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Forgotten in the Victory Celebrations: Thoughts on the 25th Anniversary of the Fall of the Wall
by Simon Coll While the rest of Europe continues its sombre reflections on the outbreak of the First World War, the Germans are taking time out for a more celebratory form of national remembrance…
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Significant anniversaries in 2016: the Contagious Diseases Act of 1866?
By Carys Brown @HistoryCarys 2016 is to be a year of historical anniversaries: 950 years since the Battle of Hastings; 400 years since the death of William Shakespeare; 350 years since the Great Fire of London; 100 years since the Battle of the Somme. The list could go on. Marking anniversaries is a long established tradition…
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‘Whence proceeds the custom of making April Fools?’
By Rosa Hodgkin In 1708 the Apollo Magazine printed the query, “Whence proceeds the custom of making April Fools?”. The answer received was “It may not improperly be derived from a memorable transaction happening between the Romans and Sabines, mentioned by Dionysius, which was thus: the Romans, about the infancy of the city, wanting wives,…
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Marking the Women’s Suffrage Centenary in Cambridge
By Helen Sunderland (@hl_sunderland) 6 February will mark one hundred years since the first women in Britain gained the right to vote in national elections. The Representation of the People Act of 1918 enfranchised 40% of women in the UK and was the result of decades of campaigning by various organisations across the country. It…
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Remembering Martin Luther King Jr.
By Tom Smith (@TomEtesonSmith) Last Wednesday, 4 April, the world commemorated the assassination fifty years earlier of a man widely regarded as one of the twentieth century’s greatest figures. Martin Luther King Jr. is best remembered for having played an instrumental role in securing the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting…
doinghistoryinpublic.org 