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Academic Insights for the Thinking World
This Day in World History – One of the twentieth century’s most recognizable buildings, the Sydney Opera House, officially opened on October 20, 1973. The Opera House, situated on the shores of Sydney Harbor and with a striking roof line, has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site, with the comment that the building “brings together multiple strands of creativity and innovation in both architectural form and structural design.”
By Martin Evans
On 17 October 1961 at 5.30 am 30,000 unarmed Algerians converged on the centre of Paris in the light rain, flooding in from the surrounding shanty towns and poor suburbs – Nanterre, Colombe and Gennevilliers. Mostly made up of young men and women, but also a scattering of older people and some mothers with young children, the demonstration was organised by the National Liberation Front (FLN) which had been engaged in war for Algerian national independence against France since November 1954.
By Frank James
I have been pondering these questions recently in the course of researching and writing the biographical memoir for the British Academy of the distinguished and influential historians of science Rupert Hall (1920-2009) and his wife Marie Boas Hall (1919-2009). Before the 1939-1945 war history of science was practiced almost exclusively by scientists of one form or another such as Charles Singer (1876-1960) in England and George Sarton (1884–1956) in the United States.
This Day in World History – While federal and state officials knew Capone was guilty of bootlegging, running prostitution rings, and ordering these and other murders, they could not get the evidence to convict him. Their break came in May 1929, when Capone was arrested in Philadelphia for carrying a concealed weapon. While he served his prison sentence, federal authorities combed his homes for evidence. Their efforts produced the desired results. In 1931, officials leveled more than 5,000 counts of violating the Prohibition law against Capone and dozens of followers. They also indicted Capone on twenty-two counts of evading income taxes.
As head of the SS, chief of police, ‘Reichskommissar for the Consolidation of Germanness’, and Reich Interior Minister, Heinrich Himmler enjoyed a position of almost unparalleled power and responsibility in Nazi Germany. Perhaps more than any other single Nazi leader aside from Hitler, his name has become a byword for the terror, persecution, and destruction that characterized the Third Reich.
This Day in World History – In Roman times, Julius Caesar instituted a calendar reform based on a solar year of 365 and one-quarter days. To accommodate the quarter day, the Julian calendar added an extra day to every fourth year, creating leap years. Unfortunately, a solar year is really a few minutes shorter than 365 days and 6 hours. The Julian calendar’s overestimate meant that over the course of a century, more or less, the beginning of each of the four seasons moved back a day. By the late 1500s, the spring equinox fell on March 11, rather than around March 21.
By Joseph McCartin
As the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement gathers momentum in New York and around the country, one of its most interesting features has been the growing number of union members at the protests. For understandable reasons, unions have traditionally avoided close involvement with demonstrations as spontaneous as OWS.
This Day in World History – Why does most every country in the world agree on how to determine what time it is? You can thank the International Prime Meridian Conference, which began on October 13, 1884, and lasted nearly ten days. The twenty-five countries that gathered in Washington , D.C., agreed to accept the line of longitude that passed through Britain’s Royal Observatory as the prime meridian—the line of 0° longitude (just as the Equator is 0° latitude). The nations also agreed that the time at Greenwich would be the standard time against which all other times would be compared—Greenwich Mean Time.
By Susan K. Harris
My respect for Mark Twain has soared lately. I started looking seriously at his political side in 2003, when I taught his anti-imperialist essay “To the Person Sitting in Darkness” the week the U.S. invaded Iraq. For the first time, Twain’s anger resonated with me, but I didn’t know what drove it. I’d always accepted the prevailing biographical narrative that personal disasters fueled Twain’s temper tantrums in his last decade. That didn’t really work for “Person,” however; the essay indicts the U.S. for complicity in imperialist aggressions throughout the world. Twain’s anger is political, not personal, and it’s based on a definition
This Day in World History – October 10 marks a signal date in Islamic history. On that day, Hussein ibn Ali, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, was defeated and killed at Karbala, in modern Iraq. His death cemented deep and lasting division among Muslims that persist to this day. In Iran, where the population is overwhelmingly Shia, the death of Hussein—“leader of the martyrs”—is regularly commemorated in passion plays.
By Simon Glendinning
Not so long ago Europe was not merely a recurrent theme for philosophy; it was central to the traditional discourse of “philosophy of the history of the world”. Taking in work by such giants as Kant, Hegel, and Husserl, the basic idea was that the history of “Man” can be related as a movement between an original “savage” condition and a final “fully human” condition. This construal of human history was not only European in origin, but also “Eurocentric”. Its centre was the idea that the transition for “Man” in history is a movement towards an end with European humanity at the head.
This Day in World History – At eight o’clock at night on October 8, 1871, a fire broke out in Patrick and Catherine O’Leary’s barn. Winds were strong that night in the Windy City, and the city itself was largely made of wood—not just the buildings, but even the sidewalks and signs. Every structure served as kindling, and the ferocious fire burned out of control for thirty-six hours, not stopping until it had destroyed 18,000 buildings over an area of three-and-a-half square miles. Three hundred people lost their lives in the fire, and a third of the city’s people were made homeless.
This Day in World History – Chester Carlson had everything he needed to invent a xerography machine, or photocopier. He had been interested in printing and chemistry since childhood. He perceived a need—in his job, he found that he always needed more copies of documents than he could obtain cheaply. He reasoned that other businesses would also love to have a way of copying documents inexpensively. He had incentive to invent—he had just gotten married and did not think his job offered much chance for getting ahead. Finally, he had an inspiration.
By Lucy Delap
Downton Abbey specialises in dramatic twists and love affairs at all social levels. The world of domestic service provides an ideal backdrop for thwarted passions and sexual machinations of all sorts.
This Day in World History – According to Korean tradition, Dangun, the founder of Korea’s first dynasty, was born on October 3, more than 4,000 years ago. The legend of his birth indicates why this king is so important. Hwanung, the son of the king of heaven, wanted to live among men rather than among the gods. He came down the earth with 3,000 followers and settled in what is now North Korea, ruling the humans who lived in the area.
By Margot Minardi
The new Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial in Washington, DC, attracted criticism from an unlikely corner recently when poet Maya Angelou complained that one of the inscriptions made the civil rights leader seem like an “arrogant twit.” In a sermon on “The Drum Major Instinct,” delivered two months before