World

Timeliness, timelessness, and the boy with no birthdays

By Geraldine McCaughrean

By Geraldine McCaughrean
As Captain Scott sat in his tent in the Antarctic in 1912, pinioned between the dead bodies of Birdie and Uncle Bill, he wrote countless valedictory notes to people he would never see again, in places half a world away.  One was to the godfather of his son, expressing his love and admiration for the man and asking him to look after the boy.  A hundred years ago that letter was lying unread in the death tent.  But eventually, of course, it was delivered – to J. M. Barrie, foremost playwright and author of his day.

Why are Russians attracted to strong leaders?

By Geoffrey Hosking
After a decade of a chaotic but exhilarating democracy in the 1990s, Putin as president and prime minister has been restoring a strong state. At least, that is how we usually understand it. He has certainly restored an authoritarian state. On assuming office in 2000, he strengthened the ‘power vertical’ by ending the local election of provincial governors and sending in his own viceroys – mostly ex-military men – to supervise them. Citing the state’s need for ‘information security’, he closed down or took over media outlets which exposed inconvenient information or criticised his actions. Determined opponents were bankrupted, threatened, arrested, even murdered. He subdued the unruly Duma (parliament) by making it much more difficult for opposition parties to register or gain access to the media, and by encouraging violations of electoral procedure at the polls. Until recently, the Russian public seemed to accept this as part of the natural order.

Osama bin Laden killed

: This Day in World History
In the middle of the night, 2 May 2011, a brief message was radioed from Pakistan to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia: “EKIA.” “EKIA” is military shorthand for “enemy killed in action.” The enemy was Osama bin Laden. After a manhunt of nearly ten years, the United States had found and killed the al Qaeda leader who had ordered the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.

Scientists identify DNA

This Day in World History
The April 25, 1953 edition of the journal Nature included a scientific paper that opened new doors in scientific understanding. The paper, written by James Watson and Francis Crick, described the structure of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), the substance that determines the hereditary traits of a living organism.

Captain Cook sights Australia

This Day in World History
“What we have as yet seen of this land appears rather low, and not very hilly, the face of the Country green and Woody, but the Sea shore is all a white Sand.” Thus James Cook concluded his log entry for April 19, 1770 — the day Europeans first sighted the continent of Australia.

Images from the Titanic Disaster

By John Welshman

At 11:40 pm ship’s time on 14 April 1912, the HMS Titanic hit an iceberg. Just two hours and forty minutes later, the hull broke, taking the ship and over one thousand people still aboard into the sea. It remains one of the greatest disasters in maritime history. In Titanic: The Last Night of a Small Town, John Welshman gathered 25 pictures of this ill-fated voyage together and we’d like to share a few with you.

Everyday people aboard the Titanic

By John Welshman
It was Walter Lord in A Night to Remember (1955) who described the sinking of the Titanic as ‘the last night of a small town’. Titanic: The Last Night of a Small Town, draws on Lord’s metaphor by focusing on the stories of just 12 people, chosen as a representative cross-section of passengers and crew.

The rise and decline of the American ‘Empire’

By Geir Lundestad
Since around 1870 the United States has had the largest economy in the world. In security matters, however, particularly in Europe, the US still played a limited role until the Second World War. In 1945, at the end of the war, the United States was clearly the strongest power the world had ever seen. It produced almost as much as the rest of the world put together. Its military lead was significant; its “soft power” even more dominant.

Magellan reaches the Philippines

This Day in World History
On March 16, 1521, Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan — attempting to sail around the world for Spain — reached the Philippine archipelago. Magellan and his expedition were the first Europeans to reach the Philippines, a stop on the first circumnavigation of the globe — though Magellan’s portion of that journey would soon end.

The real lessons of the Cuban Cold War crisis

By John Gittings
This year we shall recall, with a very nervous shudder, the 50th anniversary of the greatest crisis in the Cold  War – and with the knowledge that but for good fortune none of us would be here to recall it at all.

Algeria’s televised coup d’état

By Martin Evans
On 11 January 1992 the Algerian President, the white-haired sixty-one year old Chadli Bendjedid, announced live on television that he was standing down as head of state with immediate effect. Nervous and ill at ease, the president read out a brief prepared statement. In it he explained his decision as a necessary one. Why? Because the democratic process which he had put in place two years earlier could no longer guarantee law and order on the streets.

United Nations General Assembly meets for first time

This Day in World History
On January 10, 1946, Zuleta Angel of Colombia called to order delegates from fifty-one nations. The historic gathering, held in London’s Central Hall, marked the first meeting of the General Assembly of the United Nations.

Soviet Union proclaimed… and dissolved

This Day in World History
“Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, December 20, 1922–December 31, 1991.” So might read the epitaph of one of the dominant political forces of the twentieth century, the world’s first communist state and, after World War II, one of two world superpowers.

Anne of Green Gables, the Spirit of 1783, and World War I

By Thomas Weber
Canada’s almost complete absence of the drama, disasters, and revolutions that have been the hallmark of much of European and Asian history makes Canadian history a tough sell. And yet one of the greatest and most successful reads of the last century was a Canadian story, the one of young freckled Anne Shirley, immortalized by Lucy Maud Montgomery in her Anne of Green Gables, published in 1908.

Alfred Nobel dies

This Day in World History
Stricken by a cerebral hemorrhage, wealthy industrialist Alfred Nobel died on December 10, 1896. That date is still commemorated as the day on which the famous prizes issued in his name—perhaps the most prestigious prizes in the world—are officially awarded each year.

Ian Fleming and American intelligence (Part 3)

By Nicholas Rankin
On 27^th June 1941, in Washington D.C., Lt-Commander Ian Fleming RNVR drafted a short ‘Memorandum to Colonel Donovan’ on how to structure and staff the headquarters of his new American intelligence agency, COI, to be set up by Christmas 1941. Fleming suggested taking over a section of the FBI building and liaising closely with the Attorney-General and J. Edgar Hoover; Donovan would need to make friends with both the State Department and the FBI and enlist their full help ‘by cajolery and other means’.