Wild, Wild West!

On timelines.tv, an old favourite of mine, I have just discovered a new timeline dedicated to the history of the American West. There are seven eye-witness accounts of the West, including that of the pioneers, the homesteaders, and of course, the Native Americans-detailing Black Elk's (man pictured) story of life on the Plains, the struggle against white settlers, the Fort Laramie Treaty, and the Battle of Little Bighorn.
These videos are detailed and will make an excellent resource for revision for those students studying the American West as part of their History GCSE, including Great Wyrley's four GCSE groups!

Take a look and let me know what you think.

What's in a Portrait? A Challenge...

It's the new academic year and my year 8 classes are studying portraits. I have always found portraits to be fascinating-especially if they are of people I really like (Charles II and Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire in particular).
One of the portraits we've been studying is the above 1588 portrait commemorating the defeat of the Spanish Armada. My challenge to you is to study this portrait and let me know what you see and what the symbolism in the portrait means-maybe you'll be able to tell me anything about it I may have missed! Also, let me know what your fave portrait is!

The Necessary Evil?

It is hard not to have some sort of opinion on Truman's decision to drop the Atomic bomb on Japan in 1945. The question is; what opinion should we have? What opinion is the PC one? Does what you think depend on whether you're an American or Japanese?
I have always felt immense sympathy for the residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki-but then I think about the 'what ifs?' What if Truman had decided not to use the A-Bomb and had gone for full scale invasion instead?-it would have meant the death of an estimated 1/4 million to 1 million American troops. Would that have been the more humane alternative? I'm not quite sure. After all, the Japanese did attack the US first and, three months after the end of war in Europe, Japan was still carrying on the fight in the Pacific. The war needed to be put to an end and the Japanese were given ample time to surrender. But, the Japanese had always had a militaristic attitude; after all, they were fighting for an Emperor who they believed was a God on earth-they were fighting for their rights, their beliefs, and themselves. Even school children were being trained with bamboo spears to kill any enemy they may come across in an invasion of their land.
The atomic bomb was a new and immensely powerful weapon with a destructive force equivalent to a 2,000-bomber raid. One bomb of this capability had never been tested on humans before-just in the deserts of New Mexico. A select number of people knew what the bomb could do in terms of destruction but they were not fully sure of the after effects it would have on humans.

"In the first billionth of a second of the bomb impacting the temperature reaches 60 million degrees centigrade, 10,000 times hotter than the sun's surface. Within the first 3 seconds, thousands of people are incinerated, carbonised into charred smoking bundles. Birds ignite in mid-air. Steel-framed buildings liquefy like wax...Hundreds of radioactive isotopes spill out of the fireball [that followed], penetrating flesh and bone...Perhaps 80,000 people died in those first seconds after the blast. Thousands more would die later from burns and radiation poisoning".
It is the awful after effects of the bomb, like radiation sickness, that makes me think whether dropping the bomb was the right decision or not-I guess it's hard for me to have a worthy opinion on this with me being neither American nor Japanese.

But I would like to know what you all think about this topic...

Quote taken from BBC History Magazine, Vol 6, no 8, August 2005

Art or a little morbid?

I have recently discovered the 'art' of post-mortem photography-popular during the Victorian age.
These often disturbing photographs were popular with families who couldn't necessarily afford proper family portraits and so didn't have pictures of the deceased in order to remember them. Sometimes families would have post-mortem photographs taken to capture the deceased as they looked when they died to give to family members who lived far away-so that they could see the deceased as they looked, especially if the family members had not seen the deceased for a number of years.

These post-mortem photos have become a form of art that some people seem to want to collect. I have seen a number of these photos on auction websites-like the one to the right-that are being sold. I am not sure whether I would class such pictures as art but obviously there are people who do.
What do you think?
Some of the examples I found on the Internet are a little too disturbing, in my opinion, to put on a blog-as there are a number of post-mortem photographs of live children posing alongside their recently deceased sibling.

I'm an American President!

http://i42.tinypic.com/10idoxj.jpg
I was directed to really cool website where you can superimpose images onto ready-made pictures-and I found this one of Mount Rushmore and, as it is was the only vaguely historical photo on the website, I used it to superimpose myself on to! My rocky face looks great!

A Challenge!

I have bloggers block! For a while now I have been at a loss for something I can blog about-I haven't seen any interesting articles (History related), nor read any books recently (too busy), and so have nothing to blog about. I would like to my readers to challenge me to blog about something of their choice-I think it would be a nice little project for me! So, please get suggesting!

And Another Historical Advert!

Another great advert inspired by History, this time celebrating 125 years of Marks and Spencer's. Rather good, but still not as good as the Hovis one from last year!

Adverts and History!

Another fantastic advert inspired by History has been produced; this time for supermarket chain Sainsbury's. Take a look and let me know what you think!



Sorry about the quality-I'll post a better one when it is available!

Who would you Tweet about?

Twitter has become a place where you can read the thoughts and musings of famous people who have been 6ft under for many years, including Henry VIII and Winston Churchill! The tweets (as the posts are dubbed) imagine how important historical figures may have thought about major events that happened in their life time. Read more about these famous tweeters here.

Which historical figure would you tweet as??

The Duchess of Devonshire...Part 2

To Georgiana's disappointment the Duke was not different in private to what he was in public-he remained cold and unemotional. This was the cause of much distress to Georgiana who was in a sense the exact opposite to the Duke-she was passionate, fun-loving and sociable. Georgiana could only hope that affection, and possibly love, would come later.
It was because of Georgiana's many attributes that she soon became a popular public figure and leader of the Ton-a group of high society who inspired fashion, trends and tabloid headlines. Anything Georgiana did was the 'done' thing and anything Georgiana wore became the 'it' item of the season. She was a tabloid sensation-reporters followed her wherever she went. You could say that modern celebrity journalism started with her.
It was after Georgiana became an integral part of fashionable society that she started to gamble-initially just to get out of Devonshire House, which was boring and monotonous to her. But Georgiana's gambling would become a problem, especially in later years when creditors were pressing Georgiana to pay them back. For many years Georgiana was able to keep the creditors at bay with loans from friends, including from the Prince of Wales, but there would come a day when Georgiana had to confess all to the Duke as the debts mounted.
By 1782 Georgiana had still not produced an heir; so the Duke and the Duchess decided to travel to Bath so that Georgiana could take the waters there, with the hope of improving her fertility. It was in Bath that Georgiana met Lady Elizabeth Foster, known as Bess, a separated mother of two who was estranged from her husband, and therefore did not see her sons for 14 years. Georgiana and Bess soon became extremely close and ended up being life long friends. Bess was a main stay in Georgiana's life up until Georgiana's death in 1806, even when Georgiana discovered that Bess and the Duke were having an affair. The affair would serve as an advantage to Georgiana however, as Bess was able to smooth over conflict and disagreement between the Duke and the Duchess. Bess also provided Georgiana with the love and affection she craved from her husband, and so Georgiana would not hear bad things said about Bess and ignored all her mother's calls for Georgiana to send Bess away. Although Bess did truly love and care for Georgiana she was always jealous of her friends popularity and status-Bess' commitment to the Devonshires served her well in the end when she became the second Duchess of Devonshire in 1809.

Come back for the third installment when we discover what Georgiana was like as a mother and about her involvement in politics!