Assyrian telescopes, carved birds, and whimsical love letters
Hello everyone,
Slightly short one this week as I’m a bit overwhelmed with work obligations as well as some friends and family events. If you want to read more of my writing, you can check out my review of The Brides, which is great for anyone who loved Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
Otherwise, let’s dig into some history stories in the news this week!
My favorite of the week: A box of 300 whimsical love letters mailed during WWII was dropped off at a USO office. They are very sweet.
Runner-up: A brief history of depravity, from the Marquis de Sade all the way through Grand Theft Auto.
Ancient pro-wrestling? It might have been a thing! A grave with coins depicting wrestlers was just found in Turkey.
Antiquities of Athens was checked out of a library in Australia 150 years ago. The borrower’s descendant just returned it—and is probably very thankful not to pay $20,000 in late fees.
For a hundred years or so, people have thought this Chinese tea label was taken off a crate during the Boston Tea Party. An MIT historian just proved it wasn’t.
The last time there was a global warming period even remotely similar to our current global extremes, it took ancient forests 100,000 years to recover.
“Black hole star” sounds like something Muse is going to write a song about.
In more space news, the oldest known Martian meteorite suggests that Mars started losing its water about 4 billion years ago.
This month marks 400 years since the first enslaved people arrived in the Caribbean.
Do you know the story of Arsinoe?
If you’re interested in more Egyptian history, check out my episode on Hatshepsut, my interview with Egyptologist Kara Cooney, or my very fun bonus episode on the Festival of Drunkenness.
Listen, we knew trebuchets were violent, but MY GOD: Skeletal remains of a Medieval Scottish man resembled modern car crash victims. It was the work of a trebuchet launching something that landed on him in 1304.
In Austria, a mass grave including a body with a “lance head still inside the pelvis” may point to a previously unknown Roman-era battle.
And motion capture technology has helped prove that soldiers in the 14th-century Battle of Visby died from a blow to the skull with a spiked club.
Speaking of wars and violence: Imperial Japan built its war machine on the backs of…sardines?
Did the “Swinging Sixties” really end capital punishment in the UK?
The forgotten racial history of the detention facility dubbed ‘Alligator Alcatraz.’
90 years ago this month, FDR promised Americans would never have to go to war again. Apparently, this promise seemed realistic at the time?
Cinderella wishes: 1,500-year-old gold shoes were found in an elite woman’s grave.
Beautiful carvings found in WWII incarceration camps in the US reveal many things—chiefly, a desire for freedom.
We can retrace Marco Polo’s journey using archival materials.
A rare 2,000-year-old Kushan royal seal was just uncovered in Tajikistan.
Oh, for god’s sake: A German businessman named Heinrich Schliemann rediscovered Troy—and then destroyed it by continuing to dig for gold.
Did Assyrians actually invent the telescope 2,700 years ago?
Incredible: These ancient Nigerian sculptures rewrote African history.
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