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Rosa Parks, second half of her amazing life.
Black American woman Rosa McCauley (1913-2005) grew up in the segregated South. She was often confronted with racial discrimination and violence, co-existing with white people in a city governed...
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King Tutankhamun's beautiful art treasures
Like other pharaohs, Tutankhamun was buried with all his funerary objects and personal possessions, densely packed in the limited space. Luckily most of the burial goods remained intact. In 1922 when...
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Yitzhak Rabin's great career
Leah and Yitzhak RabinJewish BostonYears ago, I wrote a post about the terrible loss of Yitzhak Rabin (1922–1995) . From his humble beginnings, Rabin’s family path exactly followed my own family’s and...
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Blockbuster Vermeer Exhibition - Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, 2023.
Johannes Vermeer (1632-75) was a Dutch painter little known in own time. Though trained as an artist, his conversion to Catholicism on marrying at 21, in a strongly Protestant country, was...
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modern British artists: "Friends & Relations" exhibition
The four painters socialising in Soho (plus a young friend on left) photo by John Deakin, 1963One of Britain’s noted post-war painters, Frank Auerbach was born in...
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"Synagogue of the Outback Museum" in Broken Hill
From the 1880s on, a vibrant Jewish community existed in Broken Hill most of whom originated in Ukraine, Lithuania, Poland and Russia. Broken Hill boasts one of the most remote Jewish museums in the...
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Saving Odessa's fine cultural heritage sites
Museum of Western and Eastern, built into a C18th palace, architect L OttonOdessa was won from the Ottoman Empire by Russians in 1789, during the...
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History of one-pot dinners - save energy and costs; improve nutrition
During our endless Covid lockdowns and since, the cost of gas and electricity went up, and the amount of drinking-washing up water available went down. Some food products quickly became more...
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Bobby Fischer - chess genius or chess psychotic?
Jewish Pole Regina Wender and German biophysicist Hans Fischer married in Moscow in 1933 and had baby Joan in 1937. But the marriage failed and in 1939, Regina and Joan moved to U.S. Hans never...
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Huge public murals in America's Great Depression (1933-6).
Republican presidents Warren G Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover (1929-33) were easily elected in 1920, 1924 and 1928 respectively - the party of big business, high tariffs and...
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Great Victorian and Edwardian pub architecture in Kalgoorlie
600 ks east of Perth, the City of Kalgoorlie was a unique expression of gold fever. Unlike most goldmining towns, which didn’t last forever, Kalgoorlie still includes the famous Golden Mile and has an...
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Shame Ontario, shame! Dionne quins' zoo
Oliva and Elzire Dionne married in Sept 1925, a French-Canadian farming family with six children born BEFORE the quins. They also had three sons AFTER the quins. Born in 1934, the 5 premature babies...
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The Last Vermeer: a filmed court case of fake art in WW2 Netherlands.
I was very familiar with artist Han van Meegeren’s history and was therefore a bit reluctant to see the film The Last Vermeer, given it was a novel and not a history book. This Dutch artist-dealer had...
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Budapest's stunning new synagogue renovation - Rumbach Street
Rumbach St SynagogueThe Great Dohány St Synagogue was built in 1854-9 in the Moorish Revival style, with decoration based on Islamic models from North Africa and medieval Spain. This historical...
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T.B, family secrecy, involuntary lockup and treatments
Hilltop TB Sanatorium, Verona, 1907myveronanjThe first modern sanatorium for treating tuberculosis was the Royal Sea Bathing Infirmary for Scrofula, founded by a Quaker physician in Margate in 1791....
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UNESCO’s World Heritage sites: central Victorian gold rush.
Mining Exchange Ballarat, 1888 (top image)Mining Exchange, Bendigo, 1872 (image below)There are wide criteria for listing by UNESCO’s World Heritage Convention, from a masterpiece of human genius to...
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Portraits of Australian prime ministers since Federation
I asked my students if they knew all 29 Australian Prime Ministers since Federation (1901). Everyone knew the first two P.Ms, but no-one knew the rest, until Menzies in WW2.The gallery of portraits of...
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Beautiful Spree island museums in Berlin; terrible vandalism
Bode Museumon the Spree RiverSpree Island museums in redSpree River in navy, WikiBerlin’s best Mega-Museum emerged when a group of buildings finally came together on Spree Island in the Spree River....
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Teetotallers are entitled to grand architecture too!
The George Hotel, Fitzroy St StKildaopened as a coffee palace in 1885-6.Now a licensed hotel.The Sons of Temperance was one American fraternal organisation that was established in New York in 1842....
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My favourite music writer - Chip Taylor
Chip Taylor was my favourite MIRC friend that I met on-line, in 1993. I had loved his famous songs since 1965, but alas we never met in person.Speaking to Gianluca Tramontana from his Manhattan flat,...
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