Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it
Welcome to this week’s History Thread! Our discussion question: How do you draw lessons/inspirations from history? Perhaps you’re a creative type who mines history for stories or artistic ideas, maybe you view an historical figure as an inspiration. Maybe reading … Continue reading The Inspired Weekly History Thread
When Orlando Letelier awoke on September 11, 1973, he was Minister of Defense in a democratic Chile. By nightfall, he was a prisoner and his country a dictatorship. A red-haired, chain-smoking economist and diplomat who’d spent two years as Ambassador … Continue reading How We Got Here: The Wrath of Pinochet
Welcome to this week’s History Thread! This week, our discussion question: Favorite works of historical fiction. Favorite can mean a number of things, eg. just personal enjoyment, degree of accuracy, something that shapes your view of specific events or people, … Continue reading The Fictional History Thread
Welcome to the first History Thread of 2019! As usual we’ll do an open thread, though I’ll try and think of discussion questions for future ones. Please enjoy and post historical things. Today’s the sixtieth anniversary of Fidel Castro taking … Continue reading A New Year, a New History Thread
Welcome to this week’s History Thread! I’m going to take a break next week for Christmas (though I won’t object if someone else wants to throw something up). This week’s discussion question: History you’ve learned in 2018. It can be … Continue reading The Holiday History Thread!
Welcome to this week’s History Thread! As usual there won’t be a set discussion topic this week, though I might try and come up with new ones for future threads. Today’s picture: On December 11, 1917 British forces commanded by … Continue reading The Triumphant Weekly History Thread
Welcome to this week’s History Thread! The broader theme of this discussion is self-conscious archaism, the act of deliberately looking back to the past as a source of inspiration and emulating it in some way. This umbrella term also covers … Continue reading The Weekly History Thread Appropriates the Past for Its Own Ends
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
Hi, everyone. Sam here. Chris didn’t put up a HWGH this week, and in light of recent events, y’all clearly need a pick-me-up, so here’s part of a never-published manuscript I wrote many years ago called The Night Was Spent that suddenly seems … Continue reading How We Got Here: “A Nonexistent Piece of the Future”
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
Hi, everyone. Sam here. Chris didn’t put up a HWGH this week, and in light of recent events, y’all clearly need a pick-me-up, so here’s part of a never-published manuscript I wrote many years ago called The Night Was Spent that suddenly seems … Continue reading How We Got Here: “Change We Can Believe In”
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
Hi, everyone. Sam here. Chris didn’t put up a HWGH this week, and in light of recent events, y’all clearly need a pick-me-up, so here’s part of a never-published manuscript I wrote many years ago called The Night Was Spent that suddenly seems … Continue reading How We Got Here: “The Revolution Starts Now”
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
