Airminded is 20 years old today. That’s a long time in blog years. Airminded at 0 I was an almost-young almost-PhD student. Airminded was going to be a place for me to talk about things I’d found during my research. Airminded at 5 I was a recent PhD graduate, trying to get an academic job. […]
One of the fun things about historical research is finding something when you’re not looking for it. Alan Murdie, in his regular ‘Ghostwatch’ column in a recent Fortean Times, wrote the following: At Folkstone [sic], in 1917, candles in an air-raid shelter were mysteriously extinguished amid other poltergeist events. Natural gas from strata was blamed.1
It’s well known that in the Blitz, London’s Underground stations were used by civilians as ad hoc air raid shelters. Indeed, photos of platforms crowded with huddled people taking cover from the bombs on the surface are iconic and practically the first thing you likely think of when the Blitz is mentioned. (I’m sure you
Catherine Warr, a Yorkshire-based historian, recently posted a video on the British phantom airship panic of 1909 which you can watch on YouTube, or right here: This is terrific public history: engaging and fun while being informative and accurate. Catherine has dozens more videos on her channel, including a bunch of airminded ones (e.g. British airships;
1BoB is The First Battle of Britain: The Air War Over England, 1917–1918 (hereafter 1BoB), which sounds like a book but is actually a wargame. I bought my copy back in April 2009, not long after I submitted my PhD, at which point I noted that ‘I try to avoid buying wargames because I never
The current drone panic on the eastern US seaboard – which started out in New Jersey about a month ago, but has spread to Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, and even US bases in the UK and Germany – is, of course, hardly unprecedented. Not only does it bear obvious similarities to the 2019
Time to bring this puppy (of a series of blog posts) home! Duriong the last couple of weeks I spent in London researching, I also managed to tick something which had been on my bucket list since my first UK trip in 2007: the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard. Portsmouth is a little over 2 hours from
Next July, the Australasian Association for European History (AAEH) conference is being held at the University of Auckland. My abstract having been accepted, it looks like I’ll be going to New Zealand! My presentation is entitled ‘Civil defence from below: street patrols and air raid risk in Britain, 1915-1918’ and here’s what it’s about: As
Nearly at the end of these posts! During my two weeks in London researching, I also managed to fit in some sightseeing (it helped that none of my archives were open on Sundays). Mostly this meant the British Museum, but there were also a couple of other favourite haunts plus a museum I’d never managed
After Liverpool, Conwy. Via Bangor, very briefly. (All I’ll say is that if you tell people you’re going on holiday to X and their response is ‘X? Really?’, that should probably be taken as an opportunity to rethink your travel plans.)
