Great cities, and great landscapes, are often defined by mighty rivers. These rivers can serve as borders, linkages between people and cultures, and as a timeline of a nation’s history thereby marking its transition and development. Few rivers yield more of an influence to the story of Canada than the St. Lawrence River, and its…
Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay Reach the Summit of Everest 62 years ago today
Human history is very much about documenting challenges to the limits of the human body, mind and spirit. Few adventures are more grueling and gripping to the imagination that scaling Mount Everest, our planets highest peak. On May 29, 1953, Edmund Hillary and a Nepalese Sherpa, Tenzing Norgay, reached the summit of the 29,028-foot (8,848-metre) Mount…
Martin Luther’s 16th Century notes found
BBC News has reported that a “first edition of one of the most important works of the man who inspired the Protestant Reformation has been discovered in a library in France. The publication by German theologian Martin Luther, called On the Freedom of a Christian, dates back to 1520. This was a year before he was…
10 Great Tips from the Middle Ages
Hello Again Everyone, Here is an entertaining re-post from Medievalists.net on advice from those living in the Middle Ages on a range of topics from the new book ‘Ask the Past: Pertinent and Impertinent Advice from Yesteryear‘ by Elizabeth P. Archibald. “Want to know how to garden with lobsters? How to sober up? Grow a…
70th Anniversary of Victory in Europe (VE) Day
May 8th marks the 70th anniversary of the signing of Germany’s unconditional surrender in 1945. In the wake of Adolf Hitler’s suicide on April 30, 1945, Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz was appointed President of the Third Reich in the final 20 days before surrender. Provisionally signed in Reims, France on May 7th, Germany’s full unconditional…
The Battle (and rape) of Berlin 1945
This year we will mark 70 years since the end of World War II. It is difficult ethically to weigh loses in one battle over loses in another in a means to declare which conflict was more brutal and severe. However, symbolically the battle for Berlin, which ended on May 2, 1945, was the zenith…
The Fall of Saigon 1975
It has been 40 years since the fall of Saigon to communist forces near the end of the Vietnam War. It is hard to imagine, but the Vietnam War was fought over a period of 20 years, between 1954-55 and April of 1975. The conflict pitted the communist North, backed by China and Russia, against an…
Commemorating the Armenian Genocide
Yesterday, April 24, 2015 marked 100 years since the official beginning of the Armenian genocide. While this date symbolizes the beginning of a horrific period of mass murder, it is by no means meant to imply that acts of violence against Armenians did not occur before or after this date. It is merely a date…
U.S. to exhume Pearl Harbor remains of USS Oklahoma to identify the unaccounted dead
The United States Department of Defense (DoD) has announced that nearly 400 dead service men killed aboard the USS Oklahoma during the Japanese attack of Pearl Harbor in 1941 and buried in common graves will be exhumed, properly identified and provided a full burial. Due to advances in forensic sciences and DNA testing the remains…
Marking 150 Years Since the Surrender of the Confederate Army at Appomattox
This past week marked 150 years since General Robert E. Lee surrendered his Confederate Army at Appomattox on April 9, 1865. The American Civil War was an event of paramount importance to the formation of the modern United States, with remnants of social and racial division still present in relations between African Americans and Caucasians to…
Wishing you all a Happy Easter
Hello Everyone, Wishing you all a wonderful Easter weekend with family and friends. May you celebrate this time of the year with peace and goodwill in your heart. Safe travels to all those who will be crossing oceans and countries to meet with family. And, for the kid in us all: have a fun Easter…
Assyria and the Great Library of Ashurbanipal
BBC News ran a wonderful article earlier this week entitled “The men who uncovered Assyria“. The wanton destruction and barbaric inhumanity that Islamic State (IS) has demonstrated in Iraq, Syria and beyond has brought attention to not only the many innocent lives that have been lost, but indeed monuments, historic sites and invaluable treasures of…
Keep your historical mind in shape…
Happy Spring to You All! I have put together several links that may be of interest to those who want to keep their keen historical minds in shape. There are some wonderful seminars, workshops and travel opportunities for those who want to hone their skills and contribute to some amazing historical projects or learn from…
What happened to England’s WWII POW camps
The extent and state of World War II prisoner of war camps in England has not received the due attention it deserves. While the National Archives in London is riddled with sources and documentary evidence of the almost 1,500 camps across the British Isles during the war, war camps is a memory most would rather…
Remembering the bombing of Tokyo on March 9-10, 1945
While I wish not to harp on the aspect of bombing since my last post on Dresden, the bombing of Tokyo in March of 1945 is certainly worthy of remembrance. In a relatively recent article by Henry I. Miller with Forbes in 2012, Mr. Miller noted: “The nighttime fire-bombing of Tokyo on March 9–10, 1945,…
Renowned Hungarian Corvinian manuscripts digitized
The Vatican Library has recently made available as part of is mass digitization program, a set of beautiful manuscripts from the renowned Hungarian Renaissance King Matthias Corvinus. The world famous Bibliotheca Corviniana, the library of Matthias Corvinus (1458-1490), rivaled only the Vatican collection with 2000-3000 volumes of exquisite examples of humanist works, Greek, and Latin texts…
National Iraq Museum reopens 12 years on
In the immediate aftermath of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 attempts to loot and damage the Iraq National Museum occurred despite somewhat limited US efforts to protect the museum from overwhelming chaos in Baghdad. In April of 2003 between 10-15,000 items were stolen, including items up to 5,000 years old. It is all…
Shakespeare folios part of huge gift to Princeton University
The first six printed editions of the Bible and copies of Shakespeare’s first four folios are among a trove of rare books that have been bequeathed to Princeton University. William Scheide, a philanthropist who died in November, donated more than 2,500 rare books to his alma mater. The gift – valued at $300m (£194m) – is the…
Canadian War Museum WWI International Speakers Series 2015
The Canadian War Museum is hosting its annual International Speakers Series on Feb. 26, 2015 featuring academic events to mark the centenary of the First World War. The events, presented in a variety of formats, will provide an opportunity to hear and witness leading academics and experts in the field of WWI history, and learn about…
The Bombing of Dresden in February of 1945
“On the evening of February 13 the catastrophe overtook Dresden: the bombs fell, the houses collapsed, the phosphorus flowed, the burning beams crashed…” – Viktor Klemperer, diary 1945 It is ironic that a German city would come to symbolize a war of such brutality and inhumanity. Dresden was an architectural and cultural prize representing a…
Russia: Forever a Time of Troubles
Westerners often consider Russia through the prism of the Soviet Union and the Second World War. But we must look further back if we wish to understand the modern nation’s fears, aims and motivations. Russia almost didn’t survive the beginning of the 17th century. Convulsed by civil wars, peasant uprisings, foreign invasions, mass famine and…
Maps that shaped the world
Bursting with information and often incredibly beautiful – maps do more than just showing you where you are, or where you might be going. The recently published Times History of the World in Maps features documents from ancient civilizations, through the medieval period, to some of the key events of the 20th Century. Click here for…
Michelangelo’s bronze panther-riders revealed after ‘Renaissance whodunnit’
Two handsome, virile naked men riding triumphantly on ferocious panthers will be unveiled as, probably, the only surviving bronze sculptures by the Renaissance giant Michelangelo. In art history terms, the attribution is sensational. Academics in Cambridge will suggest that a pair of mysterious metre-high sculptures known as the Rothschild Bronzes are by the master himself,…
The palace of shame that makes China angry
There is a deep, unhealed historical wound in the UK’s relations with China – a wound that most British people know nothing about, but which causes China great pain. It stems from the destruction in 1860 of the country’s most beautiful palace. It’s been described as China’s ground zero – a place that tells a…
e-Storia 