History

5,000-year-old mummy found in Alps

This Day in World History – While hiking through the Alps on the Italian-Austrian border, Erika and Helmut Simon, a German couple, spotted a brown shape in a watery gully below them. Scrambling down to investigate, they realized that they were looking at a human head and shoulder. Assuming the body was a climber who had been killed in a fall, they reported their find to authorities. The body was removed with a jackhammer and tourists made off with some of its clothing and the tools that were found with it.

A concise overview of the Press

We, the editors of OUPblog, field a lot of questions about “the Press.” Sometimes, these questions aren’t even questions, just statements of misinformation or confusion such as:

I thought you just published textbooks…

But Oxford University Press is in Oxford…

OUPblog is amazing! (Oops, how’d that one slip in there…)

9/11 and the dysfunctional “aughts”

By Richard Landes
In the years before 2000, as the director of the ephemeral Center for Millennial Studies, I scanned the global horizon for signs of apocalyptic activity, that is, for movements of people who believed that now was the time of a total global transformation. As I did so, I became aware of such currents of belief among Muslims, some specifically linked to the year 2000, all predominantly expressing the most dangerous of all apocalyptic

The Black and Tans in black and white

By D. M. Leeson
In September 2010, when my book was just about to enter production, my editor asked me if I had any ideas about an image for the cover.

“That’s it. I’m not a Beatle anymore.”

By Gordon Thompson

The linguistic impact of 9/11

By Dennis Baron

The terrorist attacks on 9/11 happened ten years ago, and although everybody remembers what they were doing at that flashbulb moment, and many aspects of our lives were changed by those attacks, from traveling to shopping to going online, one thing stands out: the only significant impact that 9/11 has had on the English language is 9/11 itself.

Because it is gone now

By Claire Potter
As a citizen, it is sometimes a jolt to realize that September 11 is now a decade in the past. As a teacher of modern United States history who ended her twentieth-century survey last fall with the attack on the twin towers, it was even more of a jolt to realize that a first-year college student who had matriculated in September 2010 might recall only the faint outlines of an event that definitively altered the course of our century. A student who entered high school in that same month would likely have been familiar with images of the smoke billowing out of the World Trade Center towers

Technological progress and human barbarism: An unheroic coupling

By Louis René Beres

Every time I get on an airplane, I am struck by the contradictions. As a species, we can take tons of heavy metal, and transform them into a once-unfathomable vehicle of travel. At the same time, we are required to take off our shoes, and discard our bottled water, before being allowed to board. The point, of course, is not to make us more comfortable (those days are long gone), but to ensure that we don’t blow up the aircraft.

How 9/11 made “History”

By Mary Dudziak

In classrooms across the country on September 11, 2001, lesson plans were abruptly abandoned. Students and teachers gathered around televisions, sharing the sense that “history” was being made before their eyes. Patricia Latessa, a Cincinnati high school teacher, turned on the cafeteria television “and watched history unfold.” She reflected as she watched about how the scenes of airplanes flying into buildings would impact her students

Taking liberties

By Susan Herman
Post-9/11 surveillance measures have made it far too easy for the government to review our personal and business records, telephone and e-mail conversations, and virtually all aspects of our lives. For example, Under the so-called “library provision” of the

Decennium 9/11: Learning the lessons

By Andrew Staniforth
For Americans, no act of terrorism compares to the attacks and from that moment the history of the United States has been divided into ‘Before 9/11’ and ‘After 9/11’. In lower Manhattan, on a field in Pennsylvania, and along the banks of the Potomac, the United States suffered its largest loss of life from an enemy attack on its own soil. Within just 102 minutes, four commercial jets would be simultaneously hijacked and used as weapons of mass destruction to kill ordinary citizens as part of a coordinated attack that would shape the first decade of a new century.

9/11 and 3/11

Carl R. Weinberg
Editor, Magazine of History
On Tuesday March 11, 2003, I was working in my office at North Georgia College and State University (NGCSU), when I received an email that I will never forget. It was sent to all faculty and staff on the campus listserv from one of my colleagues on the subject of “America’s Defense.” His email noted that some of our

The English riots and tough sentencing

By Christine Piper
The riots which occurred in London and several other major cities early in August have provoked a debate, still on-going, around a range of crucial sentencing issues. Two developments have most interested me. First has been the tension between the government and the judiciary and, second, the apparent mark-up because the offending took place in the context of a riot.

Back to school special
Part 2: Early literacy data

By Sydney Beveridge, Social Explorer

With the new school year approaching, Social Explorer is taking a closer look at education data today and over the years. In this installment, we are looking at some of the earliest reported census data related to education.
The Census Bureau first reported literacy data on reading and writing in 1840. At the time, 91.5 percent of the adult white population (over the age of 20) was literate.

Strikes low, unemployment high

By Joseph McCartin

As Americans celebrate Labor Day 2012, the movement whose struggles led to the creation of this national holiday – the union movement – arguably faces its most profound crisis since Congress declared this national holiday in 1894. Indeed with the labor market weakened by the Great Recession and unemployment stubbornly high according the just released