Stuff You Missed in History Class
Didn’t pay attention in history class? HowStuffWorks has you covered.
by Katie Lambert
November 30th, 2009
1 Comment | Add Comment
No, the wicked city wasn’t Sodom or Gomorrah — it was Port Royal, Jamaica.
The English, after failing to capture Hispaniola from Spain for Oliver Cromwell, grabbed up Jamaica instead in 1655. In the later part of the century, Port Royal was one of the biggest English cities in the Americas (along with Boston).
Port Royal had a lucky location, trade-wise: right at the separation between Kingston Harbor and the Caribbean. The deep water near the shore also made it easy for ships to unload and reload cargo.
The city became very wealthy, largely due to privateering and piracy.
Port Royal was riding high and just beginning to understand what kind of money could be made from plantation owning as opposed to piracy when tragedy struck.
Although the city’s location was lucky for trade, it was disastrous in terms of stability: It was located on a sand spit not far above the water table.
Read More »
by Katie Lambert
November 30, 2009
1 Comment | Add Comment
On Monday’s podcast, Sarah and I talked about the Opium Wars. We realized we’d been on Western streak, so we’re branching out.
To understand the First and Second Opium Wars (1839-1842 and 1856-1860), you have to have a little background. The British had been trying to open up the Chinese market for years, to no avail. The Chinese were uninterested in the goods the British had to offer. The British, however, were importing tons of tea, along with silk, candy, spices and porcelain. This created a trade imbalance — lots of imports for the British, no exports. But they finally discovered something the Chinese did want: opium.
Wednesday’s podcast was about the first Thanksgiving.
Did your Thanksgiving dinner involve a lovely roasted swan? Perhaps a dish of eel? A scrumptious eagle? No? Then your feast didn’t accurately reflect its origins!
Read More »
by Katie Lambert
November 25, 2009
2 Comments | Add Comment
The issue of the future president’s health was a much-discussed topic in the months leading up to the 2008 presidential election. Would Barack Obama’s smoking lead to cancer or emphysema? Would John McCain’s age affect his cognitive abilities? The question behind these questions was always this: If we elect you as president, can we count on you to be in sound mind and body?
With all the comparisons we’ve seen in the news between Obama and FDR, you might be surprised to know that there’s a link McCain and FDR might have in common: melanoma.
Read More »
by Katie Lambert
November 20, 2009
4 Comments | Add Comment
In Monday’s podcast, Sarah and I debated whether or not there was ever an Atlantis.
The Atlantis story comes from Plato, but was he telling the story of a historical event, or simply teaching a moral lesson? In Plato’s unfinished trilogy of dialogues, he recounts the destruction of Atlantis due to the greed of its people. Throughout the years, the idea of a sunken city has captured the imagination of the most unlikely bedfellows. Heinrich Himmler, for example, used his position within the SS to send expeditions to such far-flung locales as Tibet to look for Atlantis.
Pocahontas was the subject of Wednesday’s podcast. “Pocahontas” is no one’s favorite Disney movie, but the woman herself has an interesting story.
Pocahontas became acquainted with the settlers when she was 10 or 11, but the story of her rescuing John Smith may have been completely made up. Smith’s accounts were notoriously unreliable, and he didn’t publish this sensationalized account until after she’d become famous.
Read More »
by Katie Lambert
November 13, 2009
3 Comments | Add Comment
Considering Byron popped up even in our podcast on Lucrezia Borgia, Sarah and I thought it high time for a podcast of his own. He’d become our Where’s Waldo for a while.
Oh, Byron. Handsome, rakish, promiscuous, well-traveled, brilliant. Exactly the sort of man you can’t help falling for, even when you know it’s a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea.
On Wednesday, we brought you Lord Byron’s daughter, Ada Lovelace. Ada’s mother, Annabella Milbanke, Lady Byron, is determined that her daughter will turn out nothing like her dastardly father. Her stratagem? Ban little Ada from poetry.
Instead, Ada studies math and music, and she happens to be very talented at the former.
Read More »
by Katie Lambert
November 12, 2009
4 Comments | Add Comment
I remember the first time I saw a photo of a survivor of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings. I was young, and I stared at that picture of a person’s melting skin and felt like it was something I could get into trouble for looking at. It was a powerful moment in my American history education. That came back to me vividly today when I read a piece in the Huffington Post by Greg Mitchell.
After the second bomb dropped, a Japanese company sent a film crew to document what was happening in the cities – the leveled ground, the dying. They were the only ones filming. If you were an American, you hadn’t seen a thing but a mushroom cloud. The news told you that we’d bombed the Japanese, and why we did it – ostensibly, to end the war.
But the U.S. military stepped in and banned the filming, taking what the Japanese had already recorded. Later, the military selected one of its own to head up a camera crew, Lt. Daniel McGovern, and document this campaign in Japan. They recorded every horror they saw.
What happened to that film, the footage we’d sent soldiers and civilians in to radiation-blasted cities to capture?
Read More »
by Katie Lambert
November 10, 2009
3 Comments | Add Comment
An article in Slate yesterday on the castrati caught my eye. I remember the first time I learned about the castrati, from a professor who guest-taught one of my classes. She lectured on Farinelli, who some consider the greatest Italian castrato of them all. He and his three-octave range became very famous, and he spent his later years singing solely for the melancholy Philip V of Spain.
Castrati are in the news due to Cecilia Bartoli, an Italian opera singer who has just released a recording of some of the gorgeous arias written for them — men with heartbreakingly beautiful voices who were castrated before they hit adolescence.
Was this in the Dark Ages? No — rather, the 16th through the 19th centuries.
Read More »
by Katie Lambert
November 6, 2009
4 Comments | Add Comment
The subject of Monday’s podcast is a handful: Lucrezia Borgia, the femme fatale of legend. The question Sarah and I posed was this: Was she a victim or a cunning woman in her own right? An incestuous poisoner or a pawn?
Wednesday’s podcast was a listener suggestion: the Mad Trapper of Rat River! As far as nicknames go, that one’s hard to beat.
The Mad Trapper was the subject of a huge manhunt in the middle of a Yukon Winter. He’d survived a 15-hour siege in his house by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police that included dynamite, sneaking away in a blizzard.
Read More »
by Katie Lambert
November 4, 2009
5 Comments | Add Comment
Peter the Wild Boy appeared to the world in 1724 in Hamelin in Germany. Like an animal, he was said to have walked on all fours, even though he was a 12-year-old boy (or was it 13? 15?). He ate moss and climbed trees like a squirrel. He was naked and couldn’t talk and was frightened of humans.
George I took in the little wild boy, and London society was absolutely fascinated by him (much like we are with Balloon Boy, if this year’s Halloween costumes are any indication). At court, he ate fruits, vegetables and raw meat and hated wearing clothes. He became a present for Princess Caroline, who had him dressed in special outfits and gave him a watch.
No one knew where Peter came from, or how long he’d been in the forest, though creative minds said he was nursed by a bear from birth.
But the question about Peter that still isn’t answered is this: If he simply wasn’t able to be like everyone else, was it due to his time in the forest, or was it something within Peter himself?
Read More »
by Katie Lambert
November 2, 2009
1 Comment | Add Comment
Coolest Stuff blogger and adventure editor Amanda Arnold wrote about the Nazca lines recently – a collection of drawings at the ground that you can only see from the air. These geoglyphs (some are geometric shapes, while others are figures such as a monkey or an astronaut) are a mystery to this day. Why were they created? What were they for?
While we still don’t have an answer to that, we do have a clue as to what happened to the Nazca people themselves.
The Nazca civilization produced art, pyramids and beautiful textiles, along with the Nazca lines. Cahuachi, the capital for a time, may have been the biggest mud city in the world. But the Nazca had disappeared by the time the Incan Empire rose to prominence, and our answer to why they vanished may rest on a tree, the huarango tree.
Read More »
by Katie Lambert
October 30, 2009
5 Comments | Add Comment
On Monday’s podcast, Sarah and I got to wear our English major hats – our favorite chapeaux of all.
In honor of Halloween, we talked about a little ghost story competition that gave us both “Frankenstein” and the vampire.
Wednesday’s podcast brought us Marie Laveau, voodoo queen, a person Sarah and I had a devil of a time researching.
The legend of Marie Laveau speaks of a 20-foot snake named Zombie and powerful magic that could make people crawl on their bellies on the floor, disappear or fall in love.
Read More »
Random Article
