A weekly thread about the past
Welcome to this week’s History Thread! I wanted to do something more lighthearted this week (well, a little more lighthearted, it’s still war-adjacent) so I discovered that tomorrow is the birthday of Old Abe, the United States Army’s most famous … Continue reading Old Abe’s History Thread
A few weeks ago I devoted a History Thread to the Kent State shootings of May 4, 1970. Just eleven days later, on May 15th, another campus shooting shocked the nation. While Kent State remains widely known (enough to inspire … Continue reading The Jackson State History Thread
On May 12th, 1215, English barons rose in rebellion against their king, the John made famous by Robin Hood legends and “The Lion in Winter.” Rebellions against English kings happened all the time, but this was the first occurrence involving … Continue reading A History Thread
Yesterday was the 50th anniversary of the Kent State shooting, one of the most traumatic moments of the Vietnam War era. I’ve previously written around it (writing articles on Nixon’s decision to invade Cambodia and the backlash to the shooting … Continue reading The Kent State History Thread
Today’s History Thread remembers the April 28, 1945 execution of Benito Mussolini and his mistress, Claretta Petacci. By now WWII was nearly over in Europe; Hitler’s Thousand Year Reich had been reduced to a few bombed-out neighborhoods in Berlin, his … Continue reading This History Thread Kills Fascists
This week’s History Thread looks at the most notorious photographic hoax of the 20th Century: the Surgeon’s Photograph of the Loch Ness Monster. The Monster made its modern debut in 1933, with a burst of sightings that were eagerly covered … Continue reading The Hoaxed History Thread
Looking over today’s list of events, April 14th is a remarkably grim day in human history. The sinking of the Titanic in 1912 is the most famous, but it has stiff competition from a variety of events, including the assassination … Continue reading The Doom-Laden History Thread
Threw this together at the last minute so no interesting literary anecdotes to share. It’s the anniversary, among other things, of the second day of the Battle of Shiloh hence the image above. Continue reading The Last-Second History Thread
It’s catastrophic because it’s a last minute thread, and because it deals with catastrophe. When the Romans suffered terrible defeat upon terrible defeat at the hands of Hannibal, they went looking for what went wrong. After Trasimene, it was obvious … Continue reading The Catastrophic History Thread
Welcome to the History Thread! I didn’t have a chance to prepare a literary article this week, but today is the anniversary of a famous World War II atrocity which made for a nice, if disquieting back-up subject. On March … Continue reading The Massacre History Thread
This week’s History Thread keeps with our recent literary focus. We’ll look at Charles Dickens and his journey to the United States, chronicled in his 1842 book American Notes (for General Circulation), which can be found online here. The title … Continue reading A Dickensian History Thread
Welcome to this week’s History Thread! Today we’ll return to our recent looks at famous authors through their political views, personal relationships or lesser-known exploits. Our subject will be Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women, albeit a different Alcott … Continue reading Louisa May Alcott’s Little History Thread
Welcome to this week’s History Thread! Unfortunately, I’ve been under the weather the past few days so I didn’t have time or energy to work on the header I planned for today. Instead, let’s preview some possible future history-themed threads … Continue reading The History Thread Sees the Future
Welcome to another literary-themed History Thread! This week we’ll look at Bram Stoker, author of Dracula and his relationships with prominent Americans of his time. (I dug a little into Stoker’s politics and found that he was an Irish Protestant … Continue reading The History Thread, or Bram Stoker’s American Friends
Welcome to this week’s History Thread! Since we’ve been exploring the politics of well-known American authors in recent threads, I wanted to take a slightly different track by highlighting a lesser-known writer from the 19th Century. Specifically Edith Maude Eaton … Continue reading The Spring Fragrance History Thread
The History Thread returns with another look at the politics of a Classic American Writer – in this case, Herman Melville. The author of Moby-Dick is more like Edgar Allan Poe than Nathaniel Hawthorne (who was Melville’s close friend, and … Continue reading A Whale of a History Thread
This week’s History Thread will be a little different. We talked about Edgar Allan Poe’s political beliefs in last week’s discussion, so I wanted to do a slightly deeper dive into one of his contemporaries: Nathaniel Hawthorne. Hawthorne was a … Continue reading The History Thread Hearts Franklin Pierce
Welcome to this week’s History Thread! Today’s the anniversary of Louis XVI’s execution, so feel free to celebrate by toppling your own tyrannical monarch! Continue reading The History Thread Gets a Head
Welcome to this week’s History Thread! Today is the anniversary of everyone’s favorite irascible Yugoslavian dictator, Josip Broz Tito, becoming the President of Yugoslavia in 1953. As ever, he has no time for your bourgeois bullshit, but he is willing … Continue reading The Tito-Tastic History Thread
Welcome to the first History Thread of 2020! Since we haven’t had one of these for awhile, holidays and whatnot, you can use this week’s thread to catch up on what you accomplished in 2019 and what you’re looking forward … Continue reading The History Thread Looks Forward
Today’s Weekly History Thread commemorates the blackest mark on Ulysses Grant’s ledger: General Order No. 11. On December 17, 1862, Grant, frustrated by the exploitation of wartime cotton trade by civilian merchants, issued the following proclamation: The Jews, as a … Continue reading The Weekly History Thread
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