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Items tagged with: History
Did you know that the 1st commercial #Christmas card was a #marketing scheme for a new #postal service?
In the #UK, prior to the 1840s, letters were paid by distance & sheets. This was expensive & poorer households rarely used it.
Some men decided to implement a general rate of 1 penny per letter.
While this doubled the letters sent in the 1st year, it was financially bad for the government.
Entrepreneur Henry Cole commissioned the first Xmas Card in 1843. It was a rousing success.
The entire #WhiteHouse #EastWing is demolished as #Trump moves forward with his #ballroom, AP photos show.
The East Wing, where #FirstLadies created #history, planned state dinners & promoted causes, is now history itself. The 2-story structure of drawing rooms & offices, including workspace for first ladies & their staffs, has been turned into rubble, demolished as part of Trump’s plan to build what he said is now a $300M ballroom nearly 2X the size of the White House.
Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project
Digital collection of 6,000 cylinder records from 1895-1920s with downloadable and streaming audio held by the Department of Special Collection, University of California, Santa Barbara.University of California, Santa Barbara. Library. Department of Special Collections.
Now free for all to read... Imagine a family living in 1980s Bulgaria. They're the Petrovi family: father Plamen, mother Elena, and son Boyan. I say "imagine", for the Petrovis aren't real; they're a fictional family created to illustrate life in 1980s Sofia, the Bulgarian capital - and they live in the so-called Red Flat:
Starvation as a tool for genocide was always part of the invaders acts to crush and exterminate resistance of the natives.
#USpol #History #Starvation #Genocide
I'm going to talk about the sahiqat (صاحقات) genre. In the pre-modern #Arab world this was the genre of sapphic or lesbian stories. It was regarded as the purest form of love because of how impossible it was.
Different than Western sapphic love stories, it re-affirmed their devotion to God. For example the most famous couple are al-Zarqa and Hind bint al-Nu'man.
@medievodons @histodons #history #medieval #medievalhistory #Arabicliterature
#OnThisDay, 2 Aug 1855, Elizabeth Ann Holman goes on trial in Plymouth, UK, for being a suspicious person because she was discovered to be a woman disguised as a man. The case is dismissed. As is a second charge against her for wearing trousers in 1858.
#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #BritishHistory #Histodons
Hi to all #history readers and lovers. I am developing a daily history puzzle with all of my heart. You have to guess a year with the help of 4 historical events. Afterwards you get interesting links to these events.
I would be glad if you check it out. It is called #PastPuzzle - Thank you! :)
past puzzle
Errate mithilfe von 4 historischen Ereignissen das gesuchte Jahr. Ein von Wordle und Geschichten aus der Geschichte inspiriertes Spiel.www.pastpuzzle.de
Archaeologists Just Pulled Pieces Of The Lighthouse Of Alexandria Out Of The Mediterranean Sea
By Ainsley Brown
allthatsinteresting.com/lighth…
Blocks From The Lighthouse Of Alexandria Pulled Out Of The Sea
Archaeologists have recovered 22 massive stone blocks, once part of the Lighthouse of Alexandria, from the Mediterranean seafloor near Egypt.Ainsley Brown (All That's Interesting)
wanna give a huge shout-out to Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky for gifting us some absolutely stunning colour photographs from Russia in the 1910s.
YEAH YOU READ THAT RIGHT. he took three photographs of each subject, through coloured filters, and then projected the images again through the filters and superimposed them.
and thus, we have colour photography of early 20th century Russia. and it's beautiful.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_P…
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ser…
stole your meme, yadda yadda cuz GLUE PEOPLE is who we once called ELDERS.
a hallmark of #fascism is the belief #history is a thing that lives outside of us; and that, thru violent means, only the “winners” write and impose as The Truth.
but History isn’t a thing.
history exists in being, living, doing.
books, archives, GIT repos are great, but give us a false sense of security. when “life happens”, we need Elders to wing solutions.
there is no institutional memory, only Elders.
In 1988, IBM tried to seize the whole PC market back and make it proprietary again.
This seemed to be the end for the PC open platform. Consensus was that you couldn't win against IBM.
Luckily for history, Compaq, and founding CEO Rod Canion, decided to try.
Read my latest #history longform on the fight for the soul of the PC. And how Compaq won. #technology
every.to/the-crazy-ones/the-ma…
The Man Who Beat IBM
Compaq’s Rod Canion broke Big Blue’s hold on the PC market—and changed computing foreverevery.to
This is the original middle finger of the right hand of #GalileoGalilei as it can be seen in the #MuseoGalileo, Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza in #Florence:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo%…
My personal highlight of this trip to Italy so far.
Yes, the #middlefinger gesture is old enough. Even old greeks and romans used it:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_fing…
Maybe this (and the #catholicchurch forcing him to publicly revoke his findings) is why somebody decided to steal this part of his body when he was moved years after his death.
From now on, this picture will be awarded by me to anybody who is talking bullshit that was scientifically proven wrong already.
Use my photos under #CCbyNCSA: creativecommons.org/licenses/b…
#Homöopathie #homeopathy #Schwurbel #nonsense #science #research #galileosmiddlefinger #relic #education #religion #history #church #catholic
/cc #minkorrekt @minkorrekt
This past week, 99 years ago, Miles Dewey Davis III was born in Alton, Illinois.
On November 12, 1989, on 60 Minutes, Harry Reasoner asked him if Black musicians were better at jazz and blues because of slavery. The question could’ve gone sideways.
What Davis said—quietly, precisely—was about rhythm, memory, race, and the meaning of swing. #music #Jazz #Histodons #history #blackmastodon #photography #blackandwhite
1/12
Image: Miles Davis, Hackensack, New Jersey, 1954, photo by Francis Wolff.
What Is the Origin of the Calendar?
The modern calendar borrows influences from a collective of early calendars such as the Jewish, the Babylonian, the Roman, and the Egyptian calendars.
by Mike Cohen
thecollector.com/what-is-the-o…
Books on calendars at PG:
gutenberg.org/ebooks/subject/2…
Maya calendar:
gutenberg.org/ebooks/subject/1…
New #intro!
I’m a hyperjack musician, writer & video artist. My latest album, ‘Status’, is mainly about escaping Big Tech dystopia.
My website meljoann.com includes nerdy blog posts on Faircamp, Owncast & leaving mainstream social media.
Some stuff I love:
#musicProduction #videoProduction #books #experimentalMusic #electronicMusic #RandB #earlyMusic #improvisedMusic #science #knitting #history #scienceFiction #horror #alternativeComedy #anarchism #foss #linux #introduction
#OnThisDay, 30 April 1937, 447,725 women in the Philippines vote to be given the vote in the women's suffrage plebiscite.
Yes, the government did ask women to vote on whether they should have the vote…
asiafoundation.org/2012/03/07/…
#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #VotesForWomen #Histodons
Released last Friday, a digital reconstruction of the Titanic chronicles a never-before-seen view of the wreck that is “accurate to the rivet,” a statement says.
thisiscolossal.com/2025/04/tit…
#titanic #history #photography #science #ocean #technology
'Titanic: The Digital Resurrection' Unveils an Unprecedented View of the Harrowing Maritime Disaster — Colossal
In the summer of 2022, a team of deep-sea researchers spent six weeks in the North Atlantic Ocean, revisiting the remains of HMS Titanic.Kate Mothes (Colossal)
Very early #OnThisDay, 12 Apr 1944, Odette Wilen parachutes into France to work as a wireless operator for the British Special Operations Executive. The SOE supports the French resistance.
Wireless operators were at the greatest risk of discovery, as their position could be triangulated whenever they were transmitting messages back to London.
Wilen evades capture by minutes and escapes over the Pyrenees. She lives until 2015.
#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #WorldWar2 #Histodons
Another week. Another museum. This week the Swedish History Museum in Stockholm. I came here largely to see this one tool chest.
It's the Mästermyr toolchest. A 1000 year old chest filled with blacksmithing and woodworking tools. It's an incredibly important find. Beautifully preserved in the bog. The tools are wonderful. I'd seen pictures and read about these tools, but to see them up close. That hack saw is exquisite.
I wonder how the chest ended up discarded.
#OnThisDay, 24 Feb 1968, Jocelyn Bell Burnell - along with her male supervisor and three other men - published a paper confirming the discovery of pulsars. She had built the array, picked up the signal and argued it was not an anomaly. Hewish received the Nobel prize for it in 1974: Bell Burnell did not.
In 2018 Bell Burnell received a £3m prize for her work. She's used it to set up a foundation to improve the diversity in STEM.
#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #Histodons
Hello, I'm new to Mastadon and looking to meet people interested in medieval Silk Road history, especially of women and non-western historical fiction.
To sort of give you an idea of the weird stuff I'm into, here's a post I did about stories written in the Medieval Silk Road that feature women and are available in English:
mariamalmasriauthor.wordpress.…
On this, anyone else into weird and obscure histories?
#intro #history #historicalFiction #silkroad #womenshistory #books
Stories About Women from the Medieval Silk Road and Available in English
The Silk Road had men and women of all walks of life. It also was one of history’s most literate eras and places, prior to the modern age. One of the reasons that we know that is from the sto…Women Along the Silk Road
I’m researching the life of my 5 x great grandfather Samuel Cottrell. This will be an interesting challenge because Samuel, a non-conformist, managed to avoid all the censuses taken in the 1800s
Samuel was born on 11 July 1796 to John Cottrell and Mary Teek. He was baptised on 2 October 1796 at Saint Luke’s Old Street, Finsbury, London.
During this research, I hope to learn more about London as well.
#FamilyTree #FamilyHistory #History #Genealogy #London #1700s
„Oheň, světlo, dým
a krátký život s ním
hořely dlouho a hořet budou dál.
Plamen cizích vin
a já dobře vím - jako vy tu zprávu:
zemřel živý člověk
aby mrtví zůstali žít.“
Bohdan Mikolášek - Ticho (1969)
Z krátkometrážního filmu (1969, režie Milan Peer)Hudba + text: Bohdan MikolášekZpěv + akustická kytara: Bohdan MikolášekYouTube
On this day in 1983, the ARPANET network officially switched to using the TCP/IP protocol, effectively creating the Internet.
"January 1, 1983 is considered the official birthday of the Internet. Prior to this, the various computer networks did not have a standard way to communicate with each other."
Journalist Carl von Ossietzky was a constant voice against Nazism and rising militarism in 1920s and 1930s Germany. He won the Nobel Peace Prize for it — and he died for it. In this long read for Atavist, Kate McQueen tells his story. "They may condemn us, today, tomorrow, the day after, [and] we will accept it,” he once wrote. “But our pride will be in … becoming more energetic, sharper, denser and tougher. That’s why we are journalists.”
#History @histodons #Journalism #Nazism #Germany
The Good Traitor
The Third Reich feared Carl von Ossietzky so much they sent him to a concentration camp. Could winning the Nobel Peace Prize save his life?Kate McQueen (The Atavist Magazine)
The first text message was sent on this day in 1992 by then a 22-year-old engineer Neil Papworth to wish "Merry Christmas" to his colleague.
"It didn't feel momentous at all. For me it was just getting my job done on the day and ensuring that our software that we'd been developing for a good year was working OK."
history.com/this-day-in-histor…
#OTD #OnThisDay #technology #history #phone #TextMessage #MerryChristmas
First SMS text message is sent
On December 3, 1992, the first SMS text message in history is sent: Neil Papworth, a 22-year-old engineer, uses a personal computer to send the text message “Merry Christmas” via the Vodafone network to the phone of a colleague.Missy Sullivan (HISTORY)
#OnThisDay, 28 Nov 1967, Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovers the existence of pulsars.
Not included in the 1974 Nobel prize for the discovery, Bell received a £3m prize for her work in 2018. She's used it to set up a foundation to improve the diversity in STEM.
#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #WomenInSTEM #Histodons
Matching dinosaur footprints in Cameroon and Brazil record a time when Africa and South America were still connected & herds could wander between them.
I'm not saying the very same dinosaur was stomping around in both Cameroon and Brazil...but it's possible.
nytimes.com/2024/08/28/science…
#science #history #nature #dinosaurs
Scientists Discover Similar Dinosaur Footprints on Opposite Sides of the Atlantic
More than 260 similar footprints found in Brazil and Cameroon help us understand a region that broke apart millions of years ago.Alexandra E. Petri (The New York Times)
I remember David Graeber's insight into #voting being a big 'Aha' moment for me:
"Majoritarian democracy was, in its origins, essentially a military institution. . . .
"It is of obvious relevance that Ancient Greece was one of the most competitive societies known to history. It was a society that tended to make everything into a public contest . . . So it might not seem entirely surprising that they made political decision-making into a public contest as well. Even more crucial though was the fact that decisions were made by a populace in arms. . . . [I]f a man is armed, then one pretty much has to take his opinions into account. . . . [E]ven if the vote was 60/40, everyone could see the balance of forces and what would happen if things actually came to blows. Every vote was, in a real sense, a conquest." #history #politics #democracy
- Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology theanarchistlibrary.org/librar…
Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology
David Graeber Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology 2004The Anarchist Library
youtube.com/channel/UCB9N6fHt-…
Revolution and Ideology
Jared (History) and Nick (Sociology) discuss history and theories related to revolution and social change.YouTube
George Lucas got the idea for Princess Leia's iconic "space buns" from Mexican revolutionary women. Specifically Clara de la Rocha, a total badass.
Clara's descendant recounted:
"She crossed a river on horseback…and was able to take out a power station in order to allow the rebel forces to attack during night without being seen."
Just like Leia, eh?
On Clara:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clara_de…
Lucas interview:
time.com/archive/6911956/so-wh…
#HispanicHeritageMonth #Mexico #History #StarWars #PrincessLeia
On July 2, 1982, Larry Walters attached 43 weather balloons to his lawn chair, filled them with helium, put on a parachute, and strapped himself into the chair.
Later, when a reporter asked what made him decide to take a patio chair aloft, Walters explained:
"A man can't just sit around."
#OnThisDay #history #LawnchairLarry #LarryWalters #AManCantJustSitAround
10. června 1942 došlo k vyhlazení Lidic německými nacisty... Nutno si to stále dokola připomínat, aby se historie neopakovala. 🕯️
stream.cz/slavnedny/den-kdy-by…
cs.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vyhlaz…
Den, kdy byly vyhlazeny Lidice (10. červen 1942) | Slavné dny | Stream
Vyhlazení Lidic bylo jediným případem genocidy, ke kterému se nacisté během 2. světové války oficiálně přiznali, dokonce se jím i chlubili.Stream
#TIL that in 1929, JM Barrie, the author of Peter Pan, gifted his work's copyright to the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children.
"Through this gift, Peter Pan’s magic made an unprecedented leap from the realm of fiction into reality and the hospital began to receive royalties every time a production of the play was on, as well as from the sale of Peter Pan books and other products."
gosh.org/about-us/peter-pan/hi…
#history #literature #books #bookstodon #PeterPan #philanthropy
