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Zeebrugge is located in Belgium on the north coast of Europe. The port provided quick access to the North Sea for the Imperial German Navy throughout the First World War for their U-boats and light shipping, which the German navy was trying to threaten the Allied-controlled English Channel and the North Sea with. As the […]
The way that society today consumes news and information is ever changing with the influx of social media and less direct channels of information through podcasts and a plethora of broadcasters all vying for attention in a saturated market. Many of these information sources have different validation processes or have multiple eyes on ensuring that […]
In a 2012 “documentary” film and book titled The Untold History of the United States, filmmaker Oliver Stone contended that there would have been “no Cold War” had Henry Wallace, FDR’s third-term vice president, not been forced off the ticket by reactionary Democratic Party leaders in 1944.[1] Wallace, rather than Harry Truman, would have become […]
This book was one of two sent to me by Colin. He was going on a trip to Kosovo and volunteered to go to some bookshops on my behalf to see what Kosovan booksellers would choose for me as standout books from their nation. Kosovo wasn’t included in my original year of reading the world. […]
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 […]
Bas Czerwinski/AFP via Getty Images Bas Czerwinski/AFP via Getty Images International courts investigating alleged war crimes have made headlines often in recent months. An arrest warrant has been issued for Russian President Vladimir Putin; arrest warrants have also been requested for senior Hamas and Israeli officials, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas leader […]
This part 2 of the Secret History of Polaroid and Edwin Land. Read part 1 for context. Kodak and Polaroid, the two most famous camera companies of the 20th century, had a great partnership for 20+ years. Then in an inexplicable turnabout Kodak decided to destroy Polaroid’s business. To this day, every story of why […]
“Low Rider” The band War formed in 1969, in Long Beach, California. “Low Rider” is from their 1975 album Why Can’t We Be Friends? The song was a hit as soon as it came out. It went to #1 on the Billboard R&B charts, and it’s just had tremendous lasting power ever since. Besides being […]
“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 […]
Keystone Features/Getty Images Keystone Features/Getty Images What is school for? Over a hundred years ago, a man named Harold Rugg published a series of textbooks that encouraged students to confront the thorniest parts of U.S. history: to identify problems, and try and solve them. And it was just as controversial as the fights we’re seeing […]