Unruly History in the News #6

Despite being very aware that last week was Halloween, I still had a hard time believing that November came right on its heels! I can’t believe the year is almost over. I’ve spent my week deep in the weeds of writing my next book, a historical fiction bit about a female pirate. As part of NaNoWriMo, I’m hosting a series of virtual write-ins if any of you would like to join!

But enough about me, let’s get onto the weird and wacky histories that abound in the world. This week, in history acting unruly…

• Yesterday was the fifth of November, and it has people wondering: Why, of all the weird, failed plots that have happened throughout history, do we remember the Gunpowder Plot so fondly?

• We never really can escape Nazis in the news, can we? This time its because French president Emmanuel Macron gifted Pope Francis a rare copy of Immanuel Kant’s Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch. Reviewing photos of the event, folks noticed a Polish reading group’s stamp on the book, inspiring an investigation into whether the book was looted from Poland by the Nazis before turning up at a bookshop in Paris.

• Once again we have DNA testing to thank for the discovery of the first known Neanderthal family! A father, his teenage daughter, and several other close relatives lived together in a Siberian cave about 54,000 years ago.

• The 2020 explosion in Beirut was bad, no doubt about that. But it did lead to the rediscovery of a painting by Artemesia Gentileschi long thought lost.

• In Demre, Turkey, archaeologists have uncovered the original mosaic floors in the Church of St. Nicholas—yes, that St. Nicholas, the inspiration for Santa Claus. These are the very floors the real saint stood on around 300 CE, and it’s a very significant discovery from the time.

  

  Excavation in progress at the Church of St. Nicholas in Demre. Source: HELLENIC STUDIES PROGRAM SACRAMENTO STATE UNIVERSITY

• In Morocco, a Roman watchtower was uncovered by archaeologists. It’s the first of its kind discovered in the region. The find proves that Romans once occupied the site, a fact we were pretty sure was true, but it’s nice to have confirmation.

• A mysterious partially submerged structure in Ireland has been identified as a cairn—a prehistoric tomb.

• If you liked my episode on Qamar, the Queen of Persian music, then you’ll dig this visual recap of past women’s protests in Iran.

• JSTOR is asking an important question this week: When did alchemy end (and, by extension, modern chemistry begin)?

• Bela Lugosi once took on the FBI

• This week we were reminded that Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife Coretta paid the hospital bill for Julia Roberts’ birth. The Roberts family had previously welcomed the King children to a theatre school after they had been rejected everywhere else for being Black; paying the bill was a way for the Kings to thank them for that.

• An infrastructure project in Louisville, Kentucky was designed to protect the Ohio River from pollution. It may have the unintended consequence of telling us about millions of years of history.

Have you joined the Unruly Figures chat in the Substack app yet? It’s a cozy little space for us all to hang out and chat about things!