Electrifying the Arab-Israeli Conflict
Jewish immigrants and British authorities tried to sell electrification as a matter of business while Palestinian Arabs viewed it as a Zionist nation-building project.
Revolutionary Atrocity
For the Americans, narratives about the savagery of the British became an important part of nation-building and a moral justification for armed rebellion.
Punitive Portraits of the Renaissance
The Italian legal tradition called for the public display of a humiliating—but recognizable—portrait of the disgraced person.
Tenzing Norgay: The Mountaineer Who Refused to be Categorized
By remaining vague about his own biography, Norgay called into question the idea of nationhood and made a deafening point about actions speaking louder than words.
How Upper Lips Got Stiff
The truism that “boys don’t cry” is a Western social convention. Colonialism and imperialism made sure it spread East.
Keeping Time with Incense Clocks
As chronicled by Chinese poet Yu Jianwu, the use of fire and smoke for time measurement dates back to at least the sixth century CE.
Charity Scams of Yore
Between the 1850s and 1940s, a charity scam worked a collection circuit of Evangelical Christians in least five hundred towns across eighty countries.
Why Do We Vote by Secret Ballot?
Election days used to be raucous affairs, with individual votes sometimes cast orally for all to hear.
Plant of the Month: Dittany
Did women in the premodern world have much agency over reproduction? Their use of plants like dittany suggests that they did.
Anti-Asian Racism in the 1817 Cholera Pandemic
We should learn from, instead of repeating, the racist assignations of the past.