178 posts tagged with history by Kattullus.
Displaying 1 through 50 of 178.
"Women in philosophy have always needed a special stroke of luck."
Whenever I read claims about ‘forgotten women’, I want to ask: ‘By whom?’ Feminists? Society? The ‘culture’? And why ‘forgotten’? Forgetting presupposes something once known, but the general ‘we’ who have ‘forgotten’ these women are also the ‘we’ who were not taught them in the first place. Such generalisations risk shifting the focus, and the responsibility, away from the agents of our ignorance: the historians and philosophers who made a world in which certain texts were deemed unworthy of preservation and the history of women’s thought was kept to the margins.– A Comet that Bodes Mischief by Sophie Smith. She discussed women in philosophy on the LRB Podcast.
“Anything about us, without us, is against us.”
There are clear continuities between the two German genocides. Many of the key elements of the Nazi system – the systematic extermination of peoples seen as racially inferior, racial laws, the concept of Lebensraum, the transportation of people in cattle trucks for forced labour in concentration camps – had been employed half a century earlier in South-West Africa. Heinrich Göring, the colonial governor of South-West Africa who tried to negotiate with Hendrik Witbooi, was Hermann Göring’s father.–From the essay Three Genocides by forensic architect Eyal Weizman.
"I feel that my body was colonised" - Naja Lyberth
How Denmark Destroyed Greenland: Brief History of Denmark's Colonialism in Greenland is a 25 minute video by Norwegian history YouTuber Fredda. The Danish colonial legacy has been in the news lately, as 67 Kalaallit women have sued the Danish government [NYT, archive link] for having run a program where Kalaallit women had intrauterine devices inserted without their consent in the 1960s and 70s, which possibly continued for long afterwards. About a year ago, the BBC's Elaine Jung made a 25 minute documentary about the Kalaallit women affected by the program, called Greenland's Lost Generation which focuses on psychologist and campaigner Naja Lyberth, who was one of those who had an IUD inserted as a teenager.
An Ordinary Citizen
This is Europe's JFK Mystery is a half-hour documentary by Harry Clennon and Philip Brain about the 1986 murder of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme. It gives context for who Palme was, sets out the events as clearly as is possible, and presents the three leading theories for who killed him.
Videos about Welsh and Brythonic history
Cambrian Chronicles is a YouTube page with videos focusing on the history of Wales and Celtic Britain, such as one on the missing kingdom of Rheinwg, another on a kingdom that sank into the ocean, one about the unique Welsh letter Ỽ and perhaps my favorite, the king who existed only on Wikipedia, and there are 14 more videos.
“You call this equality?”
Today Icelandic women and non-binary people will strike against gender inequality highlighting the gender pay gap [NYT, archive], gendered violence, and the status of immigrant women. This is the seventh women’s strike in Icelandic history, and the first whole-day action since the first one in 1975 [NYT, archive link]. The Guardian’s Miranda Bryant writes about the history of women’s strikes in Iceland.
"female music caught on dusty records and tapes, in the hidden archives"
Ladies on Records is the project of record collector, DJ and cultural anthropologist Kornelia Binicewicz. Her SoundCloud page is full of her mixes, for example, two volumes she made in support of feminist activists in her native Poland. Her main focus, though, is on female singers of the 60s and 70s, for example in the mixes Polish Ladies on Records, Ladies of the Arab World and Turkish Ladies. She used Turkish music to explore the lives of Turkish immigrant women in Germany in the essay Intimacy of Longing.
All across the globe people have looked at the night sky and seen myths
Figures in the Sky by Nadieh Bremer, astronomer and data visualization designer, shows how stars have been grouped into constellations by different “sky cultures”, ranging from the familiar modern ones, to those of the Sardinian, Norse, Hopi, Hawaiian, Chinese, Boorong, Arabic and 20 others. You can read a bit more on Bremer’s page for the project.
“They had no unique economic function: They were Europeans.”
The rumour about the Jews is an essay by Prof. Francesca Trivellato about how Jews expelled from France in 1394 were falsely credited with inventing the bill of exchange. She was interviewed at length on this subject by Nachi Weinstein for the Seforim Chatter podcast. The historiography of Jews and finance was the subject of Prof. Julie Mell’s The Myth of the Medieval Jewish Moneylender, which she summarizes in a brief radio interview with the Carolina Journal. For a more in-depth interview, you can listen to Scott Ferguson interview her for the Money on the Left podcast (incl. transcript) or read the three critiques in a forum on the book hosted by the Marginalia Review, and Prof. Mell’s response.
“a tacitly racist game of telephone”
The Rotten Science Behind the MSG Scare by Sam Kean is a brief history of the MSG scare, when a single letter by Dr. Robert Ho Man Kwok to the editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, led to a racist reaction that touched off decades of panic around the seasoning monosodium glutamate. Over the decades, two men claimed to be the authors of the letter, Dr. Kwok and a Dr. Howard Steel. The latter even told his story to a professor at his alma mater, Dr. Jennifer LeMesurier, who had written a detailed journal article tracing the history of the racist myth. However, Dr. Steel’s story fell apart when reporter Lilly Sullivan looked into it for This American Life.
“Don’t speak of how women can’t become heroes”
Qiu Jin was a Chinese feminist revolutionary [archive link] beheaded by agents of the Qing empire in 1907, becoming a martyred hero to her cause. She was also a poet, and Canadian translator (and SF writer) Yilin Wang has been publishing new translations of her poetry in various venues. For more about her approach, you can read her essay about translating. These new translations have been widely appreciated, including by the British Museum, who stole them and published without attribution or compensation.
"a practice school exercise undertaken by a novice scribe"
The Best Known Old Babylonian Tablet? is an essay by Janet L. Beery, introduced by Frank J. Swetz, about leading students through a mathematical problem preserved on a nearly four thousand year old Babylonian tablet, which happens to demonstrate that the Babylonians knew the square root of 2. The cuneiform tablet is kept at the Yale Babylonian Collection under the catalog number YBC 7289, and has been scanned in three dimensions and can even be 3D-printed for classroom use. The Yale Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage released a short video where curator Agnete Lassen describes YBC 7289 and Chelsea Graham explains how it was digitized.
“There is no more bond. It’s not you that’s breaking it. They broke it.”
The Last Gamble of Tokyo Joe by Dan O’Sullivan is the story of Ken Eto, who grew up the son of a fanatical Christian convert in California, was sent to a Japanese internment camp during World War II, and after getting involved in illegal gambling, rose through the ranks of the Chicago mob. And then his story really started.
"the problem was Romania had run out of episodes of Columbo"
In 2021 a video featuring Peter Falk talking about the time he stopped a revolt in Romania went viral. This led Romanian YouTuber Radu Pericol Tiganas to do research, finding evidence which seemingly confirmed large parts of the story, recounting it in a Romanian-language video. Slate's Willa Paskin became interested, and found out that it was all a bit more complicated than it first appeared, laying out her findings in a pair of episodes of the Decoder Ring podcast which together are about the length of a single episode of Columbo.
“No one must know or they’ll kill us and destroy the book.”
The Sarajevo Haggadah has been kept in the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina off and on since the late 19th Century. It is a medieval Hebrew codex, made to be read at the Passover Seder, and is beautifully illuminated, with a focus on the story of Joseph. The Haggadah has inspired plenty of art, including The Sarajevo Haggadah: The Music of the Book, by Bosnian composer and accordionist Merima Ključo, here performed with the CityMusic Cleveland Chamber Orchestra (with a panel discussion afterwards), which itself drew inspiration from Geraldine Brooks novel, The People of the Book. Brooks recounted the history of the Sarajevo Haggadah, and its incredible rescue by Islamic scholar Dervis Korkut during World War Two in a 2007 New Yorker article called The Book of Exodus.
"Every picture tells a story"
Dyson gripped the top of a stone bollard; Wagner continued to look away. The film caught a stance that suggested majestic indifference to the poorer boys at their side, as though these boys were subjects as well as spectators. The moment passed, the morning moved on. The photographer and the local boys disappeared and the Wagner car at last rolled up. The match began.—Five boys: the story of a picture by Ian Jack [archive link] is an essay exploring the history of the famous 1937 photograph Toffs and Toughs by Jimmy Sime, and the lives of the five boys in it.
“Everyone knows that he goes around with the devil and was a werewolf.”
An English translation of the transcript of a trial of a 17th Century werewolf held in Swedish Livonia, modern Latvia. The defendant, a peasant known as Old Thiess, claimed to be a hound of god, fighting the devil to safeguard the Earth’s fertility. The judges, Bengt Johan Ackerstaff and Gabriel Berger, were perplexed. This case has fascinated historians, and two of them, Carlo Ginzburg and Bruce Lincoln, discuss the trial of a Latvian werewolf on Susannah Lipscomb’s podcast, Not Just the Tudors, where a couple of years ago Jan Michelsen discussed the trial of a teen werewolf in 17th Century Basque Country.
“none are really about history, they're always a fight over the present”
Battling History is a series of five long articles in Coda Story about contentious areas of history in Europe. Isobel Cockerell writes about Nazi labor camps in Alderney, one of the British Channel Islands, and Spain’s vast tomb to fascist dictator Francisco Franco. Daiva Repečkaitė writes about struggles between Lithuania and Belarus over a shared medieval history. Caitlin Thompson writes about unsolved murders and unexamined atrocities in Northern Ireland. Katia Patin writes about resistance to official Polish narratives surrounding the Nazi occupation.
The History of Modern Linguistics
History and Philosophy of the Language Sciences or hiphilangsci to its friends, is a podcast about linguistics, from its earliest stirrings as a science. It is hosted and produced by James McElvenny, and tries to cover all major intellectual currents in linguistics, from a historical perspective. The associated blog is co-edited by Chloé Laplantine, and has evolved to feature long video interviews and a book series.
“how we arrived at today’s view of our world”
A Century of Science is a website by Science News, where they delve into their vast archive of scientific news articles to present an overview of major developments in science over the last hundred years. Among the subjects covered are plate tectonics, by Carolyn Gramling, epidemics, by Aimee Cunningham, and worlds outside our solar system, by Lisa Grossman. But that is only a sampling of what’s on offer. You can also explore the articles through a timeline and the categories language, new areas of research, and unsung characters.
“17th Century Iceland was a cruel place”
The long and underappreciated history of male witches – and the countries where more men were prosecuted for witchcraft is a short article by historian Dr. Kate Lister. The country with the most lopsided ratio of male to female witches was Iceland, where 20 out 22 executed witches in the 17th Century were men. Though a colony of Denmark, whose king was an anti-witchcraft fanatic, burning witches came late to the island. The Icelandic Museum of Sorcery and Witchcraft has a good overview of the subject. And if you want to go deeper, Prof. Suzannah Lipscombe interviews fellow historian Dr. Ólina Kjerúlf Þorvarðardóttir, a specialist in what Icelanders refer to as “the burning century”, on the Not Just the Tudors podcast, and explains why Icelandic witches were mainly men.
"why he might just be the forgotten Shakespeare for our times"
John Lyly: The Queer Shakespeare is an episode of the Not Just the Tudors podcast where Dr. Suzannah Lipscomb interviews fellow historian Dr. Andy Kesson about the Elizabethan playwright John Lyly, who was "even more keen than Shakespeare on genderbending characters and unconventional love affairs". On the Before Shakespeare website, Kesson has written a lot about the works of John Lyly, as well as a book and several journal articles. He's also working with theater director Emma Frankland on a staging of Lyly's best known play, Galatea. They, and other people involved in the production, talk about the play and performing it in the 21st Century, through trans, queer, deaf, and other lenses, in a series of videos.
"looking at the lives and voices of women in medieval literature"
Encounters with Medieval Women is a four episode series of the London Review of Books podcast where scholars Irina Dumitrescu and Mary Wellesley discuss four medieval texts by or about women: St. Mary of Egypt, Julian of Norwich, the Wife of Bath, and Margery Kempe. Each episode page has a full transcript.
“Garum has long been considered the dodo of gastronomic history.”
Culinary Detectives Try to Recover the Formula for a Deliciously Fishy Roman Condiment is an article by Taras Grescoe about recent attempts to recreate the Roman Empire’s most beloved sauce, garum (previouslies on MeFi). In Spain and Portugal, you can now buy it in stores, but the problem is that it’s “liquamen”, one of two different garum sauces, while the other, “garum sociorum”, remains a mystery. Grescoe posted a Twitter thread on how to make homemade liquamen. [via Cheryl Morgan]
Norsing around the Atlantic
While just published evidence based on the rings of trees felled by Norse people in Canada has largely confirmed what we already know about medieval sailing in the North Atlantic, two recent finds have changed what we thought we knew. A recently published paper by medievalist Paulo Chiesa shows that knowledge of Labrador had reached as far south as Genoa and Milan in the 14th Century. And in a recent paper by ecologist Pedro Raposeira, evidence has been found of human habitation in the Azores before the archipelago’s discovery by the Portuguese in 1427, backing up findings from 2015 of Norse visitations of the Azores and Madeira from an unlikely source, mouse DNA. Biologist Jeremy Searle talked about the biological evidence with archaeologist Cat Jarman on the Gone Medieval podcast.
"archival practices have not changed much in over 4,000 years"
Ebla, the Official Site of the Italian Archaeological Mission in Syria gives details about the excavation of Ebla, the capital of a bronze age empire in what is now northern Syria which flourished in the third millennium BCE. Archaeologist Paolo Matthiae first explored the Tell Mardikh mound in 1963, but the site didn't receive global attention until 1975, when the discovery of Ebla's state archives was announced, an ancient library with over seventeen thousand clay tablets, casting light on life in Ebla. Outside the Ebla website, besides Wikipedia, there is historian Trevor Bryce's short overview of the history of Ebla, an interview with Matthiae from 1978 by Tor Eigeland, and archivist Greg Bradsher's essay about the Ebla archive and how it compares to modern archives.
“I’m past anger. I’m … I’m a little overwhelmed by the horror.”
Colette is a 25 minute documentary by Anthony Giacchino and Alice Doyard about a visit made by 90-year-old Colette Marin-Catherine, to the Nordhausen concentration camp where her brother died. They were both members of the Resistance. She is accompanied by 17-year-old history student Lucie Fouble. The film won the Oscar for best documentary short this year.
The History of English Literature from Sumeria Onwards
Literature and History is a podcast by Dr. Doug Metzger about the literature of the English speaking world from the year 2000 BCE until … well, in the five years since he's now up to 300 CE, and in about a year's time, in episode 100, he'll get to the first Anglo-Saxon books. The plan is to cover all the major influences on Anglophone literature, and the main influences on those influences, before diving into literature written in that language. The episodes are generally between an hour and two hours and half long, and leaven serious literary history with jokes and silly songs. All episodes have transcripts and quizzes available, and if you've listened to all the free episodes, 84 so far, you can also buy some more. [via Emma Hine in The Paris Review]
A Chinese Gazetteer of Foreign Lands
This country is filled with light and is where the sun goes down. In the evening, when the sun enters the city, it makes a rumbling sound louder than thunder. So they always station a thousand men at the city gates to blow trumpets and beat gongs and drums to drown out the noise of the sun. If not, then pregnant women and small children would die of fright upon hearing the sun.—From the Zhufan Zhi, a geography of Asia, the east and north coasts of Africa, and bits of Europe, written in 1225 CE by Zhao Rukuo. Part one has been translated by Prof. Shao-yun Yang of Denison University.
"a fascinating and uncelebrated ancient people the world has forgotten"
In the Land of Kush by Isma'il Kushkush, with photos by Matt Stirn, is an essay about the kingdom on the Nile that was the southern neighbor of Pharaonic Egypt. If you want to see more photos, Valerian Guillot has put pictures from his 2016 trip online. The Kushites spoke Meriotic, which had two scripts. Ibrahim M. Omer's Ancient Sudan website has a wealth of information about the history, people and the land of Kush. Archaeological excavations keep unearthing new material. Charles Q. Choi wrote about a recent find of Meroitic inscriptions and in 2009 Geoff Emberling wrote about the race to explore sites which were submerged when the Merowe Dam was constructed.
"the mighty builders, perished and fallen"
Fall of Civilizations is a podcast by historian and novelist Paul M. M. Cooper about societies which collapsed. So far he's taken on Roman Britain, the Bronze Age, Ancient Mayans, the Norse in Greenland, the Khmer Empire, Easter Island, the Songhai Empire, Sumer, the Aztecs, the Han Dynasty and Byzantium. Besides the usual places for podcasts, the first eight episodes are also available on YouTube as video documentaries.
“Tell your friends that the Vikings are gay”
Vikings Are Gay is a podcast about Norse culture and history from a queer perspective by Old Norse scholar Amy Jeffords Franks. Besides an introductory episode, so far she’s touched on the subjects of bottom shaming and female magic, Odin’s gender, Thor having to act the role of the bride, and an episode in response to Black Lives Matter about the links between Viking studies and white supremacy.
“For those with a taste for the peculiar”
The Museum of Ridiculously Interesting Things is the blog of curator and art historian, Dr. Chelsea Nichols. The collection includes such treasures as sexy weasels in Renaissance art, how to scare children in the 1920s, and hidden mothers in Victorian portraits. There are also occasional guest posts, on topics including Ivan Bilibin’s Illustrations of Russian folklore by Claire Atwater, Robert Liston, a surgeon and a showman by Mike Crump, and a make-your-own-bat-colony activity sheet by Alice Fennessy.
“When my grandmother died I did not go to her funeral.”
The story of my grandmother confused people, especially Jewish Americans, who understandably assume that any story about escaping the war to the US is a happy one. But individual lives are more complicated than great sweeps of history, and while Sala was alone and frustrated in America, Alex and Henri went on to live gloriously successful lives in France.—I could never understand my grandmother's sadness – until I learned her tragic story by Hadley Freeman.
“time-keeping became universal and linear in 311 BCE”
A revolution in time is a short essay by archeologist and historian Paul J. Kosmin about how the Seleucid Empire invented the practice of an endless year count, still used in calendars today, replacing the regnal or cyclical year naming schemes. And by making it possible to think about the future, it led to the idea of the end of time, the apocalypse. If you want to learn more about Kosmin’s ideas, you can watch his lecture, listen to an interview [iTunes link], or buy his book Time and Its Adversaries in the Seleucid Empire. Finally, here are a couple of reviews of the book, by G. W. Bowersock [PressReader link] and John Butler.
Talking American Political History
American Histories is a six episode series of the Talking Politics podcast where host David Runciman interviews academics Gary Gerstle and Sarah Churchwell about American history, focusing on political issues and their historical causes. The episodes are: Impeaching the President, Pornography and the Post Office, Monopoly and Muckraking, The 15th and the 19th Amendments, Deporting Mexicans and The Great Abortion Switcheroo.
Teens explaining historical events to each other in 15 second videos
literally obsessed with teens posting history tiktoks so here’s a thread (Twitter thread by Nadia Jaferey). The Guardian’s Poppy Noor asked her old history teacher Izzy Jones what she thinks of teens making short videos about history.
“globally unique monuments to Victorian science and culture”
Palaeoartist and palaeontologist Mark Witton was asked by the Friends of Crystal Palace Dinosaurs charity to write notes about the various statues of extinct animals, only four of which are dinosaurs, in London’s Crystal Palace Park. Witton fleshed these notes out in a series of four blog posts where he shares his findings and thoughts about the mid-19th century depictions by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins of ancient, long-gone animals, and the scientific understanding at the time. Part 1: Marine reptiles, Dicynondon and "Labyrinthodons". Part 2: Teleosaurus, Pterosaurs and Mosasaurus. Part 3: Megalosaurus, Hylaeosaurus and Iguanodon. Part 4: The Mammals of the Tertiary Island. [Mark Witton previously: 1, 2]
“When he smiles at the camera, it’s almost impossible not to smile back”
Silent film clip appears to show Louis Armstrong as a teenager according to jazz historian James Karst, writing in 64 Parishes. The magazine has uploaded the eight-second clip to YouTube. Gwen Thompkins writes about the footage for The New Yorker in the short essay
An Eight-Second Film of 1915 New Orleans and the Mystery of Louis Armstrong’s Happiness.
"I truly and literally had made my living with jazz"
While [Eric] Vogel was imprisoned by the Nazis—first in the so-called model camp, Theresienstadt, and then later at the Auschwitz death camp—he and a dozen or so others played in a jazz band called the Ghetto Swingers. There were similar groups at many camps throughout Nazi-controlled Europe: musicians who were forced to perform, on command and under inconceivable duress, for the S.S.—The Jewish Trumpeter Who Entertained Nazis to Survive the Holocaust by Amanda Petrusich.
How the Inca Wrote
How to Read Inca by Daniel Cossins is an overview of current understanding of khipu, the Incan system of encoding information in knots, which has been coming along in leaps and bounds recently. To look at khipu yourself, check out the Khipu Database Project.
"an intricate guitarist, an astute songwriter and a stylistic innovator"
Memphis Minnie — Guitar Queen, Hoodoo Lady and Songster is a site by guitarist Del Rey dedicated to blues musician Memphis Minnie. It has a biography, telling her story from her birth as Elizabeth "Kid" Douglas in 1897. It also includes an appreciative review from 1942 by Langston Hughes. Memphis Minnie recorded over 200 songs, most of whom are available on Spotify and other streaming services, but Del Rey curated a list of 28 songs on the website, and made a DVD tutorial on how to play the guitar like Memphis Minnie. She passed away in 1973, shortly after Led Zeppelin reworked one of her early recordings with Kansas Joe McCoy, When the Levee Breaks. Other well known songs by her include Me and My Chauffeur Blues, Hoodoo Lady Blues and Bumblebee.
"The Radical Restaurants of Father Divine, Founder of Peace Mission"
The case was brought to Justice Lewis J. Smith, who sentenced Divine to a year in prison. But four days after the sentencing, the 55-year-old judge died of a sudden heart attack. When journalists asked for Divine’s reaction, his brazen response made headlines, and helped turn the cult leader into a media phenomenon: "I hated to do it," he reportedly said.— Heaven Was a Place in Harlem by Vince Dixon, about "the radical tableside evangelism of Father Divine — equal parts holy man, charlatan, civil rights leader, and wildly successful restaurateur".
“It’s not just a game… it’s a Gayme!”
Caper in the Castro was probably the first LGBTQ computer game. The player takes on the “the role of a lesbian private detective, Tracker McDyke, in search of a kidnapped drag queen, Tessy LaFemme.” The adventure mystery game was designed for Apple’s HyperCard, by C. M. Ralph, and released in 1989 as CharityWare, which meant that if people enjoyed playing, they were encouraged to “make a donation to an AIDS Related charity of your choice for whatever amount you feel is appropriate”. Adrienne Shaw of the LGBTQ game archive wrote about the game and interviewed Ralph last year.
"I don't want any boring old heraldry. I want something new, fresh."
Historian Sara Öberg Strådal looks at some bizarre coats of arms on her Twitter [Threadreader]. All are found in Conrad von Grünenberg's Wappenbuch, which can be read in full online.
No kings
It wasn't just Greece: Archaeologists find early democratic societies in the Americas is one of a pair of articles by Lizzie Wade about recent archeological studies of ancient Mesoamerican societies which have uncovered evidence that some were not autocratic but collective and democratic. It takes Tlaxcallan and Teotihuacan as its central examples, but looks further afield, even to societies outside the Americas. The second article, Kings of Cooperation, focuses on one example, the Olmec city of Tres Zapotes, which had seven centuries of collective rule in between times of kingship.
"The masculinization of fiction, 1800-1960"
The Transformation of Gender in English-Language Fiction is a long essay by Ted Underwood, David Bamman and Sabrina Lee that uses quantative analysis of over a hundred thousand works of fiction digitized by HathiTrust to look at the proportion of fiction written by women, and the proportion of female characters, from 1780-2007. To the authors' surprise both declined steadily and profoundly from 1800-1960, before rebounding. They also looked at gender divisions between male and female characters over the same period, finding that they had lessened. The Guardian has a short summary of the findings. And for more on gender representation in 19th Century fiction, the authors point to Understanding Gender and Character Agency in the 19th Century Novel by Matthew Jockers and Gabi Kirilloff.
"The first Phoenicians on this beach"
Hanno the Navigator was Carthaginian explorer who traveled south along the African coast in the sixth Century BCE. He left behind an account of his journey, a periplus, which among other things gave the world the word "gorilla", which may have been a kikongo phrase originally. It can be read in English translation on Livius along with scholarly notes by Jona Lendering. Hanno's brother Himilco was also an explorer, venturing north along the Atlantic coast of Europe. Lionel Casson puts Hanno in context of the history of exploration. While reading the links, you might want to listen to folk rocker Al Stewart's 2008 song Hanno the Navigator.
The Mesopotamian Pantheon
Ancient Mesopotamian Gods and Goddesses is an overview of the pantheon originating among the Sumerians which was then taken up by various later cultures, including Babylonians and Assyrians. The site has entries on the fifty most important deities, from the obscure (Papsukkal, Geshtinanna, Tashmetu) to the well-known (Tiamat, Enki, Ishtar). The site also includes a glossary and a timeline of Mesopotamian history.
Transcribing decades-old science fiction fanzines
The James L. "Rusty" Hevelin Collection contains over ten thousand science fiction fanzines. The library of the University of Iowa is scanning them and has done more than 800 so far. It has set up a page on its DIY History site where people can transcribe old zines to make the computer searchable. For more about Rusty Hevelin, read his obituary, and for more about the collection read these two articles by Jacob Brogan from 2015 and 2017.