General History Quiz 192
1. How many Allied vessels were lost during Operation Dynamo, the 1940 Dunkirk evacuation?
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1. How many Allied vessels were lost during Operation Dynamo, the 1940 Dunkirk evacuation?
Try the full 10 question quiz.
Reading time: 4 minutes
December 6 is celebrated by the Christian churches as the feast day of St Nicholas. The saint is one of the historic figures on whom Santa Claus is based and so today is the closest the world gets to a Santa Claus Day.
Nicholas was the Bishop of Myra in the early fourth century at the time when Christianity entering into full flight under the Emperor Constantine as the imperial religion of the Roman Empire. Legends reveal him as a secret giver of gifts to the needy, whose charity was saintly because it brought no honour to the giver, only help to the recipient. His gift-giving is thus one of the Christian antecedents of the practice of disguising Christmas presents in stockings or wrappings.
Read MoreReading time: 7 minutes
This government-funded paramilitary force operated from 1849 (prior to Queensland’s separation from New South Wales) until 1904. It grew to have an expansive reach throughout the state, with camps established in strategic locations along the ever-expanding frontier, first in the southeast and then west and north. While staffed with non-Indigenous senior officers, the bulk of the force was made up of Aboriginal men and, sometimes, boys.
1. Which King did Simon de Montfort overthrow in 1264?
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Reading time: 13 minutes
In this blog post I’m going to draw on the Cabinet Papers to explore the British Government’s response to the arrival of Black GIs in Britain during the Second World War. I refer to government records and other primary sources of the time which use terminology which we now consider offensive, for example, ‘coloured troops’ and ‘negroes’.
Several years ago I recall hearing a story about villagers in the West Country during the Second World War refusing to go along with a local US Army segregation order that Black GIs were excluded from the local pub and that only white American troops could use it – the villagers protested and effectively overturned this order. I’m pretty certain that it was the singer-songwriter and activist Billy Bragg that related this story to me, when I had the pleasure to meet him some years back. The story made a big impression on me and I thought, one day, I must follow this thread up. Now I have, and here are the fruits of my research so far.
Read More1. Which Soviet General coordinated the defence of Stalingrad?
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Unearthed secrets from 7,000 years back highlight prehistoric women as the heroines who dug deep--quite literally, to plant the seeds of the first Agricultural Revolution--a recent study in Science Advances has unearthed. Analysis of the bones of these women shows they took on their fair share of digging, hauling, hoeing, and grinding grain in early agricultural societies – in fact, so much so, that their upper body strength would have been greater than that of modern female athletes today. Notably, these findings disprove the widely-held notion that prehistoric women favored domestic tasks over intensive manual labor.
Reading time: 7 minutes In 1352 the crime of treason was defined for the first time in English law. But how were traitors punished in the pre-modern period?
Reading time: 6 minutes You may have heard the myth that the six o'clock swill – and the excessive drinking it supported – led to the tiles which are so common in Australian pubs. According to architectural historian J.M. Freeland in his 1966 book, after this early closing time was introduced, pubs became “no more than high-pressure drinking-houses”.
On his first journey Cook mapped the east coast of Australia, on his second the British Admiralty sent him into the vast Southern Ocean. Equipped with one of the first accurate chronometers, Cook pushed his small vessel not merely into the Roaring Forties or the Furious Fifties but become the first explorer to penetrate the Antarctic Circle, reaching an incredible Latitude 71 degrees South, just failing to discover Antarctica.
Read MoreA HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR, VOLUME ONE – AUDIOBOOK By John Buchan (1875 – 1940)...
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Read MoreThe Final Campaign: Marines in the Victory on Okinawa By Joseph H. Alexander (1938 – 2014)...
Read MoreThe Aeroplane in War – Audiobook By Claude Grahame-White (1879 – 1959),Harry Harper...
Read MoreClosing In: Marines in the Seizure of Iwo Jima – AUDIOBOOK By Joseph H. Alexander (1938...
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Read MoreTHE GREAT EVENTS BY FAMOUS HISTORIANS, VOLUME 7 – AUDIOBOOK By Charles F. Horne (1870...
Read MoreBy Charles F. Horne (1870 – 1942),Rossiter Johnson (1840 – 1931) A...
Read MoreTHE GREAT EVENTS BY FAMOUS HISTORIANS, VOLUME 4 – AUDIOBOOK By Charles F. Horne (1870...
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Read MoreTHE GREAT EVENTS BY FAMOUS HISTORIANS, VOLUME 2 – AUDIOBOOK By Charles F. Horne (1870...
Read MoreTHE GREAT EVENTS BY FAMOUS HISTORIANS, VOLUME 1 – AUDIOBOOK By Charles F. Horne (1870...
Read MoreTHE EVOLUTION OF MODERN MEDICINE – AUDIOBOOK By Sir William Osler (1849 – 1919)...
Read MoreTHE MEDICI, VOLUME 1 – AUDIOBOOK By G. F. Young (1846 – 1919) This work relates...
Read MoreTHE MEDICI, VOLUME 2 – AUDIOBOOK By G. F. Young (1846 – 1919) This work relates...
Read MoreTOM PETRIE’S REMINISCENCES OF EARLY QUEENSLAND (DATING FROM 1837). RECORDED BY HIS DAUGHTER...
Read MoreBy Thomas R. Gray THE CONFESSIONS OF NAT TURNER, THE LEADER OF THE LATE INSURRECTION IN...
Read MoreTHE A.E.F.: WITH GENERAL PERSHING AND THE AMERICAN FORCES – AUDIOBOOK By Heywood...
Read MoreFIRST WORLD WAR CENTENARY PROSE COLLECTION VOL. III – AUDIOBOOK By Various. This collection...
Read MoreFIRST WORLD WAR CENTENARY PROSE COLLECTION VOL. II – AUDIOBOOK By Various. This collection...
Read MoreFIRST WORLD WAR CENTENARY PROSE COLLECTION VOL. I – AUDIOBOOK By Various This collection of...
Read MoreA SHORT HISTORY OF RUSSIA – AUDIOBOOK By Lucy Cazalet (1870 – 1956) A Short...
Read MoreTHE EMPRESSES OF ROME – AUDIOBOOK By Joseph Martin McCabe (1867 – 1955) The story...
Read MoreHistory Guild would like to acknowledge the Boonwurrung people, the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we are based, and pay our respects to their Elders, past, present and emerging.