Menu Close

Articles on History

Displaying 781 - 800 of 1458 articles

John F. Kennedy’s assassination shocked the world in the 1960s and arguably played a part in the rise of Donald Trump today. Abbie Rowe/AAP

World politics explainer: the assassination of John F. Kennedy

The reverberations of JFK’s assassination can still be felt to this day in the paranoid and racialised politics of the American right
It’s been more than 70 years since an atomic weapon was used in warfare, but the global nuclear weapons stockpile still stands at more than 14,000 warheads. U.S. National Archives and Records Administration

World politics explainer: The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

When the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, it unleashed one of the most devastating events in history, which still has implications today.
Understanding the first world war is an exercise in comprehending the depth of human commitment to destruction, violence and resilience at a scale never experienced before 1914. BNF France

World politics explainer: The Great War (WWI)

More than 16 million people lost their lives in world war one. Over a century later, we are still asking – for what?
Connecticut members of the Ku Klux Klan, escorted by Meriden, Conn. police, run for shelter as protesters pelt them in March 1981. AP Photo

As a young reporter, I went undercover to expose the Ku Klux Klan

In 1979, David Duke told the media he had launched a wildly successful recruiting drive in Connecticut. A local reporter wanted to test Duke’s claims – so he filled out an application to join the KKK.
Detail from Julie Shiels’ 1954 poster White on black: The annihilation of Aboriginal people and their culture cannot be separated from the destruction of nature. State Library of Victoria

Friday essay: the ‘great Australian silence’ 50 years on

It is 50 years since anthropologist W.E.H. Stanner gave the Boyer Lectures in which he coined the phrase ‘the great Australian silence’. How far have we come since?
Melburnians admire the first primrose to arrive in the colony, transported by a Wardian case, in Edward Hopley’s A Primrose from England, circa 1855. Bendigo Art Gallery, Gift of Mr and Mrs Leonard Lansell 1964.

How the Wardian case revolutionised the plant trade – and Australian gardens

A wood and glass case invented in the early 19th-century transformed the movement of plants around the world. In Melbourne, several thousand people greeted a primrose on its arrival from England.
Heinz is why ketchup seemed to become distinctly American. Reuters/Mike Blake

A brief history of ketchup

Canada recently slapped a tariff on US exports of the tomato-based condiment, and the EU plans to do the same, perhaps on the notion that it’s distinctly American. In fact, ketchup’s origins are global, as are its fans.
Gin Lane, a scene of urban desolation with gin-crazed Londoners; a woman lets her child fall to its death and an emaciated ballad-seller. William Hogarth

America looks hopeless – a lot like the ‘mother country’ once did

When the U.S. broke away from the “mother country,” the dream was to let the common good overruled selfish and private interests. Yet the federal government is arranged so this can never occur.
In 2016, the Ontario government promised the province’s schools would teach all students about residential schools and add more Indigenous perspectives into the provincial curriculum. The newly elected Conservative government has scrapped those plans. Library and Archives Canada

Nixing plans to add Indigenous content to Ontario curriculum is a travesty

Ontario’s move to ignore the calls of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to add Indigenous content to its history and social studies curriculum is foolish and dangerous.
Once lauded for their vision and promise, Silicon Valley giants have made life so hard for locals that residents regularly protest the companies, including their amenities like charter buses to save workers from the region’s terrible traffic. AP Photo/Richard Jacobsen

Silicon Valley, from ‘heart’s delight’ to toxic wasteland

Big technology firms are becoming known for mistreating workers, customers and society as a whole. Is an economic powerhouse about to collapse like Detroit did years go?

Top contributors

More