The BBC’s Horrible Histories Videos Will Crack You Up and Teach You About WWI (and More)

in Comedy, History, K-12 | February 26th, 2013

My 12-year-old, home-schooled son recent­ly expressed an inter­est in study­ing World War I. This was encour­ag­ing, but also nerve-wrack­ing, giv­en the dis­dain that led me to spend most of World His­to­ry pass­ing notes and doo­dling (not in the Lyn­da Bar­ry col­lege course / this will help you absorb the infor­ma­tion bet­ter way). I retained noth­ing of what I’d been for­mal­ly taught. My most sol­id knowl­edge of the peri­od was gleaned from the sec­ond sea­son of Down­ton Abbey and an Audrey Tautou movie that was rat­ed R for sex and vio­lence. (There’s also a fam­i­ly pho­to­graph of us pos­ing on the Sara­je­vo street cor­ner where Franz Fer­di­nand was assas­si­nat­ed, but the sig­nif­i­cance of the spot had to be explained to me first.)

Some online scrab­bling led me to the BBC’s Hor­ri­ble His­to­ries’ brief overview of the “caus­es of World War I” (above). Wow. If only this series—and, ahem, the Internet—had exist­ed when I was the boy’s age! I think it’s safe to say my atten­tion would have been cap­tured. It’s sil­ly, yes, but that’s the whole point. The play­ers’ over-the-top comedic style ensures that even the dri­est of his­tor­i­cal facts will stick, as any­one who’s watched Michael Cera bring Alexan­der Hamil­ton to life in Drunk His­to­ry can attest. It’s the per­fect gate­way for fur­ther study.

Hor­ri­ble His­to­ries’ take on World War I proved  such a hit, the boy imme­di­ate­ly delved into oth­er peri­ods, often when he was sup­posed to be doing oth­er things, like play­ing Minecraft or watch­ing YouTube (tech­ni­cal­ly, I guess this sort of counts). Still it’s grat­i­fy­ing to hear him stud­ding his con­ver­sa­tion with casu­al ref­er­ences to the Bor­gias, the Tudors, and Mar­tin Luther. It makes me want to learn more, or at least bring myself up-to-speed on the videos. In the words of School­house Rock, knowl­edge is pow­er.

A WWI cen­ten­ni­al’s loom­ing, folks. Don’t get caught with your draw­ers down.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Drunk His­to­ry: An Intox­i­cat­ed Look at the Famous Alexan­der Hamil­ton – Aaron Burr Duel

The Dead Authors Pod­cast: H.G. Wells Com­i­cal­ly Revives Lit­er­ary Greats with His Time Machine

School­house Rock at 40: Revis­it a Col­lec­tion of Nos­tal­gia-Induc­ing Edu­ca­tion­al Videos

200 Free Kids Edu­ca­tion­al Resources: Video Lessons, Apps, Books, Web­sites & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day  grad­u­at­ed from North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty with a degree in the­ater and has been mak­ing up for it ever since. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Color Footage of Winston Churchill’s Funeral in 1965

in History | February 19th, 2013

On Jan­u­ary 24 1965, Sir Win­ston Churchill, the man who led Britain through the dark hours of the Sec­ond World War, died aged 90 at his Lon­don home. By decree of Queen Eliz­a­beth II, his body lay in state for three days in the Palace of West­min­ster and a state funer­al was held at St Paul’s Cathe­dral on Jan­u­ary 30. Churchill was the first states­man to be giv­en a state funer­al in the 2oth cen­tu­ry — a funer­al that saw the largest assem­blage of states­men in the world until the funer­al of Pope John Paul II in 2005. That day, the BBC report­ed that “silent crowds lined the streets to watch the gun car­riage bear­ing Sir Win­ston’s cof­fin leave West­min­ster Hall as Big Ben struck 09:45. The pro­ces­sion trav­elled slow­ly through cen­tral Lon­don to St. Paul’s Cathe­dral for the funer­al ser­vice.”  After the ser­vice, his cof­fin was tak­en by boat to Water­loo Sta­tion, where a spe­cial­ly pre­pared rail­way car­riage took Churchill to his final rest­ing place at Bladon near Wood­stock, close to his birth­place at Blenheim Palace.

This col­or footage of Churchill’s funer­al is nar­rat­ed by Wal­ter Thomp­son, Churchill’s for­mer body­guard.

Bonus mate­r­i­al:

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

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Watch Lambeth Walk—Nazi Style: The Early Propaganda Mash Up That Enraged Joseph Goebbels

in Comedy, Film, History, Politics, Video - Arts & Culture | February 14th, 2013

In a ter­rif­ic his­tor­i­cal prank that sent Nazi Pro­pa­gan­da Min­is­ter Joseph Goebbels storm­ing out of the screen­ing room, British min­is­ter Charles A. Rid­ley edit­ed togeth­er scenes from the film Tri­umph of the Will with the music from the musi­cal Me and My Girl to cre­ate a spoof that infu­ri­at­ed lead­ers of the Third Reich.

Lam­beth Walk—Nazi Style was released in 1941 to news­reel com­pa­nies. It was billed as “Schich­le­gru­ber Doing the Lam­beth Walk, Assist­ed by the Gestapo Hep Cats,” and lays the catchy tune against images of Hitler and Nazi sol­diers from Leni Riefenstahl’s sem­i­nal pro­pa­gan­da film.

The sto­ry goes that the par­o­dy enraged Goebbels to such an extent that he ran out of the screen­ing room, kick­ing at chairs and scream­ing obscen­i­ties.

“The Lam­beth Walk” tune was writ­ten for the 1937 musi­cal, about a Cock­ney boy who inher­its a for­tune and must leave behind his work­ing-class ways to become a gen­tle­man. Nazi par­ty offi­cials called the tune “Jew­ish mis­chief and ani­mal­is­tic hop­ping,” mak­ing it even fun­nier as the back­ground music for Nazi sol­diers parad­ing.

The name “Schich­le­gru­ber,” by the way, was also a dig at Hitler. It was the name of his mater­nal grand­moth­er, whose son Alois (Hitler’s father) was an ille­git­i­mate child. Oops!

via Slate

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Don­ald Duck’s Bad Nazi Dream and Four Oth­er Dis­ney Pro­pa­gan­da Car­toons from World War II

“The Duck­ta­tors”: Loony Tunes Turns Ani­ma­tion into Wartime Pro­pa­gan­da (1942)

Hitler Reacts to Take­down of Hitler Par­o­dies

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Read more of her work at .

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How a Baltimore Hairdresser Became a World-Renowned “Hair Archaeologist” of Ancient Rome

in History, Life | February 13th, 2013

Julia_Domna

In 2001, Janet Stephens, a Bal­ti­more hair­dress­er, caught sight of a bust of Roman empress Julia Dom­na at the Wal­ters Art Muse­um (the image above is of a bust in the Lou­vre). Cap­ti­vat­ed by the philoso­pher empress’s hair­do, she thought “holy cow, that is so cool… like a loaf of bread sit­ting on her head.” Thus began Stephens’ quest to recre­ate the coif­fures of ladies of antiq­ui­ty.

Stephens first set about try­ing the empress’s hair­style on a man­nequin, with no suc­cess. She under­took some research and found that schol­ars gen­er­al­ly assumed that the elab­o­rate, sculpt­ed hair­styles of Roman ladies could only be wigs. This set off Stephens’ skep­tic detec­tor, and—armed with no more than her free time, some dogged research meth­ods, and a few vol­un­teer models—she ven­tured to dis­prove the schol­ar­ly con­sen­sus. As The Wall Street Jour­nal tells it:

In 2005, she had a break­through. Study­ing trans­la­tions of Roman lit­er­a­ture, Ms. Stephens says, she real­ized the Latin term “acus” was prob­a­bly being mis­un­der­stood in the con­text of hair­dress­ing. Acus has sev­er­al mean­ings includ­ing a “sin­gle-prong hair­pin” or “nee­dle and thread,” she says. Trans­la­tors gen­er­al­ly went with “hair­pin.”

The sin­gle-prong pins could­n’t have held the intri­cate styles in place. But a nee­dle and thread could. It backed up her hair hypoth­e­sis.

Her per­sis­tence paid off. In 2008, she pub­lished an arti­cle in the Jour­nal of Roman Archae­ol­o­gy detail­ing her find­ings on Roman hair. Stephens is now a rec­og­nized author­i­ty on ancient hair­styles and a “hair archae­ol­o­gist.”

See Stephens at work and hear WSJ reporter Abi­gail Pes­ta tell the sto­ry in the video below.

Josh Jones is a writer, edi­tor, and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

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Listen to a Brief History of Papal Abdication

in Current Affairs, History, Religion | February 12th, 2013

Benedykt_XVI_(2010-10-17)_4

Pope Bene­dict XVI’s announce­ment of his retire­ment yes­ter­day morn­ing sent the inter­net into a tizzy, not to men­tion the thou­sands of Catholic insti­tu­tions across the world. The first ques­tion on everyone’s lips seemed to be “can he do that?” And since no pope has in 600 years, there doesn’t seem to be much prece­dent for it. Well, in a spe­cial and time­ly edi­tion, the new pod­cast Foot­not­ing His­to­ry presents the “admit­ted­ly very sparse” his­to­ry of papal abdi­ca­tion. It has indeed hap­pened before, but “almost nev­er with­out scan­dal.”

Lis­ten to the brief his­to­ry above and vis­it Foot­not­ing History’s home­page for more fas­ci­nat­ing his­tor­i­cal foot­notes.

Josh Jones is a writer, edi­tor, and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

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Hear Walt Whitman (Maybe) Reading the First Four Lines of His Poem, “America” (1890)

in History, Literature, Poetry | February 12th, 2013

Of all Amer­i­can poets, almost no one looms larg­er than Walt Whit­man. As I once heard an old poet acquain­tance say, Amer­i­can poets don’t need Shake­speare and the Bible; we’ve got Dick­in­son and Whit­man. Indeed, Whitman’s voice emerges from the past like some Amer­i­can Moses, show­ing the way for­ward, open­ing his arms to hold his frac­tious coun­try­men togeth­er. One can blovi­ate all day about Walt Whit­man. He tends to have that effect. But even Whit­man, he of the ser­pen­tine lines full of the car­go of the con­ti­nent, stretch­ing from left mar­gin to right, ocean to ocean, could be rel­a­tive­ly suc­cinct, and even about his favorite sub­ject, Amer­i­ca. Take his poem “Amer­i­ca” from 1888:

Cen­tre of equal daugh­ters, equal sons,
All, all alike endear’d, grown, ungrown, young or old,
Strong, ample, fair, endur­ing, capa­ble, rich,
Peren­ni­al with the Earth, with Free­dom, Law and Love,
A grand, sane, tow­er­ing, seat­ed Moth­er,
Chair’d in the adamant of Time.

Now, believe it or not, you can hear what may well be the voice of Walt Whit­man, Amer­i­can Moses, emerg­ing from the past to read the first four lines of “Amer­i­ca,” from a wax cylin­der record­ing above. Most like­ly cap­tured in 1889 or 1890 by Thomas Edi­son, this read­ing was orig­i­nal­ly found on a cas­sette called “The Voice of the Poets,” dis­cov­ered in a library by Whit­man schol­ar Lar­ry Don Grif­fin. The cas­sette, made in 1974 and includ­ing the voic­es of Edna St. Vin­cent Mil­lay and William Car­los Williams, takes the Whit­man audio from a 1951 NBC radio pro­gram, whose announc­er, Leon Pear­son, claims comes from a wax cylin­der record­ing made in 1890.

Sur­pris­ing­ly, the ’74 cas­sette tape, which land­ed in libraries across the coun­try, seemed to go unno­ticed by schol­ars until Grif­fin men­tioned it in the Walt Whit­man Quar­ter­ly Review in 1992. This men­tion sparked debate about the authen­tic­i­ty of the record­ing, and once schol­ar­ly debate is sparked, the fire can burn for decades, whole careers built on its embers. In this case, some schol­ars, includ­ing his­to­ri­an Allen Koenigs­berg, argued that since no orig­i­nal wax cylin­der has appeared, and men­tion of the record­ing in Edison’s cor­re­spon­dence is incon­clu­sive, the prove­nance is sus­pect. Fur­ther­more, Koenigs­berg argued, the record­ing qual­i­ty seems too good for the peri­od. His con­clu­sion comes backed by the analy­sis of audio experts. Accord­ing to The Edis­on­ian, a Rut­ger’s Uni­ver­si­ty Edi­son newslet­ter:

Ana­lysts for both the Library of Con­gress and the Rodgers and Ham­mer­stein Archives con­sult­ed on the case and agreed that the clar­i­ty of the record­ing was beyond what could be achieved in 1889 or 1890… the sound analy­sis along with the doc­u­men­ta­tion dif­fi­cul­ties led Koen­ings­berg to con­clude that “the sup­posed Whit­man record­ing is a fas­ci­nat­ing fake.”

On the oth­er side of this debate is the edi­tor of the Walt Whit­man Quar­ter­ly Review, Ed Fol­som, who presents his case in an arti­cle sim­ply titled “The Whit­man Record­ing,” in which he dis­cuss­es prob­lems with the Library of Con­gress analy­sis. Yet anoth­er par­ti­san for authen­tic­i­ty, William Grimes—who cov­ered the con­tro­ver­sy for The New York Times points out that the voice sounds like what Whitman’s would have, and he makes a com­pelling argu­ment that the poem would not at all be the obvi­ous choice for a fake. Grimes cites unnamed “spe­cial­ists in the his­to­ry of the phono­graph,” whom, he writes, “agree… that the pos­si­bil­i­ty of out­right fraud or a hoax is unlike­ly.”

And on it goes. No one can defin­i­tive­ly set­tle the case, unless new evi­dence should come to light. With no inten­tion of malign­ing Ed Folsom’s good faith, I can imag­ine the Whit­man Quar­ter­ly edi­tor want­i­ng this to be true more than his­to­ri­an Koenigs­berg and the LOC ana­lysts. But I also want it to be Whit­man, and so I’m glad to make an exu­ber­ant leap of Amer­i­can faith and think it’s him. From Edi­son wax cylin­der record­ing, to radio broad­cast, to cas­sette, to mp3, over more than a cen­tu­ry of Amer­i­can poetry—it would be a per­fect­ly Whit­manesque jour­ney.

via @stevesilberman

 Relat­ed Con­tent:

Voic­es from the 19th Cen­tu­ry: Ten­nyson, Glad­stone, Whit­man & Tchaikovsky

Thomas Edi­son Recites “Mary Had a Lit­tle Lamb” in Ear­ly Voice Record­ing

Mark Twain Cap­tured on Film by Thomas Edi­son in 1909.

Josh Jones is a writer, edi­tor, and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

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Destination Earth: The Greatness of American Civilization Revealed in 1950s Sci-Fi Cartoon

in Animation, Business, History | February 6th, 2013

Many sci-fi tales go some­thing like this: The human race trav­els into the great unknown, deep out­er space, and encoun­ters beings with forces greater than its own. Greater fire pow­er. Greater intel­li­gence. Greater tech­no­log­i­cal abil­i­ty. But, in Des­ti­na­tion Earth, the stan­dard nar­ra­tive gets flipped on its head. Here, Mar­tians come to Earth — the Unit­ed States actu­al­ly — and dis­cov­er a vast­ly supe­ri­or civ­i­liza­tion. A civ­i­liza­tion supe­ri­or because it enjoys an end­less sup­ply of petro­le­um (used to make gas, tires, tooth­brush­es, cos­met­ics and insec­ti­cides) and the cap­i­tal­ist spirt of com­pe­ti­tion. Now, Sher­lock, if you’re think­ing this isn’t your aver­age Sat­ur­day morn­ing car­toon, I’d say you’re onto some­thing. Des­ti­na­tion Earth was the cre­ation of The Amer­i­can Petro­le­um Insti­tute, still the biggest lob­by for the U.S. oil and gas indus­try. And the film was shot in 1956, smack dab in the mid­dle of the Cold War. If you think Mars, the red plan­et, might be a proxy for the Sovi­et Union (and Ogg looks like Stal­in), you might be the new James Bond.

Des­ti­na­tion Earth appears in the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of 500 Free Movies Online. For more vin­tage pro­pa­gan­da car­toons, check out: Don­ald Duck’s Bad Nazi Dream and Four Oth­er Dis­ney Pro­pa­gan­da Car­toons from World War II.

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The Podcast History of Our World Will Take You From Creation Myths to (Eventually) the Present Day

in History, Podcasts | February 5th, 2013

podcast history of the world

For­ward-think­ing his­to­ri­ans almost come close to for­ward-think­ing come­di­ans in terms of their enthu­si­asm for pod­cast­ing. Per­haps it stands to rea­son, since excel­lence at either pur­suit, dif­fer­ent as they may seem, demands no small degree of mem­o­ry and artic­u­late­ness. We’ve cov­ered sev­er­al ster­ling exam­ples of the his­tor­i­cal pod­cast right here on Open Cul­ture, includ­ing The His­to­ry of Rome, The His­to­ry of Byzan­tium, and The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps. My own his­tor­i­cal­ly-mind­ed pod­cast explo­rations have led me to every­thing from A His­to­ry of the World in 100 Objects to My His­to­ry Can Beat Up Your Pol­i­tics. If you pre­fer to take your his­to­ry lessons through a pair of ear­buds, tech­no­log­i­cal­ly savvy his­to­ry pro­fes­sion­als and pas­sion­ate­ly fas­ci­nat­ed ama­teurs alike have stepped up to fill the need. Rob Mona­co, one of the newest entrants into the game, has tak­en on per­haps the most ambi­tious his­to­ry pod­cast chal­lenge of them all: to tell the entire Pod­cast His­to­ry of Our World.

“The gen­e­sis of the show hap­pened late one night after quite a few Dog­fish Head Midas Touch brews were con­sumed with this pod­cast­er’s long­time good bud­dy,” writes Mona­co on the pod­cast’s about page. “As I was a fresh­ly unem­ployed social stud­ies teacher with a mas­ters degree and noth­ing to do, my ami­go sug­gest­ed that I take up the micro­phone and start mak­ing my own show.” Begin­ning with an episode on the ear­li­est cre­ation myths, embed­ded above, he goes on to dis­cuss the dawn of man, the third dynasty of Ur, the ancient Hebrews, King Solomon, and so on, show­ing no signs of slow­ing in his mis­sion to, even­tu­al­ly, get up to the present day. No need to rush him, though, since, like any his­to­ri­an worth his salt, ama­teur or pro­fes­sion­al, he under­stands that telling his­to­ry well means telling a sto­ry well. “Pod­cast­ing is a beau­ti­ful medi­um that gives some­one like me a chance to reach out and share my love and knowl­edge of his­to­ry and cul­ture to a huge audi­ence,” he writes, “an audi­ence that even ten years ago, I would not have been able to reach with­out the back­ing of tra­di­tion­al media. And that’s incred­i­ble.” If he suc­cess­ful­ly pod­casts the whole his­to­ry of our world, well, that’s even more so.

The Pod­cast His­to­ry of Our World is also avail­able on iTunes.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Rome in 179 Pod­casts

The His­to­ry of Byzan­tium Pod­cast Picks Up Where The His­to­ry of Rome Left Off

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps – Peter Adamson’s Pod­cast Still Going Strong

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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