Unruly History in the News #65
Hey everyone,
I’ve been around here less because I’ve had to pick up another job to make ends meet—it’s expensive to live in Los Angeles, as a lot of you know. I’m trying to figure out how to balance this and my work, but it’s been tough so far. Fingers crossed I figure something out soon.
Meanwhile, in history acting unruly…
This excavation in Cardiff, Wales is giving archaeologists good insight into home life 3,500 years ago. Of particular note is the floor—the original floor those residents walked on is intact bcause the field has never been plowed.
Now on display: Rare, never-before-seen photographs of the British royal family in more casual, intimate moments.
Four royal women, including Queen Elizabeth II in the middle, with their newborns. This was taken as a thank you to the obstetrician who delivered all four babies in a two-month span. Photo credit: Antony Armstrong-Jones (Lord Snowdon). Meanwhile, in Northamptonshire, amateur historians uncovered evidence of the fabled Collyweston Palace, gifted to Tudor matriarch Margaret Beaufort after her son Henry VII became the first Tudor ruler.
This is an intriguing discovery: In Norway, these ancient stone circles cover the 2,500-year-old graves of children aged 0-6.
D.H. Lawrence, famed writer of the oft-censored Lady Chatterly’s Lover, was also an amateur painter. In 1929, about 25 works by the writer went on display in a secret location in London. They were quickly confiscated by Scotland Yard for being “unlovely,” but really because they were too erotic and Lawrence had already run afoul of the law.
In historical crimes:
In 1987, President Theodore Roosevelt’s pocket watch was stolen from a museum. It recently resurfaced at a Florida auction house.
Everyone who grew up in the US has probably heard the name Lizzie Borden. She was tried and acquitted for the extremely violent axe murders of her father and stepmother in August 1892. Here is her story told through the newspapers of the time.
What became of Percy Fawcett, the explorer whose mysterious disappearance in South America loosely inspired the 2016 film The Lost City of Z? Was he murdered by hostile indigenous people? Attacked by animals? No one knows, but recent research has found that his hunch that a lost city (dubbed Z) existed in northeastern Mato Grosso was right.
Yikes—not only did this John Wayne movie absolutely flop in theatres, but the filming of it is linked with 70 mysterious deaths. Turns out it was filmed downwind of a nuclear testing facility, which the Atomic Energy Commission assured everyone was perfectly safe.
What the heck were the Georgia Guidestones? And why were they vandalized then destroyed in 2022?
Why have 700 people died at Lake Lanier since the 1950s? And why is the rate accelerating?
This distinctive Medieval gold belt—it weighs over 400 grams!—is on display for the first time since it was discovered in Ani, Turkey, in 2002.
Photo credit: AA/Arkeonews. I’m obsessed: A cultural history of slime, from H.P. Lovecraft to Ghostbusters.
Can you guess what food item helped researchers solve the mystery of a 2,000-year-old shipwreck? Answer at the bottom (or in the link).
This Anatolian language was lost for hundreds of years. Called Kalašma, it has just been deciphered.
In a sense, cats started speaking in the 19th century. What are they talking about?
This prehistory of Zoom is as intriguing as it is a symptom of how much society has changed since hte 1960s.
Decades before ChatGPT and OpenAI, Alan Turing and Christopher Strachey created a love letter generator in Manchester.
Like this? You’ll love my episode on Alan Turing.
This 1846 daguerreotype of Dolley Madison is the oldest known photograph of a US First Lady. It was just acquired by the Smithsonian.
Source: Sotheby’s. Speaking of photography: the pioneering French photographer, Hippolyte Bayard, is finally getting his due.
You probably remember Benjamin Franklin as a smart, buttoned-up kind of guy. He was also the kind of show off who jumped into the Thames naked.
Speaking of Franklin, what was up with his feud with his son? Was the boy a traitor? (Technically speaking, no, but in a way—yes.)
How did the Maya choose their sacrificial offerings/victims? New DNA studies have turned long-held assumptions on their heads.
For a long time, we thought this ancient handprint paintings were of baby’s hands. But, when they were more closely examined, the proportions were off. So what (or who) do they belong to?
As many of us know, the US uses the imperial system (feet, miles, etc) instead of the metric system (meters, grams, etc). But did you know that since the 1970s, the US government has designated the metric system as the preferred system? They just haven’t forced the population to start using it yet.
The Eastern Shoshone tribe has long held prophecies of a white buffalo being born at a time of great change. One was just born in Yellowstone. This calf, held sacred by several tribes, is often seen as both a blessing and a warning.
They were the first US women deployed into combat zones. Why did they have to fight to be called veterans? And why are their stories still largely ignored?
And now that you’ve scrolled through all of this, here’s something to make you nervous: cybersickness is on this rise! Yes, it’s real. Yes, it’s bad.
