread! Today marks the 40th anniversary of the assassination of gay rights pioneer Harvey Milk and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone (both pictured above). Cleve Jones, Milk’s friend and ally, has a nice remembrance for … Continue reading The Weekly History Thread Remembers
Thanksgiving is a strange holiday. It nominally commemorates a celebratory harvest dinner hosted by the Massachusetts Puritans in the fall of 1621, to which local Native Americans were invited in a spirit of friendship and gratitude for their help surviving … Continue reading John Redcorn’s Thankstaking History Thread
Watergate remains the defining political scandal in American history, endlessly milked for books, movies, cartoon caricatures and political analogies while Teapot Dome and Iran-Contra gather dust in the minds of history buffs. It’s easy to see why: the bizarre cast, … Continue reading Review: Watergate, Or How We Learned to Stop an Out of Control President (2018, Charles Ferguson)
Welcome to this week’s History Thread! Our picture commemorates the 36th anniversary of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial opening in Washington, DC. Designed by 21 year old architecture student Maya Lin, its simple design (a black wall listing the names of … Continue reading The Weekly History Thread
Welcome to this week’s History Thread! Today is the 80th anniversary of Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds radio broadcast, which allegedly caused panic across the country from hayseeds who thought it signaled a real alien invasion (though modern historians … Continue reading The Panicked Weekly History Thread
In 1929, the French National Academy of Sciences hosted a startling presentation. George Montandon, the Swiss-born enfant terrible of French anthropology, presented a paper positing the discovery of an anthropoid ape in South America. He cited as evidence the testimony … Continue reading Things That Are Not: George Montandon’s Malicious Monkey Business
Welcome to this week’s History Thread! Have fun and discuss what you will! Today’s picture: on October 23, 1739 Britain declared war on Spain. One of the 18th Century’s innumerable inscrutable imperial conflicts, the war stemmed in part from Robert … Continue reading The Weekly History Thread is All Ears
Welcome to this week’s Things That Are Not, a limited series exploring historical mysteries and paranormal phenomena that simply aren’t true. Having explored the Bermuda Triangle last week, we’ll take a deep dive into an even stranger maritime misadventure. When … Continue reading Things That Are Not: The Philadelphia Experiment
Welcome to this week’s History Thread! Today’s picture: On this day in 1869, several men digging a well in Cardiff, New York discovered an unusual specimen: a ten foot tall man made of stone! Immediately dubbed the Cardiff Giant, it … Continue reading The Giant Weekly History Thread
Welcome to Things That Are Not, a limited series examining paranormal/supernatural mysteries and myths that have been debunked or discredited over the years. I thought this might be a nice break from political-themed articles, particularly with Halloween around the corner. … Continue reading Things That Are Not: The Raifuku Maru, from Tragedy to Myth
Welcome to this week’s History Thread! I will forgo a discussion topic again this week so we can have…fun? Today’s picture: 51 years ago, Thurgood Marshall became the first African-American Justice on the Supreme Court. Marshall had a distinguished career … Continue reading The Weekly History Thread is Sworn In
Welcome to this week’s history thread! Today’s topic: Democracy. Perhaps as much of a philosophical/political discussion as historical, but there are plenty of historical examples upon which to draw. Does democracy work? Is it the most desirable form of government, … Continue reading The Democratic Weekly History Thread
History Thread. Today’s picture: 120 years ago today marked the beginning of the Fashoda Crisis in modern-day Sudan. The Sudan gained independence from Britain and Egypt during the Mahdist uprising of the previous decade, leading a number of European nations … Continue reading The Weekly History Thread is Ready to Fight
Welcome to this week’s History Thread! This week will discuss unlikely alliances, be they political, military, dynastic, artistic, etc. Events make strange bedfellows, sometimes literally, so let’s celebrate them. Today’s picture: September 4 commemorates two more seminal dates in American … Continue reading The Weekly History Thread Makes the Deadliest Friend
On April 30, 1973, Richard Nixon announced a shocking political purge. As the Watergate scandal spiraled beyond Nixon’s control, he forced the resignations of his two closest aides, H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, beleaguered Attorney General Richard Kleindienst, and (less … Continue reading How We Got Here: The Saturday Night Massacre
Welcome to this week’s History Thread! This week will be another open thread, so feel free to discuss what you will. Today’s picture: Emmett Till was lynched on August 28, 1955. The fourteen year old Till, a Chicago native, was … Continue reading The Outraged Weekly History Thread
Part Six in a series; see Parts One, Two, Three, Four and Five Franklin Roosevelt fumbled his reelection mandate with a disastrous second term. Starting in 1935, the Supreme Court struck down many of his programs, particularly the National Recovery … Continue reading How We Got Here: The Trials of Sedition
Part Five in a series; see Parts One, Two, Three and Four. Meyer Lansky had every reason to despise fascism. His family had survived pogroms in Tsarist Russia before emigrating to America; Lansky, as a youth in Manhattan, earned his … Continue reading How We Got Here: The Gentle Art of Nazi Punching
Welcome to this week’s History Thread! This week we’ll try having a discussion question for the first time in awhile (though don’t feel bound by it): pieces of historical writing that changed your worldview. Be it a book, an essay, … Continue reading The Weekly History Thread Writes, Strikes and Otherwise Causes Change
Part Four in a series; see Parts One, Two and Three. After Franklin Roosevelt’s reelection, his opponents grew more hysterical and conspiracy-minded in their rhetoric. Father Coughlin, abandoning most pretenses of progressivism, now branded Roosevelt’s programs the “Jew Deal,” reproduced … Continue reading How We Got Here: The Mad Legions of America
Welcome to this week’s History Thread! I’ll try coming up with discussion topics for future threads, but let’s again have fun talking about whatever. This week’s picture: On August 7, 1964 both houses of Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin … Continue reading The Weekly History Thread
