Entries Tagged as 'History'
Nemo Fried Mars Bars Impune Lacessit
Mark Steyn being chipper and optimistic again on the subject of the West in general and in this case, a favourite topic of ours in particular:
Or take Scotland. Most anywhere you go around the planet, from Hong Kong to Hudson’s Bay, almost everything that works was created and developed by Scotsmen. Now the [...]
Categories: History
A Brief History of Pretty Much Everything
Pretty much!
Categories: History
Another One For Our Escaping File
Not quite as awesome as Mr McS, but a lovely story of spooks and necessity breeding awesomeness:
CNN – How board game helped free POWs
During World War II, the British secret service hatched a master plan to smuggle escape gear to captured Allied soldiers inside Germany. Their secret weapon? Monopoly boxes. [...]
Categories: History
Biblical Fact o’ the Day:
As I understand it, the Book of Esther is one of only two books in the Hebrew Bible that does not mention God. It is the straightforward story of how Jews were threatened with genocide but were able to turn the tables and kill those who would kill them.
via Powerline. Happy Purim!
I read [...]
Categories: History
Japanese Pesos, and Other Curiosities
Have I mentioned the currency exhibition I saw at the British Museum in 2001? It was awesome. So nerdy, so arcane. Anyway this is like that, but on an international scale. And not in real life, alas: Funny Money: Unusual and Fascinating Currency
this is currency from Japan’s occupation of Hong Kong, which is prettier than [...]
Categories: History
The Fall of Constantinople and You
Touchstone – Byzantium Yet Fallen The Critical Lessons for Christians in the Long Shadow of 1453, by Paul J. Cella
Round about five and a half centuries ago, the Roman Empire was at last extinguished. By then the Empire was, of course, Greek, not Roman; Christian, not pagan; and no longer strong, but pitifully weak. [...]
Categories: History
The Pinch!
Here’s a book I, or one of you who then report back to us on your findings, need to read: The Pinch: How the Baby Boomers Took Their Children’s Future – And Why They Should Give it Back
From here:
The Guardian – The Tory frontbencher deserves to be cherished as a rare politician who injects rigour [...]
Categories: History
Cairo University Class of 1959
This is amazing:
University of Cairo, class of 1959, and the class of 2004 (spot the difference!):
Class of 1959.Class of 2004.
Click to enlarge. Curtsy: Pajamas Media via Mark Steyn in The Corner who repeats this little anecdote I’ve tried finding before (so here it is again for ye olde external memory drive):
The other [...]
Categories: History
And Now: How to Dance the Jitterbug!
How NOT to Run an Antiquities and Heritage Department
Step one: Don’t ERASE THE ANTIQUITIES AND HERITAGE.
NRO – The War Against the Infidels Terrorism is only one of the weapons. By Clifford D. May
In 2001, the monumental 6th-century buddhas of Bamiyan were dynamited on orders from Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar. The United States and other Western governments issued protests. Afghanistan’s Islamist rulers [...]
Categories: History
And Greece Wants the Elgin Marbles and Egypt Wants the Rosetta Stone and Turkey Wants All Three of Them
I wonder what the world would look like if everybody returned everybody’s antiquities to everybody else no matter the circumstances of their possession.
National Post – Jordan wants the Dead Sea Scrolls back from Israel
Categories: History
In Fairness to the Doubters, There Should Be Too Many Freaky Bugs For Civilization To Survive
Fascinating story. Brad Pitt even makes an appearance.
The Times – Hail, Britain’s Indiana Jones of the Amazon The newly discovered rainforest civilisation shows that deforestation is not just vandalism but a crime against history, by Ben Macintyre
In 1925 the British explorer Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett plunged into the Amazon forest in search of a [...]
Categories: History
“Monuments of the Good Taste of the Last Generation”
That’ll be “Phrases Spoken By My Generation After Hell’s Frozen Over,” Alec. Next category for the Daily Double: “Why do the homeless always have to ruin our cities?”
Bookworm Room – San Francisco as it once was
Union Square is no longer a grass covered and palm treed oasis in the middle of the City. [...]
Categories: History
Your Christmas Compendium
The Telegraph – The Christmas donkey starts on the way home<br/> Truth, light, love – these are things that anyone, Christian or not, rejoices to find at home.
[F]or everyone finds sooner or later that we are none of us quite at home. Christmas is homely with the children, but the children grow up and [...]
Categories: History
How Do You Write "Gimme a Cotton-Pickin Break" In Egyptian Hieroglyphics?
The Times – Where the Rosetta belongs can’t be set in stone<br/> Great cultural artefacts and great intellectual ideas are no respecters of national boundaries. Everyone must share them, by Ben Macintyre
An edict in honour of Ptolemy V, the Macedonian-Greek Pharaoh, written in three scripts, deciphered by a British and a French scholar, the [...]
Categories: History
