Archive for the ‘History’ Category
What were the five worst times and places to be alive in human history?
April 6th, 2020 by Roger Darlington
Life is tough now. Everywhere in the world is threatened by the coronavirus. I don’t want in any way to understate the challenges we all face, but maybe we now have the time and motivation to recall that, in the course of human history, things have often been worse, much much worse. This video suggests […]
Posted in History | Comments (0)
The importance of rivers to the earliest civilisations
April 3rd, 2020 by Roger Darlington
During the lockdown period of this coronavirus crisis, I’m running online lessons in Victorian history for a couple of nine year olds. This week, we covered developments in transportation and industrialisation. For the transportation section, I suggested that the history of transport could be seen as having five stages: rivers & seas, roads, canals, railways […]
Posted in History | Comments (0)
Victoria and Albert – their names are everywhere
April 1st, 2020 by Roger Darlington
This coronavirus crisis has found me running online lessons in Victorian history for a couple of nine year olds. We’re using Skype to have a one-hour session each week and we’re finding it fun. Naturally we started with Queen Victoria herself who ruled Britain from 1837 to 1901, a record 37 years – until the […]
Posted in History | Comments (4)
Coronavirus (or Covid-19): where and who was patient zero?
March 13th, 2020 by Roger Darlington
Whenever there is a global pandemic, it is natural to wonder how it all started. We still don’t know for sure where the Black Death of the mid 14th century originated although, in October 2010, medical geneticists suggested that all three of the great waves of the plague originated in China. Similarly there are different […]
Posted in History, Science & technology, World current affairs | Comments (0)
Coronavirus is not the first global pandemic and, by some accounts, today is the anniversary of the start of one of the very worst
March 11th, 2020 by Roger Darlington
It was called Spanish flu, but it did not start in Spain and we are still not sure where it originated. So-called Spanish flu was an influenza pandemic which ran from around January 1918 – December 1920. It was an unusually deadly influenza pandemic which was the first of the two involving the H1N1 virus, with the second […]
Posted in History | Comments (0)
What do you know about Paraguay and why is today a special one for that country?
March 1st, 2020 by Roger Darlington
One of the many reasons that I love foreign travel is that, having visited a country, I am more likely to pay attention to any news coming out of that nation. I only spent a short time in Paraguay but it was sufficient for me to pick up that today is a special one for […]
Posted in History | Comments (0)
“The Night Of The Bayonets” – a World War Two story that you’ve never heard
February 1st, 2020 by Roger Darlington
In the dying days of the Second World War, a group of Georgian soliders rebelled against their German ‘comrades’ on Texel Island off the coast of The Netherlands. It’s an amazing story brought to light by my good friend Eric Lee. In December, he was interviewed by Dan Snow (also known as “The History Guy”) […]
Posted in History | Comments (0)
Last of the RAF’s Battle of Britain fighter aces dies – but the victory was not a wholly British effort
January 30th, 2020 by Roger Darlington
The Battle of Britain in 1940 was a decisive turning point in British history and we owe an immense debt of gratitude to the 3,000 Royal Air Force pilots who defended this country against a proposed German invasion. We have just heard the news that the last of the British aces of that conflict has […]
Posted in History | Comments (0)
How liberal is America’s Democratic Party?
January 21st, 2020 by Roger Darlington
Last weekend, I went on a one-day course at London’s City Literary Institute with the title “Liberalism And The Democratic Party: From FDR To Today”. The course was delivered by Brian Kennedy, a knowledgeable and eloquent American who hails from Boston. We were told that a progressive wing of American politics first developed in the […]
Posted in American current affairs, History | Comments (0)
King William III and “the little gentleman in the black velvet waistcoat”
December 10th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
Today I was passing through St James’s Square in central London and took the opportunity to check out a statute in the middle of the square’s gardens. It is an equestrian statute with some kind of lump underneath one of the horse’s hoofs. What’s it all about? You’ll find the explanation here.
Posted in History | Comments (0)