Unruly History in the News #24
This is a long one! Since I focused on the coronation last week, a lot of news items built up in the interim. Hope you all enjoy it.
Have you checked out this week’s episode about Polly Adler yet? It’s a great one!
Episode 26: Polly Adler
This week, in history acting unruly…
This is the coolest sentence I’ve ever typed: Do you know the secret history of Mongolian wolves?
I’ve repeatedly covered the ongoing debate about the Parthenon marbles at the British Museum. So here’s yet another update: Turns out the UK government wasn’t always sure that keeping them was a good idea. Since at least 1983, people in the Foreign Office have supported returning the marbles to Greece.
Relatedly, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has decided to look into their own objects that need might need repatriating. They’ve appointed a team of researchers to look into items with provenance issues. The Met has been the target of several seizures of cultural items that were looted in the past. Anything with a gap with the ownership record is up for review.
Who was René Magritte (besides my personal favorite artist), and why was he so important?
Magritte’s The Treachery of Images, 1929. Speaking of artists, UNESCO says that violations of artistic freedom are on the rise in countries already struggling with conflicts—Yemen, Iran, Ukraine, and Iraq, to name a few. “The safety of journalists in emergencies has received significant attention over past decades, resulting in the establishment of a strong body of international, regional and national law and policy in this field,” according to the report. “Artists and cultural professionals lack the same opportunities and safety nets of protection, despite facing many of the same threats to their safety and livelihoods that journalists endure.”
Just a reminder that Upton Sinclair’s 1905 novel The Jungle led directly to the first federal food safety laws in the US.
In 1937, police killed 10 labor activists and got away with it, despite footage of the riot showing decisively that police overreacted. The Senate got ahold of the footage from Paramount Studios (which had hidden the footage to protect the police) and changed the laws about how police are supposed to respond to peaceful protests.
It’s graduation season. Do you know how these 9 traditions came about?
Has Britain had a Black queen? There is a lot of debate about the race of Queen Charlotte due to depictions and descriptions of her dark skin and “African” features. Many people point to the fact that she had Moorish ancestors, but the Moors weren’t a racial group—they were Spanish Muslims. Naturally, this is all coming up now because the real Charlotte is the inspiration for the Queen Charlotte of Bridgerton.
Greece is coming down on people building illegally building on islands with archaeological importance. An archaeologist was beaten earlier this year in connection with these illegal building sites as well.
An 8-year-old girl in Norway found a Neolithic dagger on her school playground. She doesn’t seem that impressed by it.
What do you know about the Title 42 health law and how it came to be used to stop immigration into the US?
The world’s newest national park—Nilpena Ediacara National Park in South Australia—protects 550 million-year-old fossils. They help tell the story of how life evolved on Earth.
Did you ever wonder how ancient cultures discovered the metal alloy iron? It fell from the sky. In fact, civilizations often used metal from meteorites to craft objects before the process of smelting iron was figured out; we have tools and jewelry like beads in North America, axes in China, and a dagger in Turkey as evidence.
Did you know that native Hawaiians have fought for sovereignty from the US for over a century? I hear about Scottish independence movements all the time, but for some crazy unknown reason, Hawaii’s desire for freedom from the US never seems to make it on my American news channels. How weird!
Also, a long-overdue monument to Coretta Scott King has been unveiled in Atlanta.
“Geneticist Matthias Meyer at work in the clean laboratory at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Meyer is part of a team that developed a technique to extract human DNA from animal bone artifacts—a first.” Photo from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Sections of the ancient wall that once surrounded the Roman city of Londinium have been rediscovered still standing along the Thames. The same excavations also found “wooden wharfs and quays that date to 133 CE were also found during the excavations. The condition of the port structures shows how important the Londinium’s infrastructure was to a Britain under Roman rule.”
Speaking of ancient things—archaeologists just discovered a statue of Buddha in Berenike, an ancient Egyptian port city on the country’s east coast. It provides important new evidence of the history of trade between India and Egypt.
This island was used to quarantine yellow-fever patients in the nineteenth century. Now it’s underwater.
A history mystery! What happened to the treasure stolen by the Nazis and buried in this Dutch village? We know it existed, but all attempts to recover it have failed. Because the Nazis documented everything, we even know what was buried, and none of it has turned up elsewhere.
Let’s take a look at FDR’s role in the development of the atomic bomb.
You’ve heard of the Renaissance. Have you heard about the Other Renaissance?
