Reading time: 5 minutes
The only extended campaign American soldiers fought as an independent force during the first world war was the Meuse-Argonne offensive. Launched in late September 1918 as part of the final allied offensive on the western front, it was the largest and most deadly campaign the US army had ever fought.
Reading time: 7 minutes
When people think of the European Middle Ages, it often brings to mind grinding poverty, superstition and darkness. But the reality of the 1,000-year period from 500 to 1500 was much more complex. This is especially true when considering the peasants, who made up about 90% of the population.
For all their hard work, peasants had a fair amount of downtime. Add up Sundays and the many holidays, and about one-third of the year was free of intensive work. Celebrations were frequent and centered around religious holidays like Easter, Pentecost and saints’ days.
Reading time: 3 minutes
On 16 December 1773, American colonists threw 340 chests of tea into Boston harbour in an event now known as the Boston Tea Party. This letter from the East India Company gives a breakdown of teas destroyed – and asks for reimbursement.
Reading time: 4 minutes
Though first invented in the 19th century, submarines didn’t really come into their own as a weapon of war until World War Two, when they saw widespread use by all parties in all theatres. Able to hide underwater and strike whenever they wanted, they were feared by friend and foe alike, but what was life like for the men that crewed these small underwater craft?
Reading time: 7 minutes Nabonidus, the last king of the Neo-Babylonians, was a traditionalist. As...
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Reading time: 6 minutes
It’s 400 years since the publication of the complete edition of British philosopher Francis Bacon’s Essays. Not without pride, Bacon (1561-1626) muses in the preface that his little book’s Latin version might “last, as long as books last.” The Essays have, in fact, never been out of print since 1625.
When the Germans took thousands of Allied prisoners during the catastrophic Greek campaign of 1941, a handful of Australian soldiers escaped from prison trains in occupied Yugoslavia. What awaited them was not passage home, but a brutal underground war where the fate of a nation was at stake.
Told through the eyes of two of the Australian escapees – mineworker Ross Sayers and storeman Ronald Jones – Anzac Guerrillas is the incredible true story of how these men became resistance fighters, double agents and spies, evading the Nazis and exposing a group of genocidal collaborators.
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Reading time: 6 minutes
As the year 1922 dragged to a close, a weary public feared that it was doomed to die in doldrums. On the harrowing heels of World War I and the Spanish Flu pandemic came a “summer journalistically so dull that an English farmer’s report of a gooseberry the size of a crabapple achieved the main news pages of the London metropolitan dailies.” One Lord Carnarvon remembered that “the public was in a state of boredom with news of reparations, conferences, and mandates, and craved for some new topic of conversation.”
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Reading time: 4 minutes
Even though a rebellion in Dublin might seem relatively minor in the grand scheme of things,” says Professor of Irish Studies at Notre Dame, Declan Kiberd, “it would actually be the pin piercing the heart of the imperial giant.
Reading time: 5 minutes
In our documentation of eyewitness accounts of Australians in the Med during WW II, we have mainly focused on the experiences of frontline troops and sailors, men who faced enemy fire and worse. What about people a little farther back from the front, those who took care of the wounded?
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Reading time: 6 minutes
Britain had been wary of foreign agents operating within its shores in the run up to the First World War, and the Secret Service Bureau – now commonly known as MI5 – had been established in 1909. It had found great success rounding up German spies when the conflict broke out. Nonetheless, it was vigilant that enemy operatives might attempt to send reports on Britain’s military and economy back home.
Reading time: 5 minutes
Napoleon Bonaparte may have died 200 years ago, but the vast ramifications of his rule can still be felt – and not only in France. This year marks the last in a series of bicentenaries since 1969, the 200th anniversary of his birth, but the chance to give the most famous emperor in French history another send-off is proving distinctly tricky – and not only because of COVID-19 restrictions.
