Composite image: The Conversation, Pexels/Shutterstock
Anzac events in the US were once upbeat affairs, with New York’s 1942 Anzac Day dinner attracting the rich and famous. The mood is more sombre today.
The fresco showing Helen of Troy and Paris.
Pompeii Archaeological Park
The paintings show the trio of women from Greek myth in a way that makes us see the Trojan War myth anew.
Wikipedia
When scientists observed planets revolved around the Sun, they posited we were now like other planets. And if other planets were like Earth, then they most likely also had inhabitants.
Yale University Library
This late-medieval document is written in encoded text that has yet to be cracked. But its numerous illustrations provide clues about its content.
The artist’s work is key to understanding Congolese culture in the last two decades.
Sammy Baloji
Sammy Baloji’s work allows us to revisit the DRC’s past and explore how art can help us understand decolonisation.
University of Melbourne Archives
I’ve been leafing through Foy & Gibson catalogues from the first four decades of the 20th century to try to understand what attracted Australian customers to wearing wool.
Ahmad ibn Fadlan wrote the only eyewitness account of a viking funeral.
German Vizulis/Shutterstock (made using Canva)
A marketplace argument led to the emergence of a key eyewitness account of a Viking burial on the Volga river
A group of witches offering wax effigies to the Devil in a 17th-century woodcut.
Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy
Only five witches were executed in Wales, while thousands were sentenced to death in Scotland and England.
Detail from a stone slab showing the Mesopotamian king Barrekub praying.
(Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin/Wikimedia Commons)
To protect their kings, ancient Mesopotamians discovered how to predict eclipses, which were associated with the deaths of rulers. This eventually led to the birth of astronomy.
TROVE
The grave of Andrew George Scott, famously known as Captain Moonlite, may not bear the significance attributed to it in a recent proposal by the Heritage Council of NSW.
Maya Angelou’s political journalism, written in the 1960s, was radical and anti-colonial.
Pictorial Press/Alamy Stock Photo
Angelou’s 1960s political journalism in Africa demonstrates her desire to link the struggle for civil rights in the US to global campaigns against racism.
Depiction of an eruption of Vesuvius seen from Portici, by Joseph Wright (c. 1774–6).
Huntington Library, Pasadena
The story of how a ‘new Pompeii’ was built is far less well known than that of the ancient city.
Shutterstock
Purple was highly valued and associated with royalty, power, and prestige in various ancient cultures, including the Roman and Byzantine Empires. So how did red creep its way in?
Portrait of Lady Margaret Beaufort by Meynart Weywyck (circa 1510).
National Portrait Gallery
Beaufort’s presence at Collyweston formed part of a strategic plan, devised by mother and son, to exert royal influence both locally and nationally.
For love or money?
Kameleon007/iStock/Getty Images Plus
A growing number of Republicans say that you shouldn’t be able to divorce simply because you’ve fallen out of love. It’s an idea with a long history.
The SS Hartdale is lying at a depth of 80 metres, 12 miles off the coast of Northern Ireland.
Michael Roberts/Unpath’d Waters
The SS Hartdale was sunk by a German U-boat in 1915 and its final resting place had long been unknown.
British soldiers questioning suspected members of the Kenya Land and Freedom Army near Gilgil, Kenya, on Jan. 8, 1953.
(AP Photo)
Operation Legacy highlights the repercussions faced when people with power determine what information is available to interpret events of the past.
Chris Tefme/Shutterstock
Victorian eugenicists perpetuated the idea that only white men went bald because of their intelligence.
Wager’s Action off Cartagena, 28 May 1708 by Samuel Scott (1772), a painting showing the moment the San José was blown up.
National Maritime Museum
The boat was sunk while still laden with treasure including 11 million gold and silver coins, emeralds and other precious cargo.
Baron Cobham and family around the dinner table, 1567.
Master of the Countess of Warwick
During the Tudor period, religious beliefs shaped people’s attitudes towards food and food waste.