Despite the hold that the internet now has on everyday life, it is difficult to imagine it as something that was ever invented. Unlike the car, the telephone, or the aeroplane, the internet by comparison has managed to achieve ubiquity without us being able to point to an obvious creator. Of course, we see traces […]
Oskar Potiorek Bosnia and Herzegovina was a hotly disputed territory in 1914. It had been annexed by the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in 1910 from the crumbling Ottoman Empire, but was also claimed by neighboring Serbia and had a growing nationalist movement amongst its youth who wanted it to be part of a South Slav state. The […]
The word “Seminole” is derived from the Muscogean word simanó-li, or “runaway,” reflecting a common heritage, as Upper Creeks from Alabama, Lower Creeks from Georgia, other affiliated tribes and escaped African slaves all sought sanctuary in Spanish Florida. There they mixed with one another, adapted to their surroundings, traded with Britain, Spain and the United States […]
“The First World War saw the first widespread use of propaganda to stir patriotic fervour,” note Gill Saunders and Margaret Timmers in The Poster: A Visual History. “The need to raise vast sums of money from the public purse to fund the war spawned numerous posters advertising war bonds and loans; countries on both sides […]
The California Gold Rush. The very words evoked the strong reaction of an American populace driven by adventure and a lust for easy riches. Drawn inexorably west in the wake of the Jan. 24, 1848, strike at Sutter’s Mill were argonauts from every walk of life—shopkeepers, former soldiers, fallen women and those willing to parade […]
O n the evening of June 5, 1944, Louis Leroux, his wife, and their six children scrambled atop an embankment near their farm to investigate the sounds of distant explosions. Three miles south, Allied fighter-bombers were attacking bridges over the Douve River on France’s Cotentin Peninsula. In the fading twilight the family watched silhouetted warplanes […]
The American chestnut was all but destroyed by fungal blight and logged as settlements spread west when the United States was settled by Europeans. But lately, it’s making a comeback. Endangered for years, the American chestnut is now being appreciated for its many helpful characteristics in cultivated permaculture gardens and its value as a historical […]
In our episode, The Great Narrative Escape, we asked: is it possible to tell a boring story that will keep people listening? Now, we put that question to the test. Invisibilia presents our version of Slow Radio: (mostly) Americans watching Norwegian Slow TV together on the radio (by which we mean podcast). We recommend wearing […]