Finally, something to justify the existence of the Internet. The Google Ngram Viewer takes the corpus of words formed by the Google Books dataset (i.e. books, journals, magazines, but not newspapers) and lets you plot the changes in frequency of selected ones over time. There are all sorts of interesting questions you could (in principle) […]
What was probably the world’s first aviation exhibition was held at the Crystal Palace, London, between 25 June and 4 July 1868. The ‘Aeronautical Exhibition’ was organised by the Aeronautical Society of Great Britain, which itself had only been set up two years earlier (and was renamed the Royal Aeronautical Society in 1918). Here’s what
In late August 1940, as the aerial battle over Britain intensified, the Manchester Guardian published a short, light-hearted account of how the war was affecting a cathedral town in the provinces. For example, a dogfight takes place overhead, and shelterers scatter outside to pick up bullet casings for souvenirs; four of the enemy raiders are
I was pleasantly surprised when A Fortean in the Archives linked (also here) to my recent post on Boer War airpower for several reasons. Firstly, because it’s always nice to be linked to. Secondly, because I’ve been following A Fortean in the Archives for a while now: the Fortean in question is Mike Dash, a
The Boer War of 1899-1902 doesn’t often appear in airpower history. This may have something to do with the fact that it took place before the invention of the aeroplane, which I suppose is reasonable. But there are still interesting and even important connections and influences to be traced. Here are a baker’s half-dozen.
Military History Carnival #23 has been posted at The Edge of the American West and H-War. My eye was immediately drawn to a post (more of an article, really) on the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom at Sparta: Journal of Ancient Spartan and Greek History. This was a remnant of Alexander the Great’s conquests in central Asia in
[Cross-posted at Cliopatria.] A couple of interesting posts at The Russian Front suggest that the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-5 should be thought of as a World War Zero, or alternatively that the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-8 should be. It’s often useful to play around with the names we give to historical events and phenomena, because
On 22 August 1849, the Republic of San Marco surrendered to Austria. The Republic was formed after a revolt in Venice against Austrian rule in March 1848. The Austrians eventually besieged Venice, leading to starvation and outbreaks of cholera in the city. During this siege, they launched the first air raids in history, by unmanned
The first bombers didn’t fly but sailed: they were warships known as bomb vessels, which mounted heavy mortars firing explosive shells. These could be used in naval battles, but weren’t very accurate and so were usually used to attack targets on land, including cities. The French navy used bomb vessels to bombard Genoa in 1684,
Perhaps the first mass outbreak of mystery aircraft sightings took place in 1892 in Russian-occupied Poland, near the German border. The Manchester Guardian reported on 26 March that a ‘large balloon coming from the German frontier appeared about the fortress of Kovno‘. The Russian defenders fired at it, but it returned safely over the border.1
