In the early 1900s, a dispute arose over who controlled Greenland—Norway or Denmark. The case was submitted to the Permanent Court of International Justice in 1933. The court ruled in Denmark’s favor.
After WWII, the United States developed a geopolitical interest in Greenland. In 1946, they offered to buy the country from Denmark for $100 million dollars. Denmark refused to sell though. They did, however, allow the US to reopen Thule Air Base in 1950. From 1951 and 1953, the base was greatly expanded as a part of a NATO Cold War defense strategy. It is still the US Air Forces’ northernmost base, located inside the Arctic Circle.
Though Xerxes did not found the Achaemenid Persian Empire, he ruled it at its greatest size, and made it the global force that it was at the time. His failed invasion of Greece has secured him a legendary place in not just Asian, but also Western culture.
If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he next comes to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination.
—Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859)
Tritones is a musical interval that spans three whole tones. This interval, the gap between two notes played in succession or simultaneously, was branded Diabolus in Musica or the Devil’s Interval by medieval musicians.
One historian said, on the tritone: “It apparently was the sound used to call up the beast. There is something very sexual about the tritone.In the Middle Ages when people were ignorant and scared, when they heard something like that and felt that reaction in their body they thought ‘uh oh, here come the Devil’.”
The Devil’s Interval came back into vogue under Wagner, of all people, who used it in his operas. Since then, the tritone has been used for everything from ACDC to The Simpson’s theme song.
The first light portrait and first human portrait every taken. From October or November, 1839. It is a self-portrait by Robert Cornelius.
A caricature of Europe right before WWI. For a full explanation of the imagery for each country, click on the image.
Around 300 BCE, the Maya began adopting a hierarchical system of government with rule by nobles and kings. This civilization developed into highly structured kingdoms during the Classic Period, around 200-900 CE. Their society consisted of many independent states, each with a rural farming community and large urban sites built around ceremonial centers. It started to decline around 900 CE when - for reasons which are still debated - the southern Maya abandoned their cities. When the northern Maya were integrated into the Toltec society by 1200 CE, the Maya civilization finally came to a close, although some peripheral centers continued to thrive until the Spanish Conquest in the early sixteenth century. Even today, many in Guatemala and Mexico identify first as Maya and second as their nationality.
Fort Sumter, in Charleston, South Carolina, at the time of the American Civil War.
In 98 AD, the Roman historian Tacitus wrote a detailed description about the Fenni, a people to the north. This is probably the earliest written reference to the Finnish people. According to him, these poor, savage Fennis lived somewhere in the northeast Baltic region — at the time inhabited by many other peoples, and the description also fits the Sami, another group still living near the Arctic Circle today. Given the name’s closeness to the modern Finns, they think it was probably them. Historians can never be certain exactly who Tacitus was referring to, however. Welcome to history class, guys!
In the mid-1950s, Sammy Davis Jr was involved with Kim Novak, who was a valuable star under contract to Columbia Studios.
The head of the studio, Harry Cohn, called one of the mob bosses. He paid the mob to threaten Sammy into ending the affair.
Great Britain finished repaying the United States’ lend-lead aid from World War II in 2006.
August 12, 1944: a band of battle-hardened nurses take a break to get their picture taken in a field close to the front lines in France.
Successor of the unfortunate Pope Formosus, Pope Boniface VI joins the league of forgotten Popes. Very little is known about him, and what is known, he probably wishes we’d forget. Pope for just 15 days, Boniface died from gout. This nasty disease comes from eating too much red meat and other rich foods. This causes a build-up of uric acid (gross) leading to swelled joints and purplish skin. Two years after his death, John IX declared Boniface Vi’s election null and void but he is still included in the official list of Popes.
This is the remarkable Lady Malcolm Douglas-Hamilton. In 1940 she was Natalie Latham, a former debutante and fixture at New York society balls, now 30, twice divorced with two children and still so beautiful that Vogue printed items about her.
All this changed when German U-boats began their devastating attacks on the North Atlantic convoys supplying Britain. Although America had not entered the war, Natalie Latham decided to do something to help, and established Bundles for Britain, which began as little more than a “knitting bee” — albeit one convened by Natalie Latham and some of the grandest dames of the New York social scene. The group quickly expanded to over 1.5 million volunteers, with branches all over the country. Bundles for Britain started shipping over not just clothing but also blankets, children’s cots, ambulances, X-ray machines, hospital beds, oxygen tents, surgical instruments, blood transfusion kits, tinned food and children’s cots. Every item was labelled “From your American friends.”
In Britain, she secured the support of Winston Churchill’s wife, Clementine, and of Janet Murrow, wife of the CBS reporter Ed Murrow, whose live radio broadcasts to America during the Blitz began with the words: “This is London.” When Bundles for Britain held a raffle, Queen Elizabeth donated items, including a piece of shrapnel that had hit Buckingham Palace. King George VI later appointed Natalie Latham an honorary CBE; she was the first non-British woman thus honored.
After her fourth husband’s death in 1951, she arrived in London to promote Common Cause, an anti-communist organization she had founded, and met the third son of the 13th Duke of Hamilton, Lord Malcolm Douglas-Hamilton, MP for Inverness-shire and an ardent anti-communist. They eventually moved to the US, and she died on January 14, 2013.