Unruly History in the News #30
#Barbenheimer, more repatriation issues, and a Princess Diana sweater that you could be wearing this winter
Hey everyone!
Quite the week for the number 30, at least around these parts. Today we’ve got our 30th installment of History in the News, a round-up I really love doing every week. I learn the most fun things while collecting these stories for y’all. And on Tuesday I published episode #30 on Sarah Bernhardt. It’s a really fun one about being daring and acting and the expectations placed upon women in turn-of-the-20th-century France.
To “celebrate” the two 30 milestones (if you can call them that, I just like to celebrate things) I’ve got 30 stories for y’all today. Which is, admittedly, a lot. I’m excited to hear which ones y’all like best.
Also this week, I wrote a movie review/analysis of the #Barbenheimer phenomenon. I looked at how both movies deal with society’s existential dread after World War II; each represents a different way society tried to move on. It sounds more fun than it is!
What did y’all get up to this week? Did anyone else see #Barbenheimer? Sound off in the comments!
This week, in history acting unruly…
Obviously, we have to start with something Barbie-related: Artist Stuart Semple released a color called “Pinkie,” the Barbiest Pink. It’s a performance art protest against Mattel’s trademark of so-called Barbie Pink. The company has been very litigious about people using the shade in the past. Semple, on the other hand, encourages anyone not working at Mattel to use it freely.
Speaking of pink—is she Earth’s oldest color? 1.1 billion-year-old rocks have been found with bright pink pigments embedded in them. And she’s been on quite a journey ever since.
Fair play, something Oppenheimer-related: Atomic bomb survivors and their descendants share their memories of the atomic bombs dropped over Nagasaki and Hiroshima. As mentioned in the article, “Hibakusha is the Japanese term for ‘atomic bomb survivors’—but given the lasting damages of radiation exposure, it’s perhaps more accurately translated as ‘atomic bomb sufferers.’”
And, while we’re here, an Indiana Jones: Dial of Destiny-related story: Many people think that the terrifying volcanic explosion at Thera (now Santorini) in 1600 BCE inspired stories of Atlantis, as well as the Biblical Ten Plagues. Since 2009, archaeologist Vasıf Şahoğlu of Turkey’s Ankara University has directed digs at Çesme-Bağlararası, 100 miles north-northeast of Santorini. There, he found evidence that Thera’s volcanic explosion caused a tsunami that hit part of a coastal settlement. Signatures of historical tsunamis are very difficult to identify, so this is a big and exciting find.
Did you know that Dial of Destiny is based on the Antikythera Mechanism, a mysterious and confounding Ancient Greek artifact? I wrote about it here.
Stanford president Marc Tessier-Lavigne is resigning after a third-party review found significant issues with a few recent studies he published. Apparently, they were not up to the rigorous research standards of scientific research today, which just goes to show you that anyone at any level can mess up their academic work.
An iconic Princess Diana sweater is available at auction! She wore the sweater below to a June 1983 polo match after designing it in collaboration with designers Sally Muir and Joanna Osborne, founders of Warm & Wonderful. It’s estimated to go for $50,000-$80,000 at Sotheby’s auction next week.
Diana, Princess of Wales with Major Ronald Ferguson at a polo match at Smith's Lawn, Guards Polo Club, Windsor, June 1983. Photo by Princess Diana Archive/Getty Images. Don’t have $50,000 for this sweater? Warm & Wonderful actually still sells it on their website for $248.
The trouble with folk etymology. For instance, no, the word ‘picnic’ has nothing to do with lynchings, and ‘rule of thumb’ did not originate with spousal abuse laws. Those are rumors, basically, weird legends that cast our past as worse than our present and suggest that the biggest problems we have today are linguistic.
Are you familiar with the Medieval colony in Greenland that just…disappeared? After prospering for 400 years?
I am obsessed with this story of ancient monkeys riding rafts from Africa to South America. Sounds absurd? Scientists studying the evolution of monkeys think this really happened about 35 million years ago. Twice. In fact, several examples of primitive primate lineages that originated in Asia and Africa have shown up in South America lately.
Did you know that the British once planted a thorny hedge that bisected India, killing people who tried to cross it? Despite how effective it was (at catching and killing smugglers, to be clear), it has largely been forgotten by history.
wrote about it in .And in more forgotten history: Women are often left out of the history of the Crusades. Yet, they were everywhere as fundraisers, propagandists, and even warriors.
In repatriation news:
The Guelph Treasure is still in German hands. The ongoing legal battle to return the treasure to the descendants of the Jewish art dealers the Nazis stole it from has been unlucky so far. As long as it remains at the German Museum of Applied Arts, it is the largest publicly held collection of Medieval ecclesiastical art. The contested items are valued at $250 million.
Similarly, Donald Trump has reportedly refused to return some Israeli artifacts that were lent to the White House in 2019. Not only did the lamps never go on display as planned, but the Israeli Antiquities Authority claims Trump has them at Mar-a-Lago.
Italian officials are seeking the return of seven looted artifacts. At the moment, they are housed at the Louvre. The artifacts have been linked to “disgraced antiquities dealers active in the 1980s and 1990s,” whose provenance work is now being called into question.
Did you know that the American Continental Navy attacked Yorkshire during the US Revolutionary War? The story of Scottish independence fighter John Paul Jones has been largely forgotten in America (probably because of the disturbing allegations that he sexually assaulted a child while living in Russia), but he was once considered an American hero for his efforts to cut British supply lines.
does a great job covering Jones’s battle with the Serapis on .This fresco in Pompeii had pizza on it. It shows not only that pizza hasn’t changed much in 2,000 years, but also that people have always topped it with strange fruit.
Archaeologists working in Denmark uncovered a bog of bones that challenges all our suppositions of so-called “barbarian” warfare in Europe 2,000+ years ago. Around 380 people are buried at the site, suggesting that Germanic militaries were much larger than we thought. Considering that cities and city-states were small, a large military suggests that there was some sort of centralized recruiting power. Injuries to the bones also suggest that this was inter-Germanic fighting; they were not clashing with poorly equipped Roman armies.
In the Te’omim cave near Jerusalem, researchers have uncovered ancient Roman necromancy ritual tools, including a lamp and a skull.
Here are some beautiful natural wonders that, uh, no longer exist. At least we have photos of some of them.
An incredible archaeological find in China has just been announced: Two animals locked in combat, covered in ash and mud, then preserved for millions of years—125 million, to be precise(ish).
Speaking of exploring the unknown—On July 1, the European Space Agency launched the Euclid space telescope. The hope is that she’ll be able to chart the history of the universe going back up to 10 billion years.
Elizabeth I’s contemporaries made much of her public love for her father. For centuries we thought she disliked her mother, Anne Boleyn, or was ashamed of her. But new examinations of her personal possessions suggest that Elizabeth revered her mother much more than previously thought. If anything, she may have only been so public about her love for her father to protect her queenship—if ever she was declared a bastard again, her rule was in danger. Anne’s legacy, on the other hand, was much more fraught during Elizabeth’s lifetime.
A Venetian monk created the first annotated map of the world and it is beautiful.
One of Fra Mauro’s maps. Source. Speaking of Medieval monks—they are often held up as a paragon of attention and thoughtfulness. And apparently, monks cultivated this legendary attention through a process very similar to modern Cognitive Behavioral Therapy!
The bizarre—and true!—story of the world’s most successful living art thief. Stéphane Breitwieser has stolen an estimated $2 billion worth of art from roughly 200 museums—and he thinks you should forgive him for it.
How Oscar Wilde transformed a simple green carnation into a cute queer trend.
A vase bought in a UK thrift store for £2.50 was discovered to be the work of late Japanese ceramist and cloisonné artist Namikawa Yasuyuki. The vase goes on auction next weekend (July 29-30, 2023) at Canterbury Auction House and is expected to sell for around £9,000.
How Goethe’s Sorrows of Young Werther led to an early documented suicide cluster in Europe—called, for a while, Werther fever.
The range of fascinating historical discoveries and insights you’ve shared here are wonderful! I really appreciate the work you put into this newsletter.