In a recent, hmm, let’s call it a discussion resulting from an old post I wrote about the US Air Force’s one-time interesting in mapping Mars, I tried to assess how scientific interest in the Martian canals hypothesis lingered after the early 20th century, and said I would run up some figures to illustrate the […]
There’s been a huge amount of interest on Twitter and in the media about the new Bomb Sight website, developed by the University of Portsmouth with assistance from the National Archives and elsewhere, and deservedly so because it’s fairly excellent. In short it’s an interactive map of the London Blitz compiled from a number of
[Cross-posted at Society for Military History Blog.] In the published version of his 2008 Lord Trenchard Memorial Lecture, Richard Overy concluded that now air power is projected for its potential political or moral impact. In Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan it is the political dividend that has been central to the exercise of air power, just
Today I attended the University of Melbourne’s Faculty of Arts eResearch forum 2012. This was in two parts: firstly, a talk by Tim Sherratt, down from Canberra for the day, entitled ‘Digital Disruptions’, where he exhorted us to find new ways to break things; followed by short spiels by local academics on some of their
Another update to my list of early 20th century British newspapers online. There are a number of new titles available: Dundee Courier Gloucestershire Echo Hereford Times Herts Advertiser Lincolnshire Echo Surrey Mirror Yorkshire Gazette In addition, the coverage for another dozen titles has been increased, though in some cases only by a year. There’s additional
I’ve updated my list of online sources for early twentieth century British newspapers. There are forty new titles, bringing the total up over one hundred, and more years are available for another couple of dozen newspapers. Most of the new titles are from the British Newspaper Archive (BNA), which now has a very helpful list
View Mystery aircraft, Australia, 1918 in a larger map My next step in characterising the 1918 Australian mystery aircraft scare was to plot all the sightings Google Maps, which you can see above. I’ve used differently-coloured icons for different time periods to give an idea of the progression over the course of 1918: blue is
Looking over the list of Australian mystery aircraft sightings suggests that some generalisations can be made. In the 1910s, mysterious lights in the sky were usually described as being airship-like; after 1910 they were far more likely to be called aeroplanes. Perhaps not coincidentally, 1910 was when aeroplanes first flew in Australia; certainly a search
I’ve updated my list of British newspapers online, 1901-1950 to reflect the new titles available in the British Newspaper Archive (BNA), a pay-site which was launched with some fanfare about a month ago. Although it has been digitised from (and in partnership with) the British Library’s newspapers collections, I must admit to not having paid
[Cross-posted at Cliopatria.] I have a favour to ask of you. Would you mind please having a look at this and telling me what’s wrong with it? Thank you. To be somewhat less cryptic, it’s an article for peer-review which I am having no luck getting accepted anywhere, and I don’t really know why. I’ve
