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Selected Events from the early 1960s (from a British perspective) (07/08)
1960: Penguin Books put on trial under the 1959 Obscene Publications Act for publishingLady Chatterley's Lover (30 years after it had first been published in Italy). They are found not guilty and the prosecution is widely ridiculed as being out of touch with changing social norms when the chief prosecutor asks if it were the kind of book ...
Shopping Malls (07/08)
A shopping mall is defined as a collection of shops usually in one main building
or close series of buildings. It would seem that shopping malls date back to at
least the 10th century when it is said that
Isfahan's Grand Bazaar in Iran was founded (the current buildings date to
the 17th century).
The Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, ...
Yiddish Theatre in America (07/08)
More than 200 Yiddish theatre troupes performed in the United States between 1890 and 1940 (
photo of a theater group in 1909). In their heyday in the 1920s, twelve troupes resided in New York City alone, with 22 Yiddish theatres on the Lower East Side, the Bronx, and Brooklyn. Their repertoires spanned a variety of genres including ...
Poliomyelitis (07/08)
Poliomyelitis, more commonly known as Polio, is a viral disease that has plagued humans since ancient times. It is transmitted primarily through direct fecal-oral contact. However, it can also be transmitted by indirect contact with infectious saliva or feces or by contaminated sewage or water.
In over 90% of cases there are no symptoms ...
All About Cheese (07/08)
Cheese can be made from the the milk of any mammal capable of being milked. Simply put, cheese making is the process of removing water from milk. The simplest method is to add an acid such as lemon juice or vinegar directly to the milk; an alternative method uses bacteria to create an acid in the milk; the bacteria also provides flavor ...
Silk, and The Silk Road (07/08)
The Silk Road (
map) starts at the western gate of old Changan in
Xian which, in the Tang dynasty (618-907 AD), was the greatest city in the world. The Xian municipality commissioned a red sandstone sculpture of twice life-size camels in commemoration, but the site is now engulfed by a supermarket - so the camels have been relocated to a ...
A Short Guide to Notable Historic Barriers (06/08)
Hadrian's Wall was built in AD 122. It measures 80 Roman miles (73.5 miles/117 km). It was the second of three stone and turf fortifications the Romans built across Britain to prevent military raids by the Picts (who inhabited what is now Scotland) but is best known as it is the best preserved. The lesser known walls are
Gask Ridge, built ...
Mental Health in the 19th and 20th Centuries (06/08)
- The events in The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox are based on a
real British policy which deinstitutionalized thousands of psychiatric
patients beginning in 1990. Margaret Thatcher's Care in the Community
program sought to end outmoded, Victorian-era mental institutions by
releasing such patients back into their homes, their ...
A Short History of Social Security in the USA (06/08)
- The Social Security Act was signed into law by President Roosevelt on August 14, 1935.
- In the 1960s the age when men were eligible for retirement benefits was lowered to 62 and health coverage was extended to Social Security beneficiaries aged 65 or older.
- One in six Americans (45 million) receives a Social Security benefit, almost 1 in 3 ...
Nocturnal Climbing at Cambridge University (06/08)
Cambridge, the second oldest university in the English-speaking world, is located in the East of England. It is said that it was established by a group of scholars in the early 13th century who left Oxford (which was established in the 11th century) after two of their number were accused of murdering a local and hung by town authorities. ...
US Military Recruitment (06/08)
After several bad years, all branches of the military met their 2006 & 2007 recruitment targets (figures below are 2007 stats rounded to the nearest 1000):
- Army: 80,000
- Navy: 37,000
- Marines: 36,000
- Air Force: 28,000
This was a relief for the military, as the ongoing war in Iraq has made recruitment increasingly difficult. It is rare to try to ...
Shah Abbas I and the founding of modern Iran (06/08)
Evidence of settled communities in Iran date back to at least the 5th millennium BC (as evidenced by 7,000 year-old
wine jars that have been excavated in the Zagros Mountains).
Cyrus the Great is credited with establishing the first unified empire during his 21 year reign beginning in 550 BCE. He is also remembered for the
Cyrus Cylinder (...
Some of the CIA's Biggest Blunders (06/08)
The Central Intelligence Agency has been riven by turf battles, political infighting, and the lack of qualified agents and analysts. But just as frequently, the CIA has been brought to its knees by thoroughly avoidable blunders…
from the (somewhat) droll…
In 1994, the station chief in Guatemala accused the American Ambassador, ...
Background (06/08)
Mark Mills is a novelist
and screenwriter whose credits
include the screenplay for
The Reckoning, which he
adapted from Barry Unsworth's
novel
Morality Play. His
first novel,
Amagansett,
set in the small
Long Island...
A Short History of Norway (05/08)
Norway is one of the three kingdoms in the geographical region known as Scandinavia (
map); the others being Denmark and Sweden. Finland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands are sometimes described as Scandinavian because of their close geographical and historic connections with Scandinavia, although technically speaking these countries belong ...
Did you know? The US food supply chain factoids. (05/08)
- The average supermarket food item has traveled 1500 miles to reach our kitchens - that's further than most families go on vacation.
- If every US citizen ate just one meal a week from locally grown meat and roduce we would save 1.1 million barrels of oil every week!
- Six companies now ...
Jewish Homelands (05/08)
Over the years a number of different plans for a Jewish homeland have been proposed. A 1903 British proposal offered 5,000 square miles of the Mau Plateau (in what is now Kenya) to the Jewish people as a homeland. This offer, presented at the sixth Zionist Congress in Basel, was in response to pogroms against the Jews in Russia. The ...
Uranium and Nuclear Power (05/08)
According to the
Uranium Information Center:- Over half of the world's production of uranium is from mines in Australia and Canada.
- 8 mining companies account for almost 80% of production.
- Nuclear energy supplies over 16% of the world's electricity.
- 31 countries use nuclear energy to generate electricity.
- 80% of France's electricity is from ...
Dowager Empress Tzu Hsi (05/08)
Dowager Empress Tzu Hsi (spelled Cixi in Pinyin; pronouced Tsoo Shee) had a bad reputation while she lived and after she died. However, in recent decades the tide of historical opinion has been shifting. Much of the West's view of Cixi comes from the writings of
Edmund Backhouse (1873-1944) who claimed to have had close contact with the ...
The Indian Caste System (05/08)
Without his violent act Balram Halwai, the hero of
The White Tiger, would have had trouble accessing upward social mobility because of the strict caste system in India. Many Westerners believe, because India is officially a democracy and the Indian constitution of 1949 banned it, that the caste system is a thing of the past, but in many ...
A short history of the French Resistance (05/08)
France capitulated to Germany on June 25 1940 and was divided into three key zones: A German occupation zone in the north and west, a small Italian occupation zone in the southeast and unoccupied collaborationist 'Vichy France' in the south (
map). The French Army was disbanded except for a small force to keep domestic peace, and the ...
Background (05/08)
Vanora Bennett became a
journalist by accident; having
learned Russian and been hired
out of university by Reuters she
was catapulted into the
adrenaline charged realm of
conflict reporting. She has
reported from Paris, Cambodia,
...
Fishing Facts (04/08)
Did you know:
- Today, the British know
the North Sea as muddy and
cold. It's always been cold,
but evidence suggests that
it wasn't always muddy. Just
100 years ago there were
vast oyster beds up to 120
miles...
A Short History of Czechoslovakia (04/08)
The lands now known as The Czech Republic and Slovakia were ruled by the Austrian-Hungarian Empire for about 300 years until the end of World War I and the collapse of the empire. In 1918, a union was proclaimed between the Czech lands and Slovakia to form the Czechoslovakian state, an idea that had been advocated by Czech and Slovak ...
Argentina: The Jewish community and the "Dirty War" (04/08)
Jews in Argentina
After being expelled from Spain in 1492, a number of Jews settled in Argentina where they assimilated into the general population, so by the mid 1800s there were few overt Jews in Argentina. When Argentina gained its independence from Spain in 1810, the first president officially abolished the Inquisition and encouraged ...
A Short History of Colombia (04/08)
About twice the size of Texas with a population of 44 million, Colombia is
located just south of Panama (
map).
ith a per capita GDP of $8,400, 49% of the population live below the poverty
line. From 1510 the area that is now Colombia was part of the Spanish empire until a nine year uprising led by Simon Bolivar resulted in the...
Henry Norman Bethune (04/08)
Henry Norman Bethune (Mar 3, 1890 - Nov 12, 1939), known as Norman, was born in Gravenhurst, Ontario. He interrupted his studies at the University of Toronto to set up classes for immigrants in a bush lumber camp in northern Ontario and then, at the outbreak of World War I, enlisted in the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps. While serving ...
A Short History of Vietnam Since 1975 (04/08)
Vietnam's history has been one of repeated invasions and resistance (
historic maps). For the millennium up to the early 10th century, Vietnam was controlled by the Chinese, until a final rebellion in 938 led to Vietnam achieving independence. Over the following centuries it repelled a number of Chinese invasion attempts, including three ...
Background info (03/08)
- The Federal Democratic Republic of
Ethiopia (historically known as
Abyssinia) is located in east Africa, on
the 'Horn of Africa' (map).
Once an important trade route due to its
location on the Red Sea, it has been
landlocked since 1993 when the province
...
Thailand (03/08)
A unified Thai kingdom was established in the mid-14th century. Known as Siam until 1939, Thailand (
map) is the only Southeast Asian country never to have been taken over by a European power. A bloodless revolution in 1932 led to a constitutional monarchy. Thailand allied itself with Japan during WWII but has been an ally of the US since....
Tyler Knox (03/08)
Tyler Knox is the pseudonym of former Philadelphia lawyer William
Lashner, known for his Victor Carl
legal thriller series. Lashner decided
to write under a new name not for the
purposes of 'rebranding or putting one
over my readers ..... but purely for the
freedom of...
Snooker (03/08)
Snooker is a very British sport, primarily played in the UK and various parts of the former colonies. The game bears some similarity to American Pool in that they both involve cues and balls, but Snooker is played on a table four times larger than the Pool table, the pockets are smaller and snooker players would say that the game is more ...
Gray Whales (02/08)
Adult
Gray Whales weigh 30-40 tons and measure about 45 feet (14 meters); they have dark skin with gray patches and white mottling, the calves are born dark gray to black (sometimes with distinctive white markings). They are baleen whales (with a series of 130-180 fringed overlapping plates hanging from each side of the upper jaw in lieu ...
The Tropics (02/08)
- The tropics are the geographic region of the Earth centered on the equator and limited in latitude by the Tropic of Cancer in the northern hemisphere, at approximately 23°30' (23.5°) N latitude, and the Tropic of Capricorn in the southern hemisphere at 23°30' (23.5°) S latitude. This region is also referred to as the ...
Turkey, The Ottoman Empire, and the Armenian Genocide. (02/08)
At its height the Ottoman Empire, which had its capital in Istanbul (formerly Constantinople), spanned three continents, controlling much of Southeastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, and was at the center of interactions between the Eastern and Western worlds for about 600 years.
The 'golden age' of the Empire was in the 16th...
A Short History of Libya (02/08)
Libya is located on the Mediterranean coast in the North of Africa to the West of Egypt (
map). Much of the country lies within the Sahara Desert but the coastal areas have a Mediterranean climate with arable land in the plateaus. The earliest known settlers of the area were the Berber people, known as Libyans to the Greeks. Around the 7th...
A Short History of Northern Ireland (02/08)
English involvement in Ireland began around 1170 when Dermot Mac Murchada, King of Leinster (one of 4 Irish provinces) asked for Henry II's help to return him to the throne from which he'd been ousted (for more about Henry II, read
A Plantagenet Primer). Henry (great-grandson of William the Conqueror of Normandy) invaded but in the ...
Jodi Picoult (02/08)
Jodi Picoult is the bestselling
author of fourteen books to date. She
was born and raised on Long Island
before studying creative writing at
Princeton. While still a student she had
two short stories published in Seventeen
magazine. On being told that someone was
...
A Short History of the Gulag (01/08)
The Soviet system of forced labor camps known as the Gulag spanned nearly four decades of Soviet history and affected millions of individuals. GULAG is an acronym of Glavnoe Upravlenie Lagereian which, depending on the source, translates as 'The Main Directorate for Corrective Labor Camps' or 'Main Camp Administration'. The earliest camps...
Interesting Facts about Wales (01/08)
- Wales, located on the south-west peninsula of Great Britain (the main island of the United Kingdom - map) is one of the four constituent nations of the UK, the others are England, Northern Ireland and Scotland. Its population is about 3 million (5% of the UK).
- The Welsh language is a Celtic language, that traces its roots back at least ...
A Short History of Mumbai (Bombay) (01/08)
The port city of Mumbai, on the West coast of India, originally consisted of a series of islands which are now joined together through reclamation. Although the area had been inhabited for many thousands of years and had been an important trading port and a center for Hindu and Buddhist culture, the city as we know it today was founded by...
A Short History of Palestine (01/08)
The Canaanites are the earliest known civilization to live in the area of land at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea, living in city-states such as Jericho around 3,000 BCE. Positioned close to Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia and Asia Minor the area was not only a meeting point for different cultures but also a battleground for various ...
Hamlet Summarized (11/07)
It's not at all necessary to be familiar with Hamlet to appreciate The Dead Fathers Club, but for those who would like to freshen their memories, here is a quick outline:
Hamlet's father, King Hamlet of Denmark, is recently dead. Claudius, the dead king's brother, becomes King and quickly marries King Hamlet's widow, Gertrude. Young Hamlet...
The Tsengel Tuvans (11/07)
To reach the homeland of the Tsengel Tuvans one has to travel to the furthest western corner of Mongolia, to the High Altai mountains to a province the size of the Netherlands, bordering China. More than 90% of the population of the area are Kazakh Muslims, the remaining 10% are Khalkh, Urinakhai, Khoshuud and Tuvans.
The Tuvans are a ...
Sir John Franklin and The North-West Passage (11/07)
The mythical North-West Passage held the imagination of Britain for most of the 19th century. At that time, before the great canals of Panama and Suez were built, trade with the lucrative markets in Asia was perilous and slow, with trade routes either flowing past the Cape of Good Hope in Africa, across to India, and thereby to the Far ...
Robert Kagan (11/07)
Robert Kagan is senior associate at the
Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace, transatlantic fellow at the
German Marshall Fund, and a columnist
for The Washington Post (he writes a
monthly column on
international affairs). He is also a
...
The sad tale of Ron Williamson & Dennis Fritz (11/07)
Ada, Oklahoma local boy
Ron Williamson achieved hero status when drafted by baseball's Oakland
Athletics in 1971, but within a couple of seasons his baseball dreams had been
dashed and he took to drowning his sorrows in alcohol. In 1978, having
twice been charged with rape and found not guilty, and having been left by his
...
The Mobile Bay Jubilee (11/07)
In "Titan" a man recalls a boyhood vacation spent on the coast of Alabama in which he experiences a
"Jubilee".
Jubilee is a natural phenomena that occurs in Mobile Bay from time to time, usually before dawn on a warm summer night, when large numbers of fish, crabs and shrimps swarm close to shore, making themselves ...
Flamenco Dancing (11/07)
Flamenco, which can be divided into cante ('the song'), baile ('the dance') and guitarra ('guitar'), is the traditional song and dance of the Gypsies (flamencos) of Andalusia in southern Spain. It is believed to have developed over several centuries from Gypsy, Moorish, Andalusian, and other roots (probably including northern India, as ...
The Knowledge (11/07)
It takes a central London cab driver an average of 34 months to gain
The Knowledge required to drive a licensed London taxi. Before they can receive their license they must know every street and the route between every street in a 6 mile radius of Charing Cross station (that's about 113 square miles) - and they need to be able to describe ...
