On Friday, I went along to a talk on “Great War aerial photography: a source for battlefield survey and archaeology?”, given by Birger Stichelbaut of Ghent University in Belgium. This brings the total number of in-any-way-related-to-early-20th-century-aviation talks given at the University of Melbourne during my PhD candidacy (as far as I know and excluding a
The latest post at Axis of Evel Knievel reminds me that today is the 90th anniversary of the Halifax disaster. On 6 December 1917, two ships collided off the Nova Scotian port of Halifax. One, the SS Mont-Blanc, was carrying huge quantities of TNT, guncotton, and other highly combustible materials, destined for the war in
The grave of Pte John Joseph Mulqueeney, in Courcelette British Cemetery, Somme, France. He was killed on 17 August 1916 near Mouquet Farm. I am extremely grateful to Steve John for providing me with this photograph.
Today is the 95th anniversary of the Sheerness Incident. Sheerness is a town at the mouth of the Medway, on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent. For several centuries, it was a dockyard for the Royal Navy (the Nore Mutiny took place nearby in 1797). In 1912, Sheerness was an important part of Britain’s naval
I recently had the somewhat guilty pleasure of watching Flood, a film (from a novel) about the sudden devastation of London by a massive storm surge — predicted by a scientist who had long been dismissed as a crank — which swamps the Thames Barrier, submerges most of the city’s landmarks, kills a couple of
One of the benefits of living in London for two months is the way it helped me to understand its geography. So when I read, for example, that 500 men, women and children walked from Greenwich to Trafalgar Square on 22 July 1917 to demand ‘improved air defences for London and the adoption of a
WHAT AUSTRALIA WOULD BE LIKE UNDER HUN RULE. — An original recruiting poster which was used with great success in South Australia. Tasmania, it will be noted, becomes Kaisermania, and the idols of the Huns have provided other place-names. This is from the Daily Mail, 3 July 1917, p. 8, and would appear to be
The fifth Military History Carnival is up. A lot of good stuff; the post I enjoyed most was at History is Elementary, on the evolution of camouflage in the First World War — it’s not only informative but enables us to vicariously share in the pleasure of teaching. And all that camouflage reminds me of
Yesterday I had occasion to pass Cleopatra’s Needle on the Victoria Embankment. It’s not really Cleopatra’s at all but Thutmose III’s, as it was he who caused it to be erected at Heliopolis, in around 1450 BC. It was eventually transported from Egypt to London and re-erected there in 1878, after trials and tribulations in
[Cross-posted at Revise and Dissent.] One interesting minor theme of my recent museum visits here in London has been, I suppose, the popular origins of wargames (as opposed to the intellectual origins): I’ve been coming across a number of games, produced in the first half of the twentieth century and aimed presumably at children, which
