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Plague doctors - in the 17th century
The plague doctors were European men who specialised in treating plague victims, at least from the Black Death (1348-9) on. These doctors were public servants hired by villages, towns, or cities when...
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The catastrophic Wall St bombing of 1920
Lower Manhattan’s Financial District was the centre of American capitalism in the 1920s, especially the corner of Wall and Broad Sts. It was dominated by the headquarters of JP Morgan and Co, a...
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Distance learning for American and Australian students - long before coronavirus
For those who see 2020 as the time when distance education/homeschooling exploded, Three Centuries of Distance Learning by Livia Gershon described the long historic infrastructure that enabled this...
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Great Ocean Road - a tourist dream and a WW1 memorial
In the 1870s, a trip from Lorne to Geelong; visitors travelled uncomfortably via a rough coach track through dense bush to the railway at Winchelsea. Early plans for an ocean road emerged in the...
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Alfred Hitchcock, in Britain and the USA
Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980) was born over his family’s foodshop in Leytonstone, East London. Little remains of his early life there, other than a Blue Plaque on the wall. But there is still evidence...
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Charles Dickens was a beast to his wife Catherine
In 1835, the Morning Chronicle in London launched an evening edition, edited by music critic George Hogarth. Hogarth invited Charles Dickens (1812–70) to contribute, and Dickens soon became a...
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Record price for an Artemisia Gentileschi painting. Go sister!
Artists who modelled themselves on Caravaggio could borrow whichever aspects of his style and method they liked most. Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1654) knew Caravaggio personally and had direct...
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Gender, Orientalism and the Jewish Nation: EM Lilien ..... guest post
In January 2020, Bloomsbury Academic Press published Dr Lynne Swarts’ first book, encompassing her passion for intellectual intersections: modern European history, Jewish history, gender studies and...
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Jesse Owens and Luz Long: a great Olympic friendship, 1936
James Jesse Owens (1913-80) had a very modest start in life. Born to Alabama share-croppers and the grandson of slaves, Owens grew up quickly. In May 1935 in Ann Arbor Michigan, Owens equalled or broke...
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Losing the use of my dominant hand
When my late father Les started primary school in 1927, he was a natural left hander. So as he learned how to write, he always put the pen in his left hand. The teachers were not bad people, but he was...
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Prince Philip - homelessness and loss of family (until 1947).
Philip was born (1921) on Corfu, son of Prince Andrew of Greece & Denmark, and Princess Alice of Battenberg after 4 daughters: Margarita (b1905), Theodora (b1906), Cecilie (b1911) and Sophie...
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Forbidden City, Beijing .........guest post
Forbidden City is an imperial palace complex at the heart of Beijing. Commissioned in 1406 by the Ming Emperor Yongle, the construction of the Forbidden City required endless thousands of labourers...
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Kent State Massacre, May 1970-2020
I was terrified by the 1970 Kent State Massacre. I was the same age as the victims (20-21), shared the same anti-war politics and studied in the same university faculties. And mostly because my friends...
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Australia's fake Russian choir "Dustyesky" went viral..........reblogged from...
Mullumbimby is a small Australian town in northern NSW. A freewheeling place of yoga and alternative lifestyles. Not an easy place to summon the suffering in the songs of the battle fields and the...
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The Kray Twins - East End Heroes or brutal gangsters?
Charles Kray and Violet Lee married in 1926 in East London, and had 3 surviving children, Charlie (b1926) and identical twins Ronald and Reginald (b1933). They moved to Bethnal Green in 1939, where...
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3rd luxury train in Australia - the Great Southern Rail
My goal years ago was to travel on every long, luxury rail trip in the world. And to write each experience up in this blog, achieved so far for Australia, Canada, USA, Japan, Southern China, Singapore,...
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Astrid Kirchherr and my beloved Beatles
Astrid Kirchherr was born in Hamburg in 1938, daughter of a manager in the German branch of the Ford Motor Company and an independently wealthy mother. She spent WW2 evacuated to the Baltic coast and...
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Zubin Mehta's busy, creative and memorable career.
Zubin Mehta, born in 1936 in India, to a Parsi Zoroastrian family. It was said that the Parsis in India were more receptive to European influence than the Hindus or Muslims. The lad was inducted early...
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The two oldest synagogues in Australia: Hobart, Launceston
Judaism was first practised in Van Diemen's Land by male convicts or free settlers from London’s Jewish East End. Lack of wives had made it difficult to form a traditional Jewish community, but by...
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Nora Heyson: talented Australian war artist
Anne-Louise Willoughby wrote her book Nora Heysen: a Portrait very well. The daughter of famous artist father Hans Heysen, Nora (1911-2003) was born in Hahndorf Sth Australia, and received her early...
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