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…
Tag: History
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…
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,…
Seventieth Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz
Today marks an important and symbolic anniversary in European and global history: 70 years since the liberation of Auschwitz by the Soviet army. Death, war and destruction have been a constant of human history; but the attempt to exterminate an entire people systematically demonstrated new levels of human-orchestrated horrors in the 20th century. The message…
Italy celebrates as 5,000 plundered artefacts worth €50m are returned
Italy is celebrating the greatest single recovery of its looted cultural patrimony after 5,361 ancient artifacts stolen by Italian and Swiss criminals were displayed by authorities in Rome, following a complex, 14-year criminal investigation. The precious haul, said to be worth more than €50m (£38m), contains objects dating from the eighth century BC to the…
Incredible discovery of the oldest depiction of the universe
The design on the Bronze Age disc might look like a six-year-old’s scribbles, but in reality, it’s one of the most sophisticated and influential artifacts of the Bronze Age. And it might never have been discovered if not for a couple of illegal treasure hunters who dug it up and sold it on the black market….
Hungarian space-age piano will enrich instrument’s history
In the 19th century, piano makers competed to make special instruments for Hungarian virtuoso Franz Liszt, the world’s first piano superstar. Now Hungary is returning the favour with a space-age piano named for its creator, pianist Gergely Boganyi. “The Boganyi,” unveiled on Tuesday, has two legs, uses carbon composite as well as wood and employs wild curves…
Saving Bosnia’s past from the ashes
The interior of Sarajevo’s Presidency building would make any historian wince. Not the decor itself – but the charred papers, piled against the walls. This display of damaged documents stretches away down the ground floor corridors of the building, leaving dark smears on the white paint, leading to a heap of burned books, boxes and manuscripts…
History Today’s Best of 2014
A collection of the most popular and interesting things History Today has published over the past 12 months. See more at: http://www.historytoday.com/blog/2014/12/best-history-today-2014#sthash.0U5k6n24.dpuf
Hitler’s old house gives Austria a headache
What do you do with the house Hitler was born in? For years the building in the Austrian town of Braunau am Inn has been rented by the Austrian interior ministry to prevent misuse by neo-Nazis. It was once a day-care centre for the disabled. Now it is empty, as the owner has not agreed to…
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