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Recent History
Barbie, Lenin and Fake Hand Grenades | My Childhood in the Wild East
I was born in a country that today doesn’t exist anymore. It was called the German Democratic Republic (GDR), or East Germany. Founded in 1949, after the Second World War, as a socialist bulwark against West Germany, it became a satellite…
This Week, In History | Brendan Duddy, Roger Ailes, Two Girls and One Cup
Treading the fine line between past and present, This Week, in History is a round-up of the latest historical events and findings which continue to impact the world today. This week, we look at the deaths of Northern Ireland's secret peace…
This Week, In History | Frank Hegarty and Sean Spicer’s Holocaust Center
Treading the fine line between past and present, This Week, in History is a round-up of the latest historical events and findings which continue to impact the world today. Whether unearthing documents with continued relevance, illuminating…
This Week, in History | Starbucks, CIA and Carlos the Jackal
Treading the fine line between past and present, This Week, in History is a round-up of the latest historical events and findings which continue to impact the world today. Whether unearthing documents with continued relevance, illuminating…
News From Yesteryear | The Week in History, March 28th
The Alt-Right claim Jane Austen, Martin McGuinness gets an early obituary and Donald Trump remembers a past. This is the week in historical news, March 20th to 27th.
When Jimmy met Martin
The main story of the week was the death of…
Blood on the Leaves |3| The Innovative Errors of Horst Herold
Previously: The Abduction of Hanns Martin Schleyer
It was March 1982 and West Germany had not experienced a single political assassination or high-profile kidnapping in almost four and a half years. Elizabeth Pond, a correspondent for…
Murder on Music Row | The Deaths of David Akeman and James Phillip Widener
In November 1973 country music was rocked by the murders of two of its stars in Nashville. Banjo supremo David Akeman and guitar slinger James Phillip Widener died in similar violent circumstances just weeks apart and it put a whole new…
Welcoming the Mayor to Hell | The Story of Jane Byrne and Cabrini Green
In 1981, Mayor of Chicago Jane Byrne took the unusual step of moving into one of the housing units in Cabrini Green. In these days of politicians having second homes and travel allowances this seems like a strange thing for a politician to…
Exquisite Carps | How My Hot Dog Meal-Deal Came With a Japanese-Irish History Lecture
The Hiroshima Carp won their first baseball league pennant in twenty-five years the day my girlfriend and I visited Kobe City. The news hardly blew us away. Had it not happened however, one hot-dog chef would not have stepped out of his bar…
Fear of a Black Picture | The History Behind Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing
“What will cause the riot?” wrote Spike Lee in his diary back in 1989. “Take your pick: an unarmed Black child shot, the cops say he was reaching for a gun; a grandmother shot to death by cops with a shotgun; a young woman charged with…