A weekly thread about the past
Welcome to this week’s History Thread! I didn’t have time to prepare a full article, but I did discover the story of William and Ellen Craft, two slaves from Georgia who made a remarkable escape from captivity in December 1848. … Continue reading The History Thread Escapes!
Today’s History Thread will not be as detailed or nuanced as usual because I am not a trained historian. Nevertheless I will give it my best shot. Today I’d like to talk about a historical event I learned about only … Continue reading The History Thread learns a new thing
Sorry that I didn’t have time to prepare a proper thread this week, but I did find another delightful Whig Party cartoon circa 1844. This one assures us that Henry Clay will beat James K. Polk because Polk will step … Continue reading The History Thread Has Fundamental Objections
This week’s header uses as its starting point a neat article about recent efforts by amateur culinarians to recreate ancient recipes and cooking styles. The main focus is the recreation of Egyptian bread by Seamus Blackley (creator of the XBox!?!) … Continue reading The History Thread Gets That (Egyptian) Bread
On November 24th, 1965 General Joseph Mobutu formally seized power in the Republic of Congo. Mobutu was a member of the Ngbandi people, long looked down upon by Congolese as a backward agrarian people. During the ’50s, he served the … Continue reading History Thread: A Brief History of Mobutu’s Zaire
Another week, another History Thread I didn’t have time to write. Mea culpa, hopefully we’ll return to substantial headers soon. As usual, you’re invited to discuss anything and everything history-related. Continue reading Same Old History Thread
The History Thread returns! We’ve all survived an acrimonious presidential election, so let’s keep it laid back this week. Header is a political cartoon from the 1852 race between Franklin Pierce and Winfield Scott. Hope to return to regular headers … Continue reading The History Thread Gets Whiggy With It
Welcome all! It’s been a busy month here in the History Thread, and after the past few long-form articles I’m making a perfunctory header this week. Next week, I will be taking Election Day off. Mostly because I plan to … Continue reading The History Thread Takes a Break
Few poets achieve lasting fame or cultural impact: in that sense, at least, Ezra Pound deserves notice. The abrasive, brilliant writer from Philadelphia made his mark in the literary salons of London in the 1910s, in Paris during the “Lost … Continue reading History Thread: The Madness of Ezra Pound
On August 30, 1945 two American war corespondents entered Tokyo. The Second World War still hadn’t formally ended – Douglas MacArthur accepted Japan’s surrender two days later – but Clark Lee of International News Service and Harry Brundidge of Cosmopolitan … Continue reading History Thread: The Making of Tokyo Rose
What responsibility do artists have under dictatorships? Nazi Germany, with its obsessive control over entertainment, posed a particularly harsh dilemma to those unable to leave. Those who willingly collaborated, like directors Leni Riefenstahl (Triumph of the Will) and Veit Harlan … Continue reading History Thread: Gustaf Gründgens, Der Schauspieler
Due to work and a defective laptop, I didn’t have time to prepare my planned History Thread, Der Schranker must wait another week. Until then, enjoy this delightful caricature of Georgian nobility: A highlight of the exhibit was the pairing … Continue reading A Peep at the History Thread
This week, we’ll explore the myths surrounding German actor Max Schreck, best-remembered for playing the vampire Count Orlok in F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922). There’s a lot of misinformation about Schreck, some of it repeated by writers that should know better, … Continue reading Die geheime Geschichte von Max Schreck
Part One here. As 1868 dawned, Andrew Johnson grew bolder and his adversaries, increasingly frustrated. Washington life fell into a dismal pattern, observed French journalist Georges Clemenceau, that yielded only deadlock and chaos: At each session [Congress] add a shackle … Continue reading History Thread: The Saturday Morning Massacre
Andrew Johnson was a stubborn man. From his hardscrabble childhood in North Carolina, when he escaped from indentured servitude; as an unschooled Tennessee tailor who taught himself (helped by his wife Eliza) to read and write, developing a taste for … Continue reading History Thread: Andrew Johnson’s Dignity
Biological warfare is a practice known from antiquity. The titular character of Philoctetes, Sophocles’ 409 BC play, is a Greek hero who suffers from a festering leg wound caused by a poisoned Trojan arrow. The ancient use of poisoned arrows … Continue reading The Weekly History Thread Wages Biological Warfare and Helps Spread a Pandemic
Today, Rick Perlstein’s new book, Reaganland: America’s Right Turn, 1976-1980, hits bookstores. It’s useful to remember, as Perlstein continues exploring the Republican Party’s right turn between 1960 and 1980, the manufactured controversy surrounding his last volume, The Invisible Bridge, in … Continue reading The Plagiarized History Thread
In the fall of 1979, 600 academics from across the world signed a petition protesting the dismissal of Robert Faurisson, a French professor of literature at the University of Lyon. The text of the petition read: Dr. Robert Faurisson has … Continue reading History Thread: Or, The Perils of Condoning Pseudohistory
I recently had occasion to reread the amusing exchange between Gore Vidal and two historians over the former’s novel Lincoln in the New York Review of Books. Vidal, a man who never let a slight go, spent a lengthy open … Continue reading The Scholar Squirrel History Thread
During the Cold War, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) engaged in a variety of morally, ethically and intellectually dubious projects. Some were blatantly illegal, from their involvement in assassination plots to domestic espionage programs like Operation CHAOS; others were outrageous, … Continue reading The Acoustic Kitty History Thread
From 1956 to 1971, the FBI ran a series of covert operations designed to infiltrate radical political groups. Dubbed COINTELPRO (for counterintelligence programs), it countenanced a wide variety of techniques for harassing and undermining groups by encouraging infighting and dissension. … Continue reading The Faux Groovy History Thread
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