Interviews

Postcard showing Zeppelin LVI bombing Leige, 6 August 1914
1900s, 1910s, 1940s, Australia, Blogging, tweeting and podcasting, Interviews, Phantom airships, mystery aeroplanes, and other panics, Pictures, Sounds

Phantom airship tales from Rat City

I’m featured in the latest episode of the podcast Tales from Rat City, which is focused on unusual and sometimes bizarre aspects of the history of Ballarat, Victoria’s third largest city (if you’ve heard of the Eureka Stockade, well, that’s where that was). It’s run by David Waldron (a historian at Federation University who co-authored […]

1910s, Art, Contemporary, Interviews, Maps, Periodicals, Phantom airships, mystery aeroplanes, and other panics, Pictures

15 minutes of relevance

‘In the future, every historian will be relevant for 15 minutes’, as somebody once said. Here’s my 15 minutes, an interview with journalist Connor Echols for Responsible Statecraft on the parallels between the 1913 phantom airship panic and the 2023 spy balloon panic. As I’ve been busy with other things and have had to watch

IWM Q48951
1910s, Conferences and talks, Disarmament, International law, Interviews, Nuclear, biological, chemical, Pictures, Radio, The road to war

The road to war – XII

For my twelfth (and last?) contribution to ABC New England’s Road to War series, I spoke about what was undoubtedly the most important battle to take place in late April 1915, the Second Battle of Ypres in Flanders. The reason why this was so important is because it opened with the first successful, large-scale poison

1940s, Interviews, Radio

Dresden plus 70

I’d forgotten that today was the 70th anniversary of the Dresden firestorm, but luckily the producers of Up All Night on BBC Radio 5 Live remembered. I spoke to presenter Dotun Adebayo and fellow historian Raymond Sun this afternoon (just before 5am Greenwich Mean Time), and for the next 29 days you can listen to

U-9
1910s, Conferences and talks, International law, Interviews, Pictures, Radio, The road to war

The road to war — IX

Today I made my ninth contribution to ABC New England’s Road to War series, talking about U-boats (AKA ‘the Zeppelins of the sea’) and their advantages and disadvantages in warfare. More specifically, I spoke about the German declaration on 4 February 1915 of unlimited submarine warfare in the seas around Britain, switching from their previous

1940s, Books, Interviews, Pictures, Rumours, Videos

The wooden bombs return

I received this request for assistance from Jean Dewaerheid, a Belgian writer who is working with Peter Haas and Pierre-Antoine Courouble to track down wooden bomb eyewitnesses: Three authors (from Belgium, Germany and France) have been working for years on a bizarre subject: the dropping of dummy wooden bombs on wooden airplanes. In order to

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