1923 Kanto: Japan’s last major Earthquake

Echoes From Japan’s Past With the massive quake and tsunami that struck Japan last week, the specter of another devastating event has returned: The 1923 Kanto earthquake, which shook the region around Tokyo, was the country’s last “big one.” The 7.9-magnitude quake reduced much of Tokyo to rubble, and as refugees tried to leave, firestorms [...]

Raising the GCSE History Standard

During the last couple of weeks radio and TV stations have been running the story of King Charles I School in Kidderminster, which has seen its GCSE results rise by an extraordinary 18% in one year. In interviews with the media Geraint Roberts, deputy head at the school, has spoken about the causes of this [...]

The Cold War: Introduction

The Cold War was the most important political and diplomatic issue of the early postwar period. The main Cold War enemies were the United States and the Soviet Union. The Cold war got its name because both sides were afraid of fighting each other directly. In such a “hot war,” nuclear weapons might destroy everything. [...]

Roosevelt’s first war…on the Depression

Image via Wikipedia By late winter 1933, the nation had already endured more than three years of economic depression. Statistics revealing the depth of the Great Depression were staggering. More than 11,000 of 24,000 banks had failed, destroying the savings of depositors. Millions of people were out of work and seeking jobs; additional millions were [...]

From Gibbon to Goebbels? The Historians’ Trajectory

Gibbon and Goebbels are not the obvious choices for comparison to Herodotus and Thucydides, but bear with me. H & T are frequently regarded as the “first historians.” They wrote the book, you might say, on how to do history. At least, Herodotus was the first writer whose name and work survive. And yet: have [...]

Teaching History

Great post from James Daley about the way we teach History at school in the UK. The amount of people who’ve said to me “This is so interesting, but I had a really boring teacher at school. Put me off for life.” The point being, as Anne of Green Gables was always saying, that the [...]

Historians are seedy and horrible, says Terry Deary

Article by Sarah Ebner He owes his success to history, but the author Terry Deary has described historians as “seedy and devious”. From The Times May 31, 2010