Submarine History

Heather Cox Richardson

This infographic from the BBC is just too good to pass up.

It’s fun for a Friday, in any case, just to take a look at ocean life at different depths. But the historians out there—especially the historians of science—will want to scroll all the way down to the bottom, where there is an interview with Don Walsh, one of the two men ever to travel to the bottom of the deepest place in the world: the Mariana Trench.

The US Navy bathyscaphe Trieste descended to the bottom of the Trench on January 23, 1960, making the deepest dive of Project Nekton, a project designed to launch careful study of the deep sea. Those plans ran aground, though, as the U.S. looked toward space exploration, rather than oceanic studies. Other countries have continued to invest heavily in ocean research—Denmark’s Galathea 3 Project drew international attention in 2006-2007, for example—but the focus of American popular interest has drifted elsewhere.

While Walsh notes that there has never been another manned expedition to the Trench, there are at least three plans underway right now to send crews to the deepest part of the ocean.

None of the groups planning the descents are scientific crews: they are a marine consulting company, a company that makes private submarines, and Richard Branson’s Virgin Oceanic group, which plans to offer undersea adventures.

Horrible Histories

Randall Stephens

Pillaging and plundering. Murder and torture. Soldiers gassed in the trenches. Kings and Queens behaving badly. Those are some of the many things you'll see on the BBC hit TV show Horrible Histories. The program is fittingly hosted by a rat puppet.

Its so popular with kids and parents that it's spawned a play, "colouring" books, and more. I'm hooked after seeing just a little of it with my god daughter here in the UK. (Watch the Four Georges boy-band sketch here.)

And in addition, the play, TV show, and the books all teach some fun lessons about the past. Jonathan Jones writes in the Guardian:

One sketch in the CBBC series concerns communications in ancient Rome. The Romans send messages by writing them on a tablet and sending them along the Roman roads by a network called Tabellari Messenger. That is, a slave takes the verbal message – complete with the requisite smilies – to its recipient. An adult needs to watch this twice to get all the references to BlackBerry Messenger. Of course, some might point to this system's alleged use in this summer's British riots. Perhaps that was all the fault of Horrible Histories.

But I doubt it: kids addicted to this programme would be more likely to be trying to memorise a song that names all the monarchs of England since William the Conqueror (one that should make the Tories happy there!) or collecting the full series of original books from Savage Stone Age to Blitzed Brits. Although it's impossible to achieve that goal because Deary keeps adding to them, endlessly spinning new variants on a winning formula. Only when he runs out of gruesome "R" words will he be done with the Romans – you can already get both Rotten Romans and Ruthless Romans.

I have wondered if the show's premise and popularity comes from Brits' happy pessimism, there comic dark streak. (Think for a moment of Monty Python or one of England's greatest poets, Philip Larkin, who famously said: "Deprivation is for me what daffodils were for Wordsworth.")

I doubt something like Horrible Histories would fly in the US. Too much celebratory and triumphant history dominates the popular view. But I certainly can see some great episodes based on robber barons, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, anti-communism, Henry Ford, slavery, and more!

Computing Machines

Randall Stephens

How did we get here?

I'm typing this on my MacBook Pro, a laptop that is a gazillion times more powerful and "pro" than the towering, whirring, always-freezing-up computers I used back in grad school. In fact, my iPad is much faster on many applications than the Dell laptop I carted around five years ago. (Check out Dan's great post from February on a related topic.)

For a little wisdom on the early days of computing and the accelerated pace of change, have a look at this clip of a BBC documentary from the early 1990s.

History Documentaries Roundup

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Lisa de Moraes, "Summer TV Press Tour 2011: Ken Burns compares ‘Prohibition’ doc to present day," Washington Post, August 1, 2011
Ken Burns wants America to watch his new PBS documentary, “Prohibition,” and notice startling similarities to our current political maelstrom. At Summer TV Press Tour 2011, Burns led TV critics to that trough and suggested in the strongest possible terms that they drink deeply.>>>

Tim Younkman, "Bay City man who served as guard during Nazi Nuremberg trial featured in documentary," Bay City Times, July 28, 2011

BAY CITY — The courtroom is quiet as a corpulent figure on the witness stand — one of the highest-ranking German Nazis — proudly defends his actions during World War II. Standing next to him is a steely American guard, Bay City soldier Andrew Wendland. It’s just one of the scenes included in a newly restored 1947 documentary titled “Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today,” which is being shown for the first time to North American audiences during a two-year tour of cities.>>>

Mike Boehm, "NEH gives $40 million in grants; $3.2 million to California," Los Angeles Times, August 2, 2011

. . . . L.A.’s Grammy Museum will get $550,000 to help produce “Rockin’ the Kremlin,” a film by director Jim Brown about the role American rock music played in weakening the Soviet empire. A UPI.com report last year on plans for the film said it includes an account of a 1977 Soviet tour by the Southern California-based Nitty Gritty Dirt Band that was said to play a part in capturing young Slavic imaginations, presumably helping to awaken them to the drawbacks of totalitarian rule. Brown’s past films include documentaries about Woody Guthrie, the Weavers, Peter Paul and Mary and a PBS series, “American Roots Music.”>>>

Rich McKay, "Post-slavery South chained to hard labor: Upcoming film shows how Atlanta relied on indentured servitude," Atlanta Journal Constitution, July 28, 2011

In the years after the Civil War, a black man could get arrested in Atlanta simply for being outside after sunset or talking loud or looking at a white woman in the “wrong way.” Those arrested could spend years in forced labor, auctioned off for pennies by the state for hard labor for the profit of big Atlantan industries. A $75 fine could take a decade of back-breaking work to pay off.>>>

Ceri Radford, "Timeshift: All the Fun of the Fair, BBC Four," Telegraph, August 3, 2011

Candyfloss bigger than your head, goldfish in plastic bags, nausea-inducing rides and inept efforts at the coconut shy: most of us have memories of the fairground, and last night’s Timeshift: All the Fun of the Fair (BBC Four) was a fond and informative trundle through its cultural history. The documentary also managed to effortlessly suggest both how different things used to be and, simultaneously, how similar.>>>