Unruly History in the News #28

Ocean Exploration Edition™

Hi everyone,

Some bad news first: I am in the hospital as I write this and have been since Thursday, so this is going to be a little bit of a short installment in our history news round-ups. It’s basically just the links that I collected earlier this week. Hopefully, I will be able to go home soon, but the doctors haven’t given me a timeline for what that looks like yet. Either way, it does look like our next episode is going to be a little late.

Thank you all for your ongoing support and understanding, I really appreciate it!

Did you see that my interview with Debby Applegate, author of Madam, went live on Friday morning? Check it out here!

This week, in history acting unruly…

• In the 1930s, three women—Gloria Hollister Anable, Jocelyn Crane Griffin, and Else Bostelmann—were among the earliest pioneers in the study of the oceans and set the tone for what ocean exploration would look like for the next hundred years.

• These explorers were some of our first underwater explorers, and what they saw has driven hundreds more into the deepest oceans.

• I am obsessed with the story of Hvaldimir, the whale we think might be a Russian spy. In addition to showing up in Norwegian waters wearing a camera harness, Hvladimir also displays several strange human-seeking behaviors that he must have been trained to do.

According to National Geographic, “Hvaldimir actively seeks out human companionship, an unusual behavior he may have learned in a military training program.” Photo by Rich German. Source.

• Influential post-war queer literature. This is an incredible reading list to get anyone through the rest of the summer!

• If you grew up in US schools, you’ve probably heard of the Advanced Placement test. (Did my entire college freshman year identity rest on getting 5s on my AP English & History tests? Maybe.) But do you know the history of them—and of them being bad for education?

• Is there a such thing as a national dish? This looks at the history and making of French culinary tradition.

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FYI, some of the links in here are affiliate links. That just means that if you click through and buy something, I’ll get a few cents but it won’t cost you anything extra.