Reading time: 5 minutes
Alexander the Great was a successful conqueror, but a poor planner. He died without an acceptable heir to inherit the empire, just a soon-to-be-born baby son, and a half-brother not quite up to the task.
Reading time: 7 minutes
Early Roman history is full of stories about the terrible fates that befell citizens who broke the law. When a certain Tarpeia let the enemy Sabines into Rome, she was crushed and thrown headlong from a precipice above the Roman forum.
Such tales not only served as a warning for future generations, they also provided a backstory for some of Rome’s cruellest punishments. Tarpeia is one of many legendary figures who appear in Livy’s History from the Foundation of the City; regardless of whether she was a real person, it became established practice to throw traitors from the “Tarpeian Rock”.
Reading time: 7 minutes
On the afternoon of 12 February 1944, travelling in a convoy from Mombasa to Ceylon (modern-day Sri Lanka), troopship SS Khedive Ismail was struck by two Japanese torpedoes just south-west of the Maldives. Hit directly in the vicinity of its engine and boiler rooms, the ship sank within just two minutes of the attack. Of the 1,506 passengers and crew on board, mostly military personnel, there were little more than 200 survivors.
Reading time: 8 minutes
Wherever they fought in the Second World War, Australian troops acquitted themselves well. They escaped the clutches of the Afrika Korps in the Benghazi handicap and soon after helped hold back Rommel at the second battle of El Alamein. Even certain defeat couldn’t stop Australian troops, like in Crete, where they and their New Zealand counterparts fought a rearguard action that delayed the German war effort considerably.
Reading time: 5 minutes
ous Rookwood Cemetery, a lichen-spotted headstone captures a family’s double burden of grief.
he grave contains the remains of 19-year-old Harriet Ann Ottaway, who died on 2 July 1919. Its monument also commemorates her brother Henry James Ottaway, who “died of wounds in Belgium, 23rd Sept 1917, aged 21 years”.
Estimated reading time: 8 minutes By Sturt Manning, Cornell University. Columbus famously reached...
Read More
Reading time: 5 minutes
The Thirty Years War was a whirlwind in the centre of Europe that at some point between 1618 and 1648 swallowed up every European country before spitting them out again. Though nominally part of the wars of religion, it drew in its wide array of combatants for any number of reasons, ranging from national prestige to territorial gain. In fact, a combination of all three drew in an unlikely contender: Sweden.
1. When did the Bronze Age collapse occur?
Try the full 10 question quiz.
Reading time: 8 minutes
As the women’s branch of the British Army during the Second World War, the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) was formed in 1938. Women serving in the ATS were tasked with the ultimate aim of ‘freeing up’ men for combatant roles on the front line.
PEOPLE DROPPED WHISKY INTO THEIR NOSES TO TREAT SPANISH FLU. HERE’S WHAT ELSE THEY TOOK THAT WOULD...
Read More
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes In Western Australia’s northeast Kimberley region, on...
Read More
Reading time: 8 minutes
Although it is difficult to calculate exactly how many Burmese personnel were recruited by SOE for operations within the country, we do know that it was in excess of 20,000. Those personnel represented at least fourteen different ethnic communities, from the majority Burman (Bamar) and well known Shan, Karen, Kachin, Chin, and Arakanese (Rakhine) peoples, to the less heard about Palaung, Kuki, and Lahu. Also included were nationalities who had large populations in Burma, such as the Gurkhas, Indians, and Chinese. Add to this the Anglo-Burman, Indo-Burman and other mixed ethnicity personnel, for example Shan-Kadu, and it is clear that there was a huge contribution made to Force 136 operations by non-Caucasian peoples. As my research for the Men of SOE Burma page has revealed, finding out about Asian Special Forces personnel in Second World War Burma has many obstacles.
Reading time: 6 minutes
It was ‘the biggest currency black market in history’, a secret operation under the auspices of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), Britain’s Second World War clandestine warfare organisation. This was Operation Remorse, a deeply imperial venture, dedicated to maintaining the commercial interests and prestige of the British Empire – sometimes acting in direct competition with its allies. Most significantly, it was a dramatic success. It returned over 15 times the money invested, a return totalling £77,741,758 at the time – about £2.5 billion today. It achieved this feat by smuggling valuable luxury items, trading wartime goods, and most profitably by manipulating exchange rates in illicit currency transactions on the Chinese Black Market. The money financed several British operations and organisations in China.
Reading time: 6 minutes
This August marks 75 years since the partition of the Indian subcontinent. British withdrawal from the region prompted the creation of two new states, India and Pakistan.
The process of transferring power grossly simplified diverse societies to make it seem like dividing social groups and drawing new borders was logical and even possible. This decision unleashed one of the biggest human migrations of the 20th century when more than ten million people fled across borders seeking safe refuge.
Reading time: 9 minutes
On December 7, 2022, German federal police arrested 25 people who were allegedly plotting to violently overthrow the German government. This planned coup resurrected the spectre of a failed coup attempt 100 years before, when Adolf Hitler and his then still nascent Nazi party tried something similar. But is there a link between this modern coup and the one of 1923? Does the history of these events rhyme?
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”.
1. Which empire did Nebuchadnezzar I rule?
Try the full 10 question quiz.
Reading time: 6 minutes
Between Aug. 7, 1942, and Feb. 9, 1943, U.S. forces sought to capture – and then defend – the Pacific island of Guadalcanal from the Japanese military. What started as an amphibious landing quickly turned into a series of massive air and naval battles. The campaign marked a major turning point in the Pacific theater of World War II. It also revealed important lessons about the nature of warfare itself – ones that are particularly relevant when planning for conflict in the 21st century.
Read More
1. The 430 BCE plague of Athens coincided with what event?
Try the full 10 question quiz.
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes By Robbie Moore, University of Tasmania. The gleeful...
Read More