Unruly History in the News #59

Some announcements, issues with history AI, and some good books

Hey everyone,

Happy Memorial Day to everyone out there observing.

I figured since this was a 3-day weekend we could do the news today. I can’t believe that I completely blanked on doing this round up last week! Sorry about that y’all, haha.

Clearly, it’s been a very hectic spring. And here’s why: I’m going back to school in the fall! And… I’ll be moving to Scotland! So the last month or so has been lots of working logistical details like visa applications, finding an apartment, et cetera.

There are going to be some changes coming to this substack once I start school, though I haven’t quite worked out what they will be. I can say that episodes of the podcast will start up again. I didn’t mean to go on a break, but life just really got in the way. Living in a construction zone and applying for graduate school will do that, apparently! Thanks for all your patience, y’all.

This week, in history being unruly…

• Too into three-day weekend relaxation to think critically today? I get it. Here’s an easy one: The worst town names in America (and other terrible maps).

• Did you know that Memorial Day began in Columbus, Georgia in 1866, when local women decided to leave flowers on the graves of Confederate and Union soldiers in an act of reconciliation post-Civil War?

• All of a sudden, Google’s search algorithm is garbage. For regular people researching history (or recipes, or literally anything), this is extremely bad news. It has already been leading to all sorts of horrifying misinformation, including the AI’s currently viral idea to “add about ⅛ of a cup of non-toxic glue” to pizza sauce to thicken it up. (In a separate search, Google’s AI will also tell you that any amount of glue is toxic to eat. Sooo…)

  • Google AI is also claiming that US President Andrew Johnson has earned an astonishing fourteen posthumuous degrees from University of Wisconsin - Madison.

    

    Literally not one of these is correct, though they’ve at least got JFK in the correct century. It’s worth noting that President Harry Truman never finished university and did not receive a degree. Source.

  • Please do not use AI to do research, I can’t believe I have to say this.

• This LA songbird has made a strong comeback after almost going extinct.

• What is the real history of love and courting in the time of Bridgerton?

• Perhaps unsurprisingly, buried underneath Hitler’s war lair are bodies. Several bodies.

• Okay, but like, why are vitamins named after letters? We have answers!

• Is beauty pain? Historically, yes.

• Interesting times make for interesting buildings: the link between architecture, history, and horror.

  • And the book this article is referencing: Horror in Architecture, by Joshua Comaroff and Ong Ker-Shing.

• Who was the Griffin Warrior? And what do his burial goods tell us about the ancient Mediterranean?

• Modern soldiers put Bronze Age armor to the test. The findings were impressive.

  

  During an 11-hour simulation of a Bronze Age battle, a volunteer from the 32nd Marines Brigade of the Hellenic Army lands a blow on a wooden target. Photo by Andreas Flouris & Marija Marković.

• There is a known history to probability calculations. Despite popular myth, this line of math did not begin in French gambling houses.

• Caligula is one of the famous villainous rulers of Roman history. But was he mad, or was he just misunderstood?

• I love talking about how prophecy and prediction dictated political decision-making in the medieval and early modern British Isles. A new addition is that Anne Boleyn’s downfall was driven by a prophecy of treason that Thomas Cromwell believed in.

• Speaking of Anne Boleyn, it was her daughter Elizabeth I who oversaw a revolution in British governmental record-keeping.

  • The book this article is referencing is pretty great: The Spectre of the Archive, by Nicholas Popper.

• In art history…

  • NFTS, the patterns of the art market, and the artists who beat the starving artist myth.

  • The Orient Express is not just an Agatha Christie book: The real train used to transport the rich and stylish across Europe.

  • On May 29, 1913, the premiere of The Rite of Spring caused an actual riot in Paris.

  • And in 1934, The Loch Ness Monster had her screen debut! The Secret of the Loch captured the mythic monster in all her glory. By casting an iguana to play the mysterious creature in the deep, directors were reflecting a common idea at the time that Nessie was a survivor from the Mesozoic era.

    

    The mythological Nessie looms over the viewer in this publicity still for the first-ever movie to feature her, The Secret of the Loch (1934). Photo credit: BFI National Archive/STUDIOCANAL.

  • On June 1, 1885, over a million people in Paris streamed into the streets to lay Victor Hugo to rest. Newspapers famously declared, “Art is over!” when the poet died.

  • Gosh I love a facial reconstruction. This Inca girl was frozen for 500 years and just got a new portrait.

• This 150-year-old Artic murder mystery remains unsolved.

• And to end on a conspiracy theory related note: These five secret societies changed the world.

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FYI, a few of the links in here are affiliate links! That just means that if you click through and purchase, I’ll receive a few cents in my pocket, but it won’t cost any extra for you.