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Mother's Ruin - gin
Gin is a spirit which derives its predominant flavour from juniper berries. From its earliest medieval beginnings, gin has evolved from an herbal medicine to the commercial drink that the Dutch...
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Chautauqua: adult education in the USA 1874-1933
Dr George Birkbeck of the Andersonian Institute in Glasgow gave the first lectures in 1800 to local mechanics i.e skilled workers. His subject was new technology. The lectures were so popular that a...
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What happened to pacifists in WW1?
Pre-WW1 pacifism was the belief that violence was always immoral, even in self-defence. The belief might have been grounded in religious commitment against the killing of human beings or in a secular...
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Stefan Zweig - defender of European peace, promoter of European culture
My list of turn-of-the-century writers is especially long and constituted an important part of Austrian literary history: Franz Werfel, Arthur Schnitzler, Hermann Bahr (playwright and director),...
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Innovative housing programmes of the New Deal: Aluminium City Terrace Pa
By 1932, during the Great Depression, at least one-quarter of the American workforce was unemployed. When President Franklin Roosevelt took office in 1933, he needed to strengthen the economy ..and...
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Mata Hari - seductive dancer in Paris or German WW1 spy?
Margaretha Geertruida Zelle (1876-1917) came from Leeuwarden, born to her Dutch father Adam Zelle, a failed merchant. Her Javanese mother Antje Zelle fell ill and died when the four children were still...
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Guy Fawkes and his 12 Catholic co-conspirators
Remember, remember the fifth of November, gunpowder, treason and plot. I see no reason why gunpowder treason should ever be forgot.” Even though in childhood I really did not understand why we remember...
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My favourite Art Deco portraitist - Tamara Lempicka
Maria Gorska (1898-1980) was born into a very comfortable Russian family somewhere in the Empire. After her mother and father divorced, her grandmother sent her to boarding school in Lausanne. Maria...
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Christina Stead - literary hero or forgotten Australian?
Author Christina Stead (1902–1983) left Australia in 1928 at 26. She embarked on a successful literary career with the publication of Seven Poor Men of Sydney and The Salzburg Tales, 1934. But the...
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Maremma dogs protect fairy penguins from rampant foxes: Australia
The Fairy Penguin once bred all along the southern Australian coastline, and were an important food source for the indigenous population. They were also eaten by early European settlers, sealers and...
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Did France accept desperate Spanish Civil War asylum seekers in 1936-44?
In The Voice of the Vanquished, Alicia Alted reported that c465,000 Republican Spaniards fled to France during the years of the Spanish Civil War, especially during the winter of 1936. On 23rd Jan...
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Israeli trials of Jewish kapos from WW2 - 1950-1972
A kapo was a prisoner in a Nazi camp assigned to the SS guards, to supervise the forced labour. It was cheap for the SS since they didn’t have to pay the kapos. But more importantly for the SS, making...
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Mussolini's fake nation - the Italian Social Republic (1943-5)
In July 1943, the Allies had pushed Italy out of North Africa and subsequently invaded Sicily. The war had been going so badly for Italy that a meeting of the Fascist Grand Council, with the support...
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The British Raj in India - in perfect control or in chaos?
The Dutch and Portuguese had dominated European trade with the Subcontinent during the 1500s. England (then Britain from 1707 on) was a late-comer to Asia. After Vasco da Gama discovered a sea-route...
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Mentoring Noel Pearson - a guest post
I was born in Eastern Europe and eventually moved into a UN refugee camp for people seeking visas to safe countries. Life for me was fine once we got to Australia, but I was always aware how my...
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Corfu - was it Venetian, British, Greek or something else?
The Ionian island of Corfu, off the west coast of Greece, is 56 ks long but only 18 ks wide. Now some quick and messy history. Before the French Revolutionary Wars, the Ionian Islands had been part of...
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Revolutionising the care of spinal injuries - Ludwig Guttmann
Ludwig Guttmann (1899-1980) was born in Upper Silesia Germany/now Poland, into a religious Jewish family. His parents were Bernhard and Dorothea, and his sisters were Margarethe Guttmann, Alice...
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cold case squad, DNA science and a 1984 murder - Kylie Maybury
1984Melbourne girl Kylie Maybury (born 1978) was abducted and murdered, during the Melbourne Cup Day holiday on 6th Nov 1984. Kylie was with her mother, Julie, visiting a neighbour when she was sent...
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Colour and emotion in Vincent van Gogh's post-impressionist years
Post Impressionism is a term initially used to refer to the styles developed during the last two decades of the C19th by French painters like Paul Cezanne, Paul Gauguin and Georges Seurat. The most...
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Let's celebrate Canada's 150 years since Confederation
Queen Victoria gave royal assent to the British North America Act, so that Canadian Confederation could occur. 150 years ago in July 1867 the old province of Canada was divided into Ontario and...
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