just in case you weren't familiar with Dorling Kindersley Multimedia - the short-lived educational software division of the book company - its crowning achievement is this Macromedia Director-produced animated re-imagining of stephen biesty's Incredible Cross-Sections: Stowaway!
CALVES. His calves are gone to grass; a saying of a man with slender legs without calves. Veal will be cheap, calves fall; said of a man whose calves fall away.
A selection from Francis Grose’s “Dictionary Of The Vulgar Tongue” (1785)
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#books #literature #dictionaries #history #society #language #slang @histodons
Emma Peel - 1960s Icon
27 September 1965 Daily Mirror
Previewing the forthcoming series and fashions. “Emma wears a hipster trouser-suit in ice-blue lame, bare to the navel. On sale for 29 guineas. Watch for this outfit in Episode Five, scheduled for the week of October 24th.”
Don’t know why I didn’t think of asking sooner…
Is anybody planning to attend the #MemoryStudies conference in Prague this summer?
I’m presenting work on the US Semiquincentennnial and authoritarian mobilizations of historical memory.
Could it actually happen here? I’d like to think so, since it seems the only real chance we have of stopping fascism and preventing the worst impacts of global warming.
https://wagingnonviolence.org/2025/04/what-would-general-strike-in-the-us-look-like/
When War Became Sport: The History of the Mesoamerican Ballgame
A Sino-Tibetan folded book printed in Beijing in 1410, with dhāranīs in Sanskrit written in Tibeto-Nepali characters and woodcuts of protective mantra-diagrams and deities, block printed on heavy white paper. Breathtakingly detailed printing in red ink, 40 years before Gutenberg
> Five things you didn’t know about Black British cultural history
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2025/apr/15/five-things-you-didnt-know-about-black-british-cultural-history
In #TIL, and I may need to add the book mentioned to my #TBR list.
It is not for nothing that among the accusations listed in the Declaration of Independence is the charge that the king is guilty of “transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended Offences”
- @jbouie
The Italian Empire 1942
This map illustrates the extent of the Italian Colonial Empire, established during the era of New Imperialism as Italy sought to assert itself alongside the great powers of Europe. Driven by both economic ambitions and national pride, the empire reflected Italy’s desire for international prestige and territorial expansion, reaching its peak under the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini (r. 1922-43)
via whencyclopedia
Put a warning on the real threat:
“DANGER: CAPITALISM INSIDE” – the sticker your local bank kiosk doesn’t want to see.
Order now, rebel later: https://www.etsy.com/listing/1796089151/danger-capitalism-inside-sticker
The relief panels from the Sebasteion in Aphrodisias are incredible on their own but seeing them in context truly strengthens their impact. The central panel here shows Aeneas carrying his father away from Troy.
One of Katy’s students found this Telefunken radio — we think from the 1950s — abandoned on the street! How cool is that? It seems you could tune in to the radio everywhere from Finland to Italy with a mere twiddling of knobs / the touch of a few buttons. Apparently we weren’t the first people to think of connecting the continent through sound 
Let us know if you’re familiar with this kind of radio, we’d love to know more about how it worked.
The Red Army of the USSR began the Second World War (1939-45) with a series of shocking defeats, but from late 1942, it rallied and held on to key cities like the capital Moscow, Leningrad (Saint Petersburg), and Stalingrad (Volgograd). #History #RedArmy #SecondWorldWar #SovietUnion #USSR #WWII #HistoryFact https://whe.to/ci/2-2700-en/
For #MeerMittwoch here's a view of #Portsmouth from the sea, showing the historic waterfront with the Round Tower and Hot Walls to the right then the Spinnaker Tower and HMS Warrior to the left beyond Spice Island. Taken from the paddle steamer Waverley in 2022.
"My comrades, who did far more and suffered more profoundly than I, are not here to speak. Because of this, I speak for them."
#OnThisDay, 16 April 1943, Special Operations Executive agent Odette Samsom is arrested by the Gestapo in France. The British SOE worked with the French resistance.
#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #BritishHistory #WorldWar2 #Histodons
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#OnThisDay, 16 Apr 1912, Harriet Quimby becomes the first woman to fly a plane across the English Channel.
Quimby was the first American woman to receive a pilot’s licence and made her living doing exhibition flights in the US. She also made money as the advertising face of a grape juice. She died in July 1912 when her plane pitched forward at 1,000 feet and she was thrown out.
