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An amazing Negev Desert Zoo just opened.
Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Animal Park in Israel serves as a sanctuary for endangered desert animals and injured local wildlife, and as a home to animals born in captivity that cannot be returned...
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Russian born Yul Brynner's amazing story
Yuliy Borisovich Briner (1920-85) was born in Vladivostok, apparently with mixed ancestry. The mystery began with Brynner's birth, for which he gave dates anytime between 1915-22. He sometimes said...
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Archduke Franz Ferdinand, assassination ->
Danubia: A Personal History of Habsburg Europe was a big book. Happily once we get to 1848, the year of revolutions across Europe, the book became much more balanced and more interesting. The 53...
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You'll Never Walk Alone Liverpool Ftball Cl
The world of musical theatre seemed a very long way from Anfield Football Stadium in Liverpool. So how did a big, wonderful song from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s show Carousel (1945) end up as a football...
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UK's National Health Service, slow important development
Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham, originally built in 1933and replaced by the new hospital in 2010.It is one of the largest single-site hospitals in the UKAfter the Boer War, a Committee on...
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Norway's North Pole Expedition Museum
In C19th, exploration and discovering new lands had become a much smaller endeavour as the world "shrank". Instead, exploration looked to the world's more dangerous reaches, even beyond the atmosphere....
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Cimabue art in a kitchen Vs in Le Louvre
A prized C13th painting found hanging over a stove in the kitchen of an elderly woman in Compiègne, north of Paris in 2019. The painting was going to the rubbish tip during her house clearance;...
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historic Halifax, Nova Scotia
I’ve been to Canada a number of times, mainly to Toronto and Montreal for IRC gatherings, and to Winnipeg and Vancouver for family reunions. The Maritimes were lovely, but I didn’t have enough time...
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Australia's national hat, the akubra.
Australian Army hat, wool felt Rising sun badge and puggaree Everything AustralianThe origin of the slouch hat began with the Victorian Mounted Rifles in 1885. The Victorian hat was an ordinary bush...
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1956 - what a year!
Budapest Oct-Nov 1956BBC History Magazine asked historians to select history’s most dramatic year. I expected them to select 476 AD, 1215, 1492, 1914 and 1933, but in my opinion 1956 was by far the...
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WW2 heroes deleted in Pentagon’s purge, NBC News
References to an American WW2 Medal of Honour recipient, the Enola Gay aircraft that dropped an atomic bomb on Japan and the first women to pass Marine infantry training are among the tens of thousands...
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Best history books published in 2024.
Except for one book below, I have not read any list of best history books, so I relied on the historians in Smithsonian Magazine and BBC History Magazine. Silk: A World History by Aarathi Prasad in...
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Ralph Lauren, still a luxury life!
Born Ralph Lipschitz in 1939 to Jewish immigrant parents Frank (from Belarus) and Frieda Lipschitz (from Poland), Ralph was the youngest of 4 siblings. The family wasn’t rich, living in a poor Bronx...
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Alice Paul: bravest American suffragette
The main U.S organisation fighting for Women’s Suffrage was the National American Women’s Suffrage Association-NAWSA, founded in 1869 by Susan Anthony and Elizabeth Stanton. But over the next decades,...
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Degenerate Art Exhibitions: from 1937 Germany, USA and France.
How do we remember art exhibitions held decades ago? This question is the key to an understanding of post-modernist practices. Reesa Greenberg called it the Remembering Exhibition, and used the term...
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UK Holidays with Pay Act 1938 for families
As I showed in my post onlate C19th amusement centres, sporting activity, fun and healthy living were popular amongst British families with some leisure time on their hands. From 1870 on, glamorous...
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Thank you Neil Diamond, from my family
My beautiful mother was elderly (89) but much involved in bridge tournaments, Sunday concerts and family lunches in coffee shops near her retirement village. Her physician gave her white blood cell...
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Sir Roger Casement - hero, hanged by Irish
Roger Casement (1864–1916) was born near Dublin to a Protestant father & Catholic mother! After his parents’ early deaths, he spent his childhood with Protestant relations and was raised as an...
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Brilliant Dr Alice Hamilton, USA
Alice Hamilton (1869-1970) grew up in a cultured family on a large Fort Wayne Ind. estate. Her father wanted home-schooling for his daughters, but eventually Alice decided to become a doctor anyhow....
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Alone in Berlin: Hans Fallada's great book
Born in Greifswald in NE Germany, Rudolf Ditzen (1893–1947) was the son of a lawyer and a very educated mother. In 1909 the family relocated south to Leipzig, following dad's appointment to the...
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Gertrude Stein & friends: life in art.
Gertrude Stein at her salon, 1920InvaluableBaby Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) and the family moved to Vienna and Paris, so Gertrude spoke German, French and English well. Her father moved them back to USA...
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Destroy old slaver statues or put them in history museums?
Edward Colston (1636–1721) was born in a wealthy merchant family in Bristol. Later he went to school in London and established himself as a successful trader in woolEdward Colston's statueBristolIn...
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Up There Cazaly - Aussie football anthem
Roy Cazaly (1893–1963) was an early champion ruckman for St Kilda and South Melbourne Clubs from 1911-27. In the 1910s and 1920s, Cazaly formed a famous ruck pack with teammates Fred Skeeter Fleiter...
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Melbourne Uni 1889 mansion, heritage protected, tower, gardens
The land boom in Marvellous Melbourne came in 1883-1891 era which saw the price of land start to thrive. Naturally London banks were eager to extend loans to entrepreneurs who capitalised on this with...
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Hobart Town Hall fine architecture 1866.
When Hobart Town Hall had its 150th birthday, spouse and I sailed on the Spirit of Tasmania, from Melbourne to Devonport, to join in the celebrations. Joe lay on the bunk, seasick, for the entire...
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