History Guild World History Course

General History Quiz 192

General History Quiz 192

Dec 7, 2023

1. How many Allied vessels were lost during Operation Dynamo, the 1940 Dunkirk evacuation?
Try the full 10 question quiz.

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When should we hang Christmas decorations?

When should we hang Christmas decorations?

Dec 6, 2023

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.

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How unearthing Queensland’s ‘native police’ camps gives us a window onto colonial violence

How unearthing Queensland’s ‘native police’ camps gives us a window onto colonial violence

Dec 4, 2023

Reading 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.

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Black GIs arrive in Britain

Black GIs arrive in Britain

Nov 29, 2023

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.

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WW2 History Quiz

WW2 History Quiz

Nov 28, 2023

1. Which Soviet General coordinated the defence of Stalingrad?
Try the full 10 question quiz.

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Find out More About the Australian's who served in the Mediterranean during WW2.

Military History

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Unsung Heroes: Women’s Role in the Agricultural Revolution

Unsung Heroes: Women’s Role in the Agricultural Revolution

Nov 15, 2023

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. 

Political and Economic History

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Social and Cultural History

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Are Aussie pubs really filled with tiles because it’s easier to wash off the pee? History has a slightly different story

Are Aussie pubs really filled with tiles because it’s easier to wash off the pee? History has a slightly different story

Oct 11, 2023

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”.

History Audiobooks

A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World – Audiobook

A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World – Audiobook

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.

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History 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.