Hope you’re all having a good week. I’ve been busy trying to get back into a workout routine—it’s brutal to get back into exercise after 2.5 years away.

This week, I posted gift ideas for Father’s Day, which is coming up. If you’re shopping for the dads or father figures in your life, check it out.

Now, in history acting unruly in the news…

• My favorite of the week: What became of Lord Alfred Douglas after Oscar Wilde went to prison?

• Runner-up: It’s summer. Let’s swim through history.

• A look at intergenerational trauma and Indigenous resilience in the US.

• Why is the US federal government banning books about how enslaved Americans helped the North win the Civil War?

• Gorgeous: A Viking hoard found in Denmark is now the country’s third-largest and contains incredible gold armbands.

  

• These oral histories of the AIDS crisis are heartbreaking, significant, and so so important to continue preserving.

  • Speaking of AIDS—a look at plagues and prejudice. Why do epidemics produce scapegoats?

• What’s up with these 2,500 holes across Denmark?

• Opinions of Chinese opera in New York have been historically shaped by racism, which is deeply unsurprising.

• How did Mary, Queen of Scots, position herself as a Catholic martyr?

• What was the Affair of the Diamond Necklace?

• Let’s look back on the 1960s, when Israel and Iran were on good terms.

It’s June, and Father’s Day is coming up in a short couple weeks. That means it’s once again time to begin the annual quest for a gift that feels more thoughtful than a tie and less predictable than the standby “World’s Best Dad” mug.

So I pulled together 50+ gift ideas for the dads and father figures who love history. This is for anyone whose Roman Empire is teh Roman Empire, has strong opinions about World War II documentaries, and/or treats roadside historical markers as must-see attractions.

There’s a little bit of everything here at every price point: clever, funny, genuinely useful, and niche enough to feel like you actually put some thought into it. Whether he’s into ancient civilizations, military history, presidential trivia, archaeology, castles, trains, ships, maps, or obscure historical facts that somehow become dinner-table lectures, hopefully you’ll find something that fits.

• For the guy who loves a historical war pun: William Tecumseh Sherman Landscaping Business tee.

• If tees are what you’re looking for, this vintage science poster tshirt (featuring the mighty mitochondria!) is also a great option.

• I love this box of cocktail recipe cards. It’s a great way to travel through drink history.

• These Headlines of History cocktail glasses go great with the cocktail recipe box.

• The printing press is one of the most significant advancements of modern history—let Dad build his own with this DIY Kit.

  

• I know we’re coming up on summer, but this Pleistocene fossil blanket might still be good for the dad who gets cold in the A/C.

  • Plus, some books to read while curled up under the blanket:

    • The Magical Game: The Spirit and History of Baseball’s Superstitions, Rituals, and Curses - B&N, Amazon, Bookshop

    • For dads who like both the tv show NCIS and WWII histories: Ghosts of Sicily: The True Story of the Naval Intelligence Agents Who Courted the Mob to Fight Nazis in America and the Battlefields of Italy - B&N, Amazon, Bookshop

    • The Grave Robber: The Biggest Stolen Artifacts Case in FBI History and the Bureau’s Quest to Set Things Right - B&N, Amazon, Bookshop

    • Talking Classics: The Shock of the Old - B&N, Amazon, Bookshop

    • Dinner with King Tut - B&N, Amazon, Bookshop

    • Check out my other book reviews for more recommendations!

• Also good for staying inside when it’s too hot out: This Presidential slogans puzzle.

• Don’t gift him a regular watch, gift him this gorgeous Ptolemaic Universe watch.

• We love personalizing things—especially when it’s a personalized spyglass.

• Medieval Mishaps is a great board game for tabletop game fiends!

• Authentic pirate coins in a glass case—I mean, c’mon.

  • Alternatively, here are some authentic coins from several different empires.

• For the dad who knows they weren’t just friends: The Achilles and Patroclus necklace.

• This Thor’s Hammer necklace set is great.

  • There’s also an amulet pendant that is just Thor’s Hammer.

    

• If you know his ring size, this Shield Ring was inspired by ancient Roman shields.

• This box of mystery WWII newspapers was a hit during the winter holidays, so if you skipped it then, now might be the time!

• Test his knowledge of history trivia with this interactive daily trivia coffee mug.

  • Does he love collectible/fun mugs? There are a million options! There’s this fun color-changing Ice Age Megafauna mug. This Medieval armor mug might be a good fit, or perhaps this Great Gays of history mug (it is Pride month after all). A Memento Mori mug might be a good one for your more goth/punk-inspired dads, and for cat dads, this Hisstorical Figures mug will be a hit.

  • If you like the idea of interactive daily history but don’t want another mug cluttering up your cabinets, this interactive daily history wood calendar might be a better fit. There’s also this “today in history” perpetual calendar.

• For plant dads who live science, this Albert Einstein bust planter is sure to be a hit. Also comes in Jane Austen, Vincent van Gogh, William Shakespeare, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Sigmund Freud.

• If he’s a WWII buff, this collection of New York Times newspaper articles about the war might be good.

• I quite like this Historic Cartoons box set.

• This brass cannon puzzle might be fun for anyone who likes 3d puzzles.

• For the guy who is into America’s 250th birthday this year, this Declaration of Independence serving board could be fun.

  • This Constitution and Declaration whiskey glass set might also be nice—pairs well with these democracy coasters.

  • For tea drinkers, this Teas of the Boston Tea Party set looks fun and experiential.

• This desktop Celestial Tide Dial is a replica of a 16th-century tool used by sailors.

• If he wants old school aesthetics with modern convenience, this Throwback Speaker with Bluetooth might be the one.

• The Game of Ur—the world’s oldest strategy game—was also a hit for Christmas and Hannukah! Check it out if you haven’t yet.

• If he likes whiskey stones, these Prehistoric Whiskey Stones made of Precambrian rock might be a hit.

• A year-long subscription to History by Mail is also always a hit! Choose from Classic History by Mail, Historic Holidays, National Park History, Urban Legends, Historic Recipes, Sports History,

Unruly Figures participates in several affiliate marketing programs, including Amazon, Bookshop, and ShopMy. If you decide to buy anything through them, I will receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you for your support!

Bit of a short one this week, as I’ve been traveling and haven’t been able to read as much news as I’d like. The ones I have found have been particularly interesting to me, though, so I hope you enjoy them!

Additionally, I issued a call (admittedly last-minute) for a June writing challenge. Anyone interested in participating? If there’s anything that ensures I get some writing done, it’s public accountability and peer pressure.

Finally, if you missed it, I published a review of Dinner with King Tut by Sam Kean this week.

I’m hoping to get some more book reviews up in the future. I haven’t been reading as much as I’d like, but I am currently reading Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, which I’m finding as transporting and fascinating as everyone promised.

All right, now our roundup of history acting unruly in the news…

• Favorite of the week: As a general rule, I find our warming planet and man-made climate change alarming. The extremely thin silver lining of the whole thing is that melting ice is revealing all kinds of historical artifacts. The new problem is that archaeologists are racing to recover them before they’re destroyed by being exposed to the elements (again).

  

• Speaking of the climate: A fascinating history of beekeeping in the US and how bees changed our landscape.

• By now, you’ve probably seen the Pope’s encyclical regarding AI floating around. Quick question: Why did he quote Gandalf in it?

• In book history…

  • Was H.P. Lovecraft haunted by history?

  • These memorials of a ladies’ book club in the Midwest are quite touching.

  • And finally, what is with the bat-vampire connection?

• We hear a lot about the Dalits (“Untouchables”) caste of India, but did you know there was a similar social group in France and Spain too?

• This had me giggling: At the Museum of the City of New York, you too can tear down a statue of George III, just like American revolutionaries did in July 1776.

• The deadly poison present on these Ming-Era tools might be the earliest evidence we have of surgical anesthetic.

• Nat Geo has created a new vertical: Stones & Bones. Their inaugural story is about the hermit of Patagonia who found a new dig site that eventually yielded over 40 dinosaur bones.

• How did Medieval doctors treat the Black Death?

• You probably have at least one fond memory of them: Playgrounds, and how they reinvented childhood.

• Empire & Taxidermy: Weird bedfellows.

History, for a long time, was put together by people who just sort of…theorized about things. They might have looked at things archaeologists dug up and said, “We believe this item was used for this,” or “This must have been handled this way.” But they often didn’t—or couldn’t—create any tests to confirm, which is how we ended up with wildly off-base assumptions that domestic items were ritualistic or ceremonial in some way. (A good example of this is the debate about whether this deposit of broken spindles was ritualistic or just a site of communal weaving.) Experimental archaeology is helping change that. Instead of theorizing based on a limited (often male) perspective on the world, this new form of archaeology actually tests ideas and assumptions by recreating old materials, tools, foods, and practices.

I loved Kean’s approach to this book. In each chapter, he tags along with experimental archaeologists to explore a different civilization and the projects that are teaching us more about it. Intercut with the science and history are short stories that situate an item or practice back in its original moment. It’s an excellent way to explore what experimental archaeology is telling us—how societies structured themselves with the tools they had.

One of the most memorable chapters (for me, at least) explores how the atlatl (an ancient spear-throwing device) enabled female hunters to take down extremely large animals in the Andes. Based on the size of the animals hunted, people long assumed that the biggest and strongest men of any society were responsible for hunting them—and therefore probably had more power or rights because they fed/provided for the community. But experimental archaeology shows that the atlatl was a democratizing device, allowing smaller people to throw a dart at speeds up to 100 mph, meaning they could also take down large prey. These hunters may have still been held in higher esteem in their social groups, but they didn’t have to be big, strong men to qualify.

Kean explains all this with both more detail and an approachable voice. His accompanying story, about a teen girl hunting a large quarry several thousand years ago, was enthralling—I found myself cheering for her, worrying about her, and well—I won’t spoil the ending.

Each of his short stories is like this: Immersive, perspective-changing. Whether it’s ice floes in the Arctic, hunters in the Andes, or warriors firing Medieval cannons, Kean makes it fascinating.

Of course, it helps that the science itself is fascinating. This is history beyond political maneuvers, wars, and broken pottery. It’s what life tasted like, smelled like, sounded like. It’s how normal people lived their day-to-day lives and what those experiences might have looked and felt like. It’s especially wonderful that Kean (and experimental archaeology) focuses on people whose lives are so far removed from our own that even basics like how they physically moved around a city are different—and the differences may shock you!

Dinner with King Tut is perfect for anyone with an interest in ancient history and the daily lives of people other than leaders, prophets, and princes.

Order This Book on Bookshop

Order This Book on Amazon

Order This Book at Barnes & Noble

Order This Book at Waterstones

I’m recovering from a two-week fight with the flu—I don’t recommend hanging out with sick toddlers if your immune system isn’t used to it. I’ve never been so sick in my life.

But I’m back! And finally able to focus long enough to catch up on some history news myself. To make up for missing last week’s post, here’s an extra long roundup to cover the last few weeks. So without further ado, this week in history acting unruly in the news…

• My favorite of the week: When plagues struck, many cities were so overwhelmed that they buried people in mass graves. 1500 years later, researchers are attempting to identify the bodies.

• Runner-up: The earliest known dental bridge was put in place in the 11th or 12th century CE in Aberdeen, Scotland. Bit flashy—it relied on 20k gold.

• In Mesopotamia 4,500 years ago, gender ambiguity was a tool of power.

• Alan Shepard was the first American chosen to go to space. How did the choice get made?

• How did the Rothschild family's tiara evade seizure by the Nazis?

• Learning from the past: How ancient Andeans lived peacefully with migrants during a time of crisis.

• In arts and literary history…

  • This past week in literary history.

  • A lost copy of the oldest English poem, Caedmon’s Hymn, was just recovered by researchers. It features the most common piece of punctuation in English—the period—but used slightly differently than we do today.

  • Take a look back on the wild 1963 tour that established a bad boy image for the Rolling Stones.

  • Who discovered petroglyphs in Europe? And why were people afraid of them?

  • Gustav Klimt’s earliest commission—pre-The Kiss—was for the ceiling of an Austrian theater. Now visitors can see them up close for the first time.

  • 60 years ago, a boy stole Medieval tiles from a monastery. He just returned them.

  • And in New York, $2 million worth of rare books were just returned to the Whitney family after 37 years.

  • Meet the literary agent who invented the book auction.

  • This rare equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius was restored by Michelangelo.

  • A marble head of Alexander the Great was found in New York. It—and hundreds of other Italian history artifacts—were returned to the Italian government this week.

  • William Hodges and the art of empire.

  • A beautiful altar dedicated to the Roman god of light has been found.

  • These paintings by Edvard Munch—famous for The Scream—hung in a chocolate factory for decades. Now they’re going on public display for the first time.

    

• Have you heard of Sardinia’s legendary maggot cheese? Read all about it.

• A collection of maps owned by Mary I is on sale for $1.6 million, if you’ve got that lying around.

• Once considered risqué and rejected by big box stores for how it encouraged “proximity,” Twister only became a classic when Johnny Carson and Eva Gabor played it on TV.

• Not ominous at all: A 2,000-year-old sling bullet found in the Holy Land is inscribed with “Learn Your Lesson.”

• Did Lewis & Clark invent the Western?

• In sickness and in health…

  • New evidence shows that malaria fueled early human migration across Africa.

  • This mummy from Bolivia shows the earliest known bacterial evidence of strep throat in the Americas.

• Nazi propaganda and its mirror images in America today.

• The skeleton of a man who fled Pompeii as Vesuvius erupted with a bowl on his head and a lantern to light his way was just found 2,000 years after the disaster.

• This island in a loch in Scotland is actually manmade—it was built on a wooden platform 5,000 years ago.

• And here: A look back on humanity’s first attempts to make a home.

• Meanwhile, one of Europe’s best-preserved 14th-century ships was just found beneath a regular city construction project in Tallinn, Estonia.

  

• Meanwhile, a rare intact Roman grave has just been found in Croatia.

• These little mysterious green rocks found in a remote cave in Spain prove that prehistoric people were working with copper earlier than previously thought.

• You’ve heard of Ireland’s Magdalene laundries (especially if you’ve read Small Things Like These), but have you heard about the fanatical Legion of Mary?

• Have there always been tradwife influencers?

• In China, climate disasters 3,000 years ago caused societal upheaval, which we can see in oracle bones.

• This bowl commemorated a soldier’s service at Hadrian’s Wall in England. It was found in Spain 1,900 years later.

• Worried about teens? Adults have always been.

• A troubling Stone Age mystery featuring a cut-up skull has just been found in Denmark.

• Queen Camilla visited New York and returned one of Christopher Robin’s toys, completing the set of toys that inspired Winnie the Pooh.

• How did people pay for things after Rome’s money ran out?

• See the largest ever Viking hoard of coins found in Norway.

  • Speaking of Norway, this golden sword ornament found in Norway is gorgeous.

    

• What can objects reveal about their owners? And what should they?

• Why are some people haters? Sartre had an answer.

• In the 15th century, Iceland was caught in a trade war between the Kalmar Union, the Hanseatic League, and England.

• I’m obsessed with this 5,000-year-old fertility figurine that is wearing a necklace of herself.

• Check out what robots are finding at France’s deepest shipwreck.

• According to some geneticists, the “fall” of the Roman Empire was really more of a mix-and-mingle situation.

• Last year, a 13-year-old boy found a coin. Inspection revealed it to be the oldest known Greek artifact found in Berlin.

• If you’re into niche environmental history, you’ll like this: A history of America’s drowned towns.

• Samuel Pepys’s 1.25 million-word diary is famous for how it captured the 1660s. 200 years later, George Templeton Strong spent 4 million words capturing New York during the Civil War.

• How did people vote before the secret ballot?

• More in astrolabe news: This giant 400-year-old astrolabe was made by Mughal master craftsman and owned by royalty. It just went for millions at auction.

  

• Divers just discovered a 1918 shipwreck.

• King Henry I probably mourned the sinking of the White Ship, but it seems like his subjects mourned it more.

• You remember Paul Revere’s midnight ride—but did you know he tried to save a trove of important documents?

• Considering the past, present, and future of prophecy.

• More than 800 traces of ancient people revealed a larger-than-anticipated Prehistoric settlement near Germany’s Müritz lakes.

• Also in Germany, this intricately made silver and gold bowl that shows Athena and her owl was found buried in a forest.

• The rise, fall, and infamy of snake oil.

Mother’s Day is creeping up in the U.S. and beyond! If you’re anything like me, you’d rather skip the last-minute panic buy or the default flower bouquer in order to find something that actually feels her.

So I pulled together 35 gift ideas for the moms and maternal figures who love history. This is for anyone with strong opinions about Abigail Adams, has a favorite Tudor wife, and/or can spot a Regency silhouette at 50 paces.

There’s a little bit of everything here at every price point: clever, funny, genuinely useful, and niche enough to feel like you didn’t grab it off the endcap on your way out of Target.

• Olive oil was used as a beauty product, especially by the ancient Greeks, Egyptians, and other Mediterranean women. Korre’s Greek Skinacre Discovery Kit brings those ancient ingredients into the modern world.

• This Egyptian Goddess Beauty Balm also utilizes ancient beauty remedies to create a luxurious moisturizer that can be used on the face and body.

• Help her wrangle all her beauty products using this Georgian Fashion Zipper bag!

  • Need a little more than that? This Rosie the Riveter lip balm will go right in that zipper bag for an extra bit of gifting goodness.

  • This heat-activated Regency Finery Mug from the era of Jane Austen is also a great addition to any cabinet!

    

• For the woman who never misses a chance to remind everyone that Abigail Adams once implored her husband to remember the ladies: A Ladies of the American Revolution tee, with Abigail’s quote at the bottom.

• This 19th Amendment pin set is a great reminder of the work our foremothers did to get us where we are today.

• I love Ritual’s women’s multivitamin. Ritual operates on the radical idea that supplements should work, which historically has not been the case in the vitamin and supplement market. I know it’s not the sexiest gift, but showing someone you care about their health is always a good idea.

• Ever heard her rail against trad wife influencers? She is going to obsess over Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke.

• This gorgeous olive wood stool is inspired by milking stools in rural China.

• A beautiful pinch-neck vase is perfect for the mom who loves ancient Greece.

• For the women who enjoy travel and walking in addition to history, this collection of NYC Women’s History Walks will take her through 10 New York neighborhoods—and ten tales of amazing women’s history.

• If she loves mermaids, this Sea Siren ring would be a perfect gift.

  

• I’m obsessed with these Chainmail Dynamic hoop earrings—I might be buying a pair for myself this season!

• For a fantasy-loving mom, this Mystic Portal necklace invites both admiration and wonder. It looks like wearing a portal to another world around your neck.

• Does she love ancient Egypt? This gorgeous solid gold scarab ring might be right up her alley.

  • Not sure what her ring size is? The same design is available in stud earrings!

• For the generalist, this History Buff candle might be perfect—you can choose the scent to whatever she prefers!

• Alternately, this Smells Like She’s Talking About History Again candle is great for the one who manages to always bring a conversation back to a historical fact

• If you’re a creative type, personalize this Museum Silhoutte Box with her favorite memories and moments.

• Speaking of museums, check out this scarf transformed from a 16th-century Mughal carpet in the Met’s Islamic Art collection.

• This Today in History perpetual calendar is a great gift for someone who loves history facts.

• Is she a math lover? This pendant necklace featuring Hypatia of Alexandria is a gorgeous ode to the defiant mathematician of antiquity.

• For the woman who loves archaeology, this skeleton queen tee is a fun addition to her closet.

• If she’s a writer or diarist, this Antique Horse Hitching Post hardcover journal might be a beautiful addition to her shelves.

• These Henry VIII wives tees had me in stitches. Get her the tee repping her favorite Tudor queen, or collect all six! Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Kitty Howard, and Kateryn Parr.

  

• Brooches are BACK folks, and this French Hummingbird Brooch inspired by textiles in The Met museum is a great first one for someone ready to experiment with wearing this historical jewelry.

• Is she the cat’s pajamas? Make it literal with these cute cat-print pajamas inspired by graphic artist Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen.

  • These William Morris-inspired pomegranate pajamas are also really cute, and perfect for anyone who loves the British Arts & Crafts Movement.

• Help her mix and sip her way through cocktail history with this History by the Glass recipe box.

• To go with that, might I suggest these Headlines of History whiskey glasses?

• For the mom who loves true crime with her alcohol, Killer Cocktails puts together dangerous drinks inspired by history’s most nefarious criminals.

• Has she been saying she wants to write a book for a while, but hasn’t gotten started? I highly recommend Scrivener as a program! It allows her to organize her research, draft new scenes, and create her character sheets all in one place.

  • She might also enjoy reading Rooms of Their Own: the places where great writers wrote.

  • Does she prefer longhand? Help her organize her notes with the Memo Mori pad! She’ll remember death and her to do list.

• Is she still saying “As if!” ? This mug featuring Cher from Clueless going to be a perfect gift.

• If she loves art history, this Art Flowers puzzle is perfect—it pulls beautiful blooms from over 70 art movements into one 1000-piece puzzle.

• Speaking of flowers—bring back going outdoors to draw flowers and plants! Help mom get offline with this Botany Notebook that helps her draw and catalog her own garden.

It’s wedding season again, and I’m in Palm Springs for the weekend. My duties are more kid-wrangling than wedding-related, but it’s nice to be here for the weekend and get the LA air out of my lungs.

This week, I’m posting a list of great Mother’s Day gifts for moms who are into history, and next week I’m posting a few book reviews. Work has also slackened for me a bit, so I’ll be getting into some bonus episodes and regular podcast episodes again too! If you have any requests for future content coverage, drop them in the comments below.

Leave a comment

This week, in history acting unruly in the news…

• Favorite of the week: CT imaging has revealed undeniable proof that a woman underwent complex facial reconstruction surgery about 2,500 years ago and survived. The surgery reconstructed part of her jaw after a severe injury and showed remarkable healing that would have taken months or years. This is more proof that ancient people weren’t less intelligent than we are, they just had different access to resources.

• Runner-up: This 2,000-year-old papyrus revealed the lost verses of Empedocles. This is huge for ancient philosophers—as the article points out, it would be like spending a career trying to piece together Victor Hugo from fragments only to suddenly find an intact copy of Les Misérables.

  • Speaking of papyrus fragment finds—a fragment containing passages from The Iliad was just found in the wrappings of a 1,600-year-old mummy.

  • Speaking of The Iliad, you can now tour the palaces of the elite heroes who populated that epic.

  • And in other writing news—where in London did Shakespeare live? We know for sure now.

• Who are the Scottish families that own fragments of the Stone of Destiny? (I swear this is not a historical fantasy plot, though it certainly could be.)

• We think of automatic weapons as a modern scourge, but new archaeological evidence suggests that an extremely early automatic weapon—the Polybolos—might have been used at Pompeii in 89 BCE.

• Ancient coin lovers, mark your calendars for next April! This coin dealer in San Francisco hosts an annual rare-coin scavenger hunt where they hide coins across the city worth up to $50,000 to relive the California Gold Rush.

  

• A sudden squall doomed this vessel sailing on Lake Erie 150 years ago. It has finally been found and explored by archaeologists.

• In the “harbor” of Gibraltar, shipwrecks spanning thousands of years mingle on the ocean floor.

• In Lincolnshire, an amateur metal detectorist has uncovered a runic ring.

• Rawdogging is not new, no matter what TikTok is trying to tell you.

• A previously unknown Achaemenid cemetery in Iran is revealing how regular people lived and died under the powerful Iranian empire.

• Speaking of Iran—the Persian Empire gave us so much of the modern world, but its place in world history has long been overlooked by Eurocentric worldviews.

  

• Looking back on the Roman Triumph, possibly the ancient world’s most effective tool of propaganda.

• Two dogs found buried under overturned cradles suggest ritualistic intent, perhaps sacrifices meant to protect children.

• In a moment of trouble and upheaval, the Maya rejected divine kingship in favor of shared responsibility.

• What killed the Neanderthals? Well, according to new research, it was a lack of genetic diversity.

• 58 women were buried in this pre-Inca Wari tomb. Who were they, and why were they buried together?

• This is amazing: In early 20th-century Indonesia, it was Chinese-run photography studios that helped shape the nation’s image.

  

• How is it possible that the General Strike of 1926 failed, but still recast British politics?

Short one this week, as I’ve been prepping for the LA Times Festival of Books all week (as well as trying to sort out a tax issue that is making me crazy). I was escorting authors yesterday and today I’m attending a bunch of panels. Are you going to be there?

This week, in history acting unruly in the news…

• My favorite of the week: Yes, there were female gladiators. Yes, they really fought. (This is probably my favorite subgenre of history: Proving that women really did all the things men claimed they couldn’t.)

• Runner up: History as a necromantic art. (The next time someone says history is boring to me, I will be countering with “I’m basically a necromancer.”)

• First, there were paper towns. Now, ghost cities on early 16th-century maps: Europe’s first map including Tenochtitlan wasn’t made until the city had already been razed to the ground.

• This single dinner gala started the Harlem Renaissance.

• The arc of human history might not bend toward progress, but does it bend toward cooperation?

• New DNA tests reveal a mysterious human lineage no one knew existed (until now). This East Asian lineage split from the rest of humanity tens of thousands of years ago.

• American turtle racing? It was a thing—and still is in some places!

• Can these mid-20th-century matchbooks give us a glimpse into a version of Malibu before it was razed by a fire?

  

• Mohenjo Daro is a 5,000-year-old metropolis frozen in time.

• Meanwhile, a unique temple complex has been discovered in Northern Sinai.

• The origins of American science fiction lived between the boldly colorful pages of Amazing Stories.

• In art history…

  • As the art world gears up for the 61st Venice Biennale, it’s worth it to look back on the first Venice Biennale.

  • Edmonia Lewis was the earliest known Black artist to depict emancipation back in the late 19th century. She’s finally getting her first retrospective.

  • RIP Millennial Gray. Color is back.

  • Will the LA County Museum of Art’s new galleries rewrite art history?

  • Monet’s Vétheuil, effet du matin had not been seen in public for about 100 years. It just sold for €10.2 million ($12.1 million) at auction, the highest price for Monet’s work in France.

  • Speaking of auction: This Artemisia Gentileschi painting was rolled up in a cellar for decades. Now it’s on auction—with an important piece missing.

  • In restitution news, a Catalan museum has yet to comply with a year-old court order to return murals to a monastery in Aragon. But Turkey has successfully seen a 1,500-year-old marble head returned from the Denver Art Museum.

  • After the death of Cleopatra, Roman emperors ruled Egypt. In stark contrast to Roman art made for these emperors, which focused on individual achievements, the Egyptian art depicting them in Egypt shows them fulfilling duties, giving us an idea of what ideal governance looked like in Egypt.

  • A mysterious, monumental scroll is on public display for the first time ever.

• What was the succession plan for Elizabeth I if she hadn’t made the deal with Mary, Queen of Scots for her son James Stuart to inherit and unite England and Scotland?

• Oh, I can’t wait for this one: Andrew Lloyd Webber is writing a musical about the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa.

• What can Oscar Wilde’s changing hairstyles tell us about his changing public persona?

  

• Ah yes, the golden age of the American soapbox. (It’s not right now, despite what you may think of social media.)

It’s been an eventful week in Los Angeles. I got to attend a release party for ’s new book Making Art and Making a Living, which came out on Tuesday. If you’ve ever wondered how artists of all stripes balance their money and their art practice, this book is perfect for you.

I also put out a bonus episode about the origins of April Fools’ Day. Every year, people get mad at Geoffrey Chaucer all over again, but did he really invent the pranksman’s holiday?

All right, now we’ll get into history acting unruly in the news….

• My favorite of the week: These German Carnival floats have been sites of political protest for years—possibly hundreds of years. Using exaggerated caricatures of political figures and general revelry, these events give a voice to people upset about the state of the world. Their origins are murky, but their utility as critiques of power are not.

  

• Second place: We can save the world. In fact, we’ve done it at least once before.

• Runner-up: Who were the runaway nuns of Norman England?

• A brief history of the most important food ever invented: the pickle.

• Uhhh, are we still battling the 19th-century blues?

• Often overshadowed by the Little Rock Nine, these arrests of these 9 Black college students helped the NAACP push for the desegregation of public spaces in Mississippi.

• A look back at how the Young Lords of Chicago were founded.

• I’ve written about the Grand Tour before—the right of passage for European noble boys when, in their late teens/early twenties, they traveled around Europe to see the sites and gain a certain “polish.” But what about the servants who went with them? What was their experience like?

• NSFW: In the Netherlands, the reopening of hundreds of forgotten boxes in museum storage has led to many significant discoveries related to Ancient Roman life in the region—including this rare bone phallus.

• Traces of resin found in incense burners buried in Pompeii have confirmed extensive trade networks in the Mediterranean.

• How were prisoners treated in the Crimean War?

• Okay, who really wrote the Old Testament? The theories are legion.

• How an alleged giant squid attack in 1941 became a popular urban legend.

• Was the Rio Grande always the border between Texas and Mexico?

• I, like many Millennials and Gen X folks, had a “free-range” childhood. Now those are disappearing.

• In searching for authenticity, did art historians (accidentally) make ancient Greek and Roman statues unappealing?

• Meanwhile, this forgotten Roman mosaic reveals the only known female beast hunter.

• And in Romania, a recently rediscovered Ancient Roman cemetery is revealing rare burial practices.

• A look at how ”The Raven” exemplifies Edgar Allen Poe’s relationship with 19th-century technology.

• In 1923, living-beyond-their-means couple, Clara and André Malraux, conspired to loot the pink temple of Banteay Srei. What they actually did was spark a battle for reclamation over Southeast Asia’s cultural history.

• For centuries in Western Europe, men played the women’s roles in theatres. In the 19th century, calmer morals allowed women on stage—and soon they began to play male roles in return.

  • If you like this, you might be interested in my coverage of Sarah Bernhardt, who famously played Hamlet in 1900!

• The top 1% of wealthy Americans: Was the period of private indiscretions “superior to the Access Hollywood horror through which we’re living” in every day of the 21st century?

• I always hate any sort of fatshaming, so I’m really happy to see that the story of William Howard Taft getting stuck in a bathtub is being debunked.

• WWI created the color “army olive green” and I remain thankful.

• I am obsessed with the fact that modern botany classification systems were invented on a bet.

• Ope, I can feel the new Jurassic Park movie being written about these: The bizarre raptor-like creatures that terrorized the Mesozoic Era.

• Admire these beautiful portrait miniatures (and many others) that were exchanged as love tokens in Tudor England.

  

• Speaking of England, a mysterious and extremely unusual coin pendant featuring John the Baptist was just unearthed in Norfolk.

• Was the real Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas’ father?

• Scandinavia’s largest mound was long thought to be a tomb for a king. Is it actually something much, much darker?

• Meanwhile, excavated burial mounds in Germany reveal rare weapons and Europe’s oldest copper jewelry.

• And a 6,000-year-old Megalithic tomb has been discovered in Lubin!

• Native nations fought in the American War of Independence to protect their lands. When the nascent US won, settlers stole their land anyway.

• Speaking of US independence, who was the Quaker woman who defied her religion’s commitment to neutrality and spied on the British, ultimately warning George Washington of an attack?

• Satellite scans have revealed a 2,600-(or more)-year-old structure underneath the Nile delta.

• And in nearby Greece, a groundbreaking mission of underwater archaeology has revealed 5 sunken ships and a maritime network that was lost for 2,600 years!

  

• A new Sinai fort has been linked to a militarized exodus—perhaps the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt in the Bible.

• A 2,400-year-old workshop unearthed in Senegal revealed a unique African metallurgical tradition.

Now, usually these episodes dive deeper into something I’ve mentioned in a past episode, but this time I thought it would be fun to look a little more deeply at tomorrow’s questionable holiday: April Fools’ Day.

I know some people really hate the day of pranks. And I completely get why, if you’ve been the victim of some of the more awful and cruel pranks out there. It can be embarrassing to feel foolish! So if you hate this holiday, I’ll totally understand if you skip this episode—but I hope you don’t. We’ve got some really interesting history to get through here.

Starting with—the origins. Who really started April Fools’ Day? It’s often blamed on (or credited to, depending on your perspective) Geoffrey Chaucer.

Read more

Hope everyone is having a wonderful weekend. My weekends are normally very low-key, but yesterday I had three separate celebrations to attend, so I’m behind on my other weekend tasks like laundry and putting together this list! So apologies for the delay here. But we’re ready to go! In history acting unruly:

• My favorite of the week: No one ever said “ye olde.” (Sorry to burst your Renaissance Faire bubble.)

• Runner up: Renaissance star forts militarized the shape of snowflakes. These are so cool looking from above.

  

• I love that every year people get in their feelings about whether or not Chaucer invented April Fool’s Day.

• 17th-century nuns in Italy took apart a Raphael masterpiece to sell it. It is finally all back together again in New York.

• How did George Washington weaponize smallpox?

• A look at how satirical magazines confront serious issues.

• The East India Company made several attempts to trade with Japan in the 17th century.

• In about 1969, some tiny bones were found and stored away in a museum. Recently, they were taken back out and reexamined and what they revealed was shocking: They were the 55,000-year-old fetal bones of a Neandertal.

• To sell the American West, photography was a primary tool.

• The night of Sicilian Vespers might sound like it has something to do with perfume, but was the devastating massacre of over 2000 people in an uprising.

  • If you like this story, you might be intereste din this related episode:

• This war-torn village in Syria is the last known place on Earth where people speak Aramaic regularly. They’re trying desperately to keep it that way.

• If some days have been feeling longer or shorter than others, it’s not all in your head: Earth’s rotation is variable, but over the past few years, it has been speeding up.

• The hunt for neutrinos has been going for nearly 100 years. In Antartica, it has led to some strange findings, like mysterious radio waves under the ice.

• A young anesthesiologist DIY’d the device that helped humanity summit Everest.

• How has sickness shaped humanity?

• Was the modern world shaped by a collapse?

• The murder of priest, Jerzy Popiełuszko, in Poland revealed the cracks in the USSR control of the country.

  Unruly Figures is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

I apologize that it’s been a few weeks since my last roundup—I got pretty sick and had a hard time catching up after. But I’m back and excited to bring you all things history newsworthy.

If you missed it, earlier this month, I posted a roundup of free and open resources for researching women’s history. If you like this, I’ll do more of them in the future!

Now, in history acting unruly in the news…

• My favorite of the week: Research shows that prehistoric women’s manual work was tougher on the body than rowing on today’s elite crews.

• Very exciting: Will this shipwreck found off the coast of Croatia rewrite the Early Medieval history of the Byzantine Empire?

  

• See how Muslims celebrate Eid al-Fitr around the world.

• Is it possible to write a history of emotions, and if so—how would we do that?

• Did horses shape the Mughal Empire?

• In storytelling history…

  • Who was Elizabeth Gaskell, and how did she turn the death of Charlotte Brontë into a scandal?

  • What did European folktales teach about a life well lived?

  • How did storytelling evolve with technology?

• Leading Maya archaeologist David Stuart did an AMA where he cleared up some misunderstandings we have about the history of the Maya.

• AND: A look into some basics of Aztec philosophy.

• Meanwhile, the debate about when humans arrived in North America is back on.

• Take a moment to learn about the complex history of anti-Asian racism in the US.

• What was the intersection of mental health and faith like in 19th-century Prussia?

• In the mid-20th century, there was a rising “scandal” of unmarried mothers in Scotland.

• Is there a secret religious history to your… Chia Pet?

  

• The first ever plantation almost collapsed under full-scale revolt in 1595. How different might the history of the Western hemisphere have been if it had fallen.

• In England, a 1717 story of two African princes who were enslaved by Companies and had to find their way home.

• “Kiss Me, Hardy.”

• Remember Glasnost from high school? Looking at the collapse of that literary freedom in Russia today.

• Here’s some truly great drone footage of the crowning of the Jesus tower of the Sagrada Familia.

• Robert Goddard proved rockets could reach space. He was mocked for it in his time.

• Never forget that, for all his interesting ideas, Benjamin Franklin also supported and spread genocidal propaganda about Indigenous people.

• The surprisingly long history of high-tech border policing.

It’s March, which means it is Women’s History Month. I’ve never done much for this awareness month here—I’ve put together roundups for Black History Month and Pride Month, but never Women’s History. So, I decided to fix that today with a little resource guide. There are way too many women in the podcast to do a roundup of them—it would just be most episodes of the podcast—so, instead, I put together some of my favorite books and resources for learning about women’s history.

Women of Pre-History

• Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution Cat Bohannon overturns hundreds of years of evolutionary history by simply centering women and the people who give birth. You know, the ones in whose wombs transformation at the genetic level actually occurs. This sweeping revision of mammalian development will make you reconsider everything you think you know about the story of evolution.
  Bookshop | B&N | Waterstones | Goodreads

• Lady Sapiens: Breaking Stereotypes About Prehistoric Women Synthesizing material from fields like archaeology, genetics, and anthropology, this book challenges the passive stereotype cast on prehistoric women. Showing that the hunter-gatherer narrative is a false dichotomy, this book provides proof that anyone could be artists, hunters, shamans, and anything else—not just men.

  Bookshop | B&N | Waterstones | Goodreads

Ancient Women

• Diotíma Named for the sage who taught Socrates the “philosophy of love” in Plato’s Symposium, versions of this database have been around since 1995. This is “a resource for information on women, gender, sex, sexualities, race, ethnicity, class, status, masculinity, enslavement, disability, and the intersections among them in the ancient Mediterranean world.” This is a truly incredible resource, including bibliographies, translations, teacher resources, and more.

• Duke’s Papyrus Archive Digitizing nearly 1400 papyri from ancient Egypt, this guide covers more than just women’s history. They are sorted by language and by subject, including a section on women and children. This section includes texts about women and texts written by women and/or to women.

Medieval Women’s History

• Epistolae This open online database from Dr. Joan Ferrante from Columbia University brings together over 2,000 letters written by women and to women from the 4th to the 13th centuries CE. The letters are presented in both Latin and English, if you’re looking to brush up on your Latin.

• Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages Through the Women Written Out of It Long thought of as a period of history that was uniformly terrible for all women across the board, this book by Janina Ramirez is an important reframing of women in the Middle Ages. From uncovering erased queens to the early beginnings of Christianity, Ramirez finds stories of influential women to show how important women have always been to our shared history.
  Bookshop | B&N | Waterstones | Goodreads

• Feminae This open online database from U of Iowa brings together and updates published resources about Medieval women. The lists have been being collected since the 1990s, so it is extremely comprehensive. They also index and surface a monthly translation of a Medieval document that is important to Medieval gender studies.

• Global Medieval Sourcebook This digital repository of Medieval texts was put together by Stanford University. It isn’t solely about women, but they do organize texts into collections and even occasionally call out certain texts as resources for learning about Medieval misogyny. This one is also not limited to Europe, which is wonderful.

Renaissance Women

• How To Be a Renaissance Woman: The Untold History of Beauty and Female Creativity Dr. Jill Burke (U of Edinburgh) explores the history of beauty and cosmetics—and how Renaissance women used them as a source of creativity, community, and resistance.
  Amazon | Bookshop | B&N | Waterstones | Goodreads

• Renaissance Spell: Renaissance Women A significant part of the Renaissance Spell website is dedicated to the daily lives of Renaissance women. It is heavily focused on Italy, with a little bit of play for France, but is a good starting point for day-to-day life for women.

• Women in the Renaissance This research guide from Syracuse University brings together a number of established and developing resources for gender and sexuality in the Renaissance.

Early Modern Women’s History

• Early Modern Female Book Ownership This project documents books that were owned—and often annotated—by women from 1500-1800, giving us insight on how women thought privately of themselves.

• Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal This is the only journal that is dedicated to the interdisciplinary study of Late Medieval and Early Modern women. They accept articles from folks of all fields, which makes this particularly fascinating. A lot of articles are behind paywalls, but not all of them.

• Professor Pavlac’s Women’s History Resource Site is, well, what it says on the tin: A resource site for women’s history. Organized by biographies of important women from different eras, she covers more than just Early Modern women, though there are more of these biographies than any other.

• A Vindication of the Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft’s tract is a foundational feminist text advocating for women’s education and equal rights. In it, she critiques the societal norms that kept women home and argues that women deserve to be treated as rational beings with the same opportunities to contribute to society as men.
  Bookshop | B&N | Waterstones | Goodreads

• Women Writers Online Collected by Northeastern University, this is a repository for rare texts written and published by women 1526 and 1850. It provides an “unparalleled view of women’s literate culture” during this era.

Modern African Women’s History

• Female Monarchs and Merchant Queens in Africa This “African-centered monograph [reveals]… systems of female power and leadership in African cultures.” It breaks from Western perspective and tradition to highlight the importance of African primary sources and world views.
  Amazon | Bookshop | B&N | Waterstones | Goodreads

• Open Access Collections on Africa This comprehensive database from Boston University lists dozens of Africana collections that are open and available online. Currently, the collection only covers about 20 of the 54 recognized sovereign states in Africa, but new work is being published all the time. It is also not limited to women, but I think it’s too comprehensive to be ignored.

• Women in African History Like the Open Access Collection from BU above, this University of Kansas comprehensive resource guide focuses on African history. But this time, it does specialize in women.

Modern Asian Women’s History

• Asian Journal of Women’s Studies Several articles in this academic journal are open access, meaning anyone can read them anywhere. The journal is dedicated to publishing feminist scholarship and giving a voice to Asian feminist activism.

• Visualizing Beauty: Gender and Ideology in Modern East Asia These 8 essays examine the “intersection between feminine ideals and changing socio-political circumstances” (such as the “Traditional Woman” and “New Woman” stereotypes) in China, Japan, and Korea during the early 20th century.
  Amazon | Waterstones | Goodreads

Modern Central American Women’s History

• A Kick in the Belly: Women, Slavery and Resistance This book is an act of historical reclamation. In it, activist and historian Stella Dadzie “recovers the lives of women who played a vital role in developing a culture of slave resistance across the Caribbean.”
  Bookshop | B&N | Waterstones | Goodreads

• Latin American Feminism From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy comes this history and resource guide to the development of Latin American feminist thought, especially as a response to colonialism and neoliberalism.

• Women Through Women’s Eyes: Latin American Women in Nineteenth-Century Travel Accounts Available for free through Archive.org, this book collects the travelogues of several European women who traveled to Central and South America. Though told from a European perspective, this is a fascinating look at women that we don’t usually get through the travelogues written by men.

Modern European Women’s History

• A History of Their Own: Women in Europe, vol 2 This second installment in the 2-volume set focuses on women in Europe from the 15th century into the mid-late 20th century. A classic of the field, this one is a little out of date but still a really accessible foundational text.

  Amazon | Bookshop | Goodreads

• Europeana A collection of featured stories to learn about notable women throughout European history and their work. They also have teaching resources for anyone interested in that.

• I Who Have Never Known Men / Moi qui n’ai pas connu les hommes This groundbreaking 1995 speculative fiction novel was first published in France before being translated into English. It follows a narrator in a post-apocalyptic world who has—you might have guessed it—never met a man.
  Amazon | Bookshop | B&N | Waterstones | Goodreads

• Women and Yugoslav Partisans: A History of World War II Resistance Historian Jelena Batinić looks at women’s participation in the largest resistance effort of WWII, how women’s gender roles changed post-war, and the endurance of memory in the decades after.
  Amazon | Bookshop | B&N | Waterstones | Goodreads

Modern South American Women’s History

• Digital Archive of Latin American and Caribbean Ephemera This digital archive from Princeton University covers Central and South America, but the lion’s share of the materials are from Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile. To find specifically information on women, you’ll have to search by gender and sexuality.

• Putafeminista This pioneering manifesto from Brazil explores the centrality of sex workers to the feminist struggle. By responding to a lot of the major work on feminism of the 20th century, it triggered a wave of discourse when it was first published in 2018.
  Bookshop | B&N | Waterstones | Goodreads

Modern US American Women’s History

• American Women: A Guide to Women’s History Resources at the Library of Congress Organized by type of resource—maps, rare books, moving images, recorded sounds, etc.—this guide helps users easily find what they’re looking for within the Library of Congress’s collections. LOC has been collecting documents related to suffrage and feminism since at least 1903, so their collection is vast.

• Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us This book is as much an investigation of sex and gender in modern America as it is a memoir of Kate Bornstein’s transition. Considered both a classic and revolutionary today.
  Bookshop | B&N | Waterstones | Goodreads

• Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot This collection of essays rightly calls out the people that white feminism of the 1960s-early 2000s forgot and offers new solutions to create a more inclusive future.
  Bookshop | B&N | Goodreads

• Latine and Hispanic Women This research guide for Harvard’s Library brings together the archives and oral history of Latine and Hispanic women primarily living in and around Massachusetts, though it also contains archives of other historically significant Latine and Hispanic women from around the US.

• The Library of Influential Asian American Women Compiled seemingly singlehandedly by Ashley J. Chan (!!!), this ongoing project is an open resource for anyone interested in Asian American women who have impacted history and shaped today.

• Scream with Me: Horror Films & the Rise of American Feminism 1968-1980 The horror genre deliberately engages with the things that keep us up at night, so I was amazed when Dr. Eleanor Johnson seemed to be the first to stumble onto the idea that horror films have been engaging with and critiquing “the combustive politics of women's rights” since the inception of film. Scream with Me weaves iconic films like Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist, and The Shining into the fabric of American feminism, showing us that true horror is often found in the deep-seated fears and realities of everyday women's lives.
  Bookshop | B&N | Waterstones | Goodreads

This was fun to put together! Would folks want more content like this in the future?

Extremely short list this week because I have family in town and many events to attend. If you want a much longer list, you can catch up on last week’s list, which I think had over 50 articles.

You can also check out the book review I posted on Thursday covering ’s debut novel set in 14th-century Paris, The West Façade.

Basically, I’ve picked my favorite/the biggest stories from all my favorite outlets this week. So, please enjoy, and we’ll be back to longer lists next week!

This week, in history, acting unruly in the news…

• My favorite: The real sword in the stone has nothing to do with King Arthur.

• Who were our first linguistic ancestors? And why did a group in Paris have to ban conversation about that question?

• Neanderthals and human females likely interbred/intermarried. (Saw this one on Threads quite often with captions like “And they still are.”)

• And in Southern China, wedding traditions once allowed women to weep and speak the otherwise unspeakable.

• What is the birthday paradox, and what can it teach us about Black history?

• Wall Street’s 2008 meltdown through the eyes of an FBI informant. 👀

• The extremely European myth of Indigenous “savages.”

• Relatedly, the coining of the word ‘massacre’ began with a Dutch conspiracy trial in the Indonesian archipelago.

  

• A scholar found Galileo’s handwritten notes scribbled in the corner of a manuscript.

• What the first American tourist to “Shangri-La” took home as a souvenir.

• With the news of war against Iran in the news today, this story feels particularly relevant: In Philadelphia, a shipment of 50+ Bronze Age swords and arrowheads from Iran, believed to date back nearly 4,000 years, was just intercepted. It is worth noting that the items have not been returned to Iran and, given today’s news, probably won’t be any time soon.

  Unruly Figures is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

I am in a writer’s Discord with , so I have been hearing about her debut novel for a while now. I knew it was set in Paris during the Bubonic Plague, which I was immediately intrigued by since my novel is also set in France during the 14th century plague years. So when she offered me a free early reading copy, I—of course—said yes.

The West Façade is so great. I know that’s a weak start, but those keep being the first words out of my mouth. It’s lush and sensorial in a way that I haven’t read in a while (outside of body horror fiction, which this is not). It’s also a deeply empathetic book, full of very relatable human wants and worries, even during an elevated, terrifying time in history.

The novel opens with the statue of Sainte Geneviève in her niche on the façade of Notre Dame in Paris. It’s January 1348, and a terrified drunk girl is praying to Geneviève for her family’s safety. The Plague has arrived on the southern coast of France and is making its way north to Paris. She presses an offering—an orange, a luxury—into Geneviève’s stone hands before hurrying away.

When the statues awaken on the night of the new moon, they are meant to speak with one another, enjoy the city, and perhaps pray. They are not meant to indulge in human behavior, but that night, Geneviève cannot stop herself from eating the orange.

See It On Goodreads

Giving into this first temptation sets off a cascade of events that leads Geneviève to her first ambition, her first kiss, her first love, and eventually to leaving Notre Dame to try her luck as a human. (Don’t worry, that isn’t a spoiler.) The story is told slowly, carefully, with a bit of meandering, but in the way that life can also be a bit meandering. And the life that Genevièvre experiences once she steps off her plinth is wild and difficult, but also touching and lovely.

Johnson’s debut is a lovely tribute to the desire to truly live, even in the harshest of circumstances. There was a part of me that wished I’d had it during our plague years to remind me that there can be beauty even in terror and pain, but reading it now did still restored some hope in me. And to get this novel about Notre Dame, with its burning fresh in my mind and its post-restoration reopening just 18 months ago, was its own special reminder of the staying power of significant places.

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Bookshop

Some Other Books I’ve Read & Loved Recently…

I work for Macmillan, so I cannot review these titles, but I can say that I recently got to read the following and genuinely loved each one:

• Making Art and Making a Living by - Check it out on Goodreads | Amazon | B&N | Bookshop | Waterstones
  ”Delightful, illuminating stories and reflections about how famous artists, writers, musicians, and filmmakers throughout history have managed to successfully (or not) support a creative life.”

• The Lost Founder by Jesse Wegman - Check it out on Goodreads | Amazon | B&N | Bookshop
  ”New York Times journalist Jesse Wegman tells the story of James Wilson, a Founding Father whose bold vision shaped American democracy but whose legacy was lost to scandal.”

• Lady Tremaine by - Check it out on Goodreads | Amazon | B&N | Bookshop | Waterstones
  ”A breathtaking reimagining of Cinderella, as told through the eyes of its iconic ‘evil’ stepmother, revealing a propulsive love story about the lengths a mother will go to for her children.”

• The Last Kings of Hollywood by Paul Fischer - Check it out on Goodreads | Amazon | B&N | Bookshop | Waterstones
  ”The untold, intimate story of how three young visionaries―Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, and Steven Spielberg―revolutionized American cinema, creating the most iconic films in history while risking everything, redefining friendship, and shaping Hollywood as we know it.”

Through NetGalley, I also got to read an early copy of Rebel of the Regency by of the podcast. The ARC was possibly posted too early—it was full of typos, which took me out of it, occasionally—but this was such a fun romp of a history book. Caroline of Brunswick was the only English queen to never be formally crowned, and her whole life reads like a gossip columnist’s favorite dream. She was such a modern and fascinating woman, especially for the 18th and 19th centuries. I am hoping to cover her on the podcast someday, but I wanted to mention that this book was a great read in case I don’t get to her soon.

Check out Rebel of the Regency on Goodreads | Amazon | B&N | Bookshop | Waterstones

If you read any of these—or have read a book lately that you’d like to recommend—let me know in the comments!

FYI Some of the links in here are affiliate links! That just means that if you click through and buy something, I will make a few cents of profit, but it won’t cost you any extra.

Busy week here in Los Angeles—felt like I hardly had a chance to breathe since I last sat down to do a roundup. Hoping to get back into some book reviews, podcast episodes, and writing posts up again soon.

Until then, here’s history acting unruly in the news…

• My favorite of the week: This fossil has been everywhere this week, including ’s lovely newsletter Everything Is Amazing. What looks like a smirk trapped in a rock is, in fact, a fossilized marine plant that washed up on The Holy Island in the UK. It is connected with stories of miracles dating back to the 7th century, when St. Cuthbert took up residence there. Honestly, I’m so obsessed with this rock I’ll probably write more about it here.

  

• New 3D scans at Ness of Brodgar, Scotland, could rewrite what we know about Neolithic History.

• This one’s dark: A look at how touring choirs of Korean “orphans” encouraged Americans to believe they were the ideal adoptee—and that they needed to be “saved” by generous Americans. Yikes.

• New compelling evidence has been found that humans practiced cannibalism about 18,000 years ago in what is now Poland.

• A fascinating report out of the University of Portsmouth reveals that 17th-century Londoners had a way of tracking Plague deaths and used that data to assess travel, meetings, and personal risk of illness.

• Ramadan, happening now, is Islam’s most sacred month.

• How did Super Mario Bros. become the cultural touchstone it is today?

• A look at how drought impacted Indigenous migration in the Midwest.

• Next year, let’s all celebrate Maslenitsa. Sounds amazing.

  

• Interesting: Music on the phonograph in the brief moment before mass production.

• Simone de Beauvoir, known for her philosophical books like The Second Sex and The Ethics of Ambiguity, also wrote a single play in her lifetime: Who Shall Die? Perhaps unsurprisingly, it is about moral ambiguity and how to decide who dies during wartime.

• We keep talking Trump and Greenland, so why not look back on the last time Americans occupied Greenland… and how much they wanted to return home.

  • Similarly, Trump’s favorite former president, McKinley, started a colony on Cuba. It did not go as planned.

• What was the Tichborne Dole, and why was the Labour government in 1947 so focused on halting it?

• Did you know Al Pacino’s Serpico was inspired by a true story? (I didn’t know Al Pacino was in Serpico as I’m woefully uneducated about pre-1990 films. Please feel free to mock me in the comments, I deserve it for this one.)

  • Speaking of movies ripped from the headlines: Do you know the full story behind A Very English Scandal? It involves, of course, an English PM and his love affair with a male model, but also a hit gone wrong, a dead dog, and a very troubling court case.

  • And a story I’m suprised hasn’t made it to the silver screen yet: Aldrich Ames, the most damaging spy in CIA history.

    • Seemingly no relation to Blanche Ames Ames, covered on the podcast.

• Looking back on when the field of criminology influenced Cold War strategy with a little something called deterrence.

• Who was Vicky with Three Kisses—and how did she contribute to the Allied war effort?

• I love this: The development of color theory and how it impacted women’s fashion starting in the nineteenth century.

  

• In Panama, a 1,000-year-old royal tomb has been found filled with gold.

• And in Venezuela, archaeologists discovered a massive complex of 8,000-year-old petroglyphs.

• Though established in 1975, Germany’s Fairytale Route still breathes new life into the Grimm Brothers’ fairytales.

  • And in New York, you can explore Black literary history with this list of 100 spots.

• The making of American Romanesque and its lasting influence on American architecture today.

• A long-standing chronological puzzle of a tomb has been solved using tree rings.

• The Temasek Wreck, found at the mouth of the Singapore Strait, confirms Singapore as a well-connected maritime center in the 14th-century.

• Meet the father of modern European fascism. (It’s not who you think.)

  • Speaking of—why does contemporary fascism fetishize the Classics?

  • And can the rise and fall of Julius Caesar teach us anything about EQ?

• Ellis Island Hospital could determine whether immigrants could enter America and start a new life—so why has it been overlooked as a historical resource?

• This pair of skulls found along the Han River in Central China have long puzzled scientists because they challenged expectations about when humans left Africa. New dating places the fossils at 1.77 million years old—the oldest known Homo erectus fossils in existence. This completely reshapes the debate.

• A new theory puts forth metabolism, not cells, as the kickstarter of life on Earth.

  • Similarly, was the beginning of complex life on Earth fungi?

  • And how has illness transformed civilization?

• How the English consumed the empire.

• Jack Sheppard: Carpenter, thief, hero of the people.

FYI: A few of the links in here are affiliate links. That just means if you click through and buy something, I’ll earn a few cents, but it won’t cost you any extra.

I hope you’re all having a wonderful Valentine’s Day weekend.

• My favorite of the week: The Il Principe body was found in 1942, with rich grave goods and mysterious injuries to his upper body. How he died remained a mystery until recently, when it was determined he was killed by a bear. I love that this story shows us how far science has come.

• A close run-up: Afghanistan was a crossroads in the Ancient World, where Hellenistic cultures blended with Buddhist influences.

• In Valentine’s-related stories…

  • Did you send any Valentine’s cards? Or maybe some Vinegar Valentine’s?

    

  • Inside the world’s largest flower market, which is probably where your recent bouquet came from.

  • Did France invent the restaurant and revolutionize the food industry?

  • Vivid frescoes in this opulent dining room in Pompeii celebrate the life of Dionysus.

• A peek at the Japanese countryside 100 years ago.

• Traces of Roman-Era Cologne, Germany have been uncovered.

• As part of the takedown of Anne Boleyn, rumors spread that she had six fingers and was a witch. This portrait seems like it was made as a direct refutation of that rumor.

  

• What is the holiday of Maha Shivaratri?

• Did bird guano help fuel the rise of Peru’s Chincha Kingdom?

• This Greek canal took over 2,500 years to build.

• Cracking the meaning of Peru’s Serpent Mountain.

• A groundbreaking new study of DNA revealed that some hunter-gatherer cultures in Europe clung on longer than others.

• This little-known French region safeguarded the Louvre’s treasures during WWII.

It’s time for this week’s round-up, and I’ve found some cool stories for you. Hope you didn’t miss this week’s Künsterroman post about how to ask inanimate objects the right questions to create a foundation for your story.

Now, in history acting unruly in the news…

• My favorite of the week: American children learn about Roanoke, the English colony that disappeared in 1590 without much trace. The Norse have a similar history of colonists who disappeared 500 years after settling in Greenland. Now, new archaeological clues are shedding light on what may have happened to the colonies first established by Erik Thorvaldsson around 1000 CE.

• A close runner-up: Sex, ritual, and ecstasy in Neolithic Taş Tepeler. Taking a feminist look at phallic reliefs offers a different, less symbolic interpretation that the field of archaeology has long marginalized.

• And the one that will haunt my dreams: Our true legacy will be technofossils.

• I also loved this reissue of an old story covering the history of blues music.

• Who was Friedrich Miescher, and how did he contribute to the discovery of DNA?

• A look back on the moment when Mao Zedong’s cult of personality accidentally popularized an obsession with mangoes in China.

• Two fetal burials discovered in Iran are being examined.

• In the Early Modern period in Europe, attempts to understand cancer led to one doctor tasting a growth… and dying.

• What was the racialized myth of the Basque Sheepherder, and how did it impact immigration to the US?

  

• A closer look at Claudette Colvin, a teen who refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus. She came up briefly in the Rosa Parks episode.

• In Oregon, early evidence of sewn hide was discovered in a cave.

• Was the world’s oldest alphabet just discovered in Syria?

• A reflection on when coffee was so controversial in 16th-century Islam that poets began weighing in.

• A Roman shipwreck has been discovered off the coast of southern Italy.

  • And a Roman carriage ornament was discovered in England.

• This sounds like it could be another object lesson like the one I posted earlier this week: A mysterious medieval tunnel was found under a Neolithic monument in Germany.

• In Russia, 20,000 silver coins were discovered while restoring a merchant’s house.

• Looking back on the Medieval Climate Anomaly is helping scientists understand today’s wildfire-prone climate.

• An important look at how communal memory helped shape Chile’s democratic rebirth after Augustus Pinochet’s dictatorship fell in 1990.

• Debates about whether people could love the two Js—Japan and Jesus—raged for centuries.

• As a woman, I love my little mental health walks, and Laura Secord’s is kind of an inspiration.

• I would give anything to visit this space race theme park from the 1960s.

• The birth of Dada in February 1916 is an anniversary worth celebrating.

• Remember when Renaissance Florence tried to encourage prostitution by building a new neighborhood and a nunnery for retirement?

Over the holidays, I began to write a story with the Verona Astrolabe at its center. I’ve been obsessed with this artifact since I first read about it while doing my weekly history roundup (all the way back in 2024, for roundup #52!). Astrolabes are basically ancient pocket computers: Devices that can calculate time, distance, plot the position of the stars, predict sunrise and sunset times, and so much more. Each one is incredible—and was incredibly valuable—for just that reason.

They were created in the Islamic world in roughly 200 CE, then spread west along the Mediterranean throughout the Medieval Era (500-1500 CE, more or less). They fell out of use as the sextant rose in popularity in the 16th and 17th centuries, but until then, they were expensive and useful items relied upon by travelers, political leaders, and scholars.

When it comes to writing historical fiction, this alone is pretty useful, right? As long as your character(s) know how to use it, they can easily travel, tell the future, and find a hidden treasure. (If this isn’t already the plot of one of the Indiana Jones movies, give it a few years.)

All that is great. But the Verona Astrolabe is special. It’s incredibly rare, not just because these tools were delicate and tended to get lost, but because it shows evidence of adaptation over time. This astrolabe was initially made for Arabic-speakers and readers around Toledo, Spain, which was a unique center for religious tolerance and scholarly exchange in the Late Medieval Era. Jews, Christians, and Muslims shared the city and coexisted peacefully alongside each other (most of the time; there are exceptions, of course).

Later in its life, someone translated the writing on the astrolabe from Arabic into Hebrew, implying that the astrolabe moved out of the communities of al-Andalus (Muslim-ruled Spain) into Jewish communities that didn’t speak or read Arabic (so, not Sephardic communities). Those translations were made in the 11th or 12th centuries, and then more translations, this time into Western numerals, were made later for someone who didn’t speak or read Hebrew or Arabic.1 By this point, the astrolabe had probably arrived in Verona, where Dr. Gigante found it in a museum’s recent acquisitions documentation.

Rediscovering the Verona Astrolabe

All of that detail is why I wanted to highlight it as an Object Lesson. It’s not just that the astrolabe is cool and useful, of course, but the journey it represents, the collaboration. It is a significant artifact representing Toledo, this haven of religious tolerance, however brief that moment was. There’s a story here, clearly! But we may never know the full details. Imagining them is what historical fiction is great at.

To use this astrolabe to write some historical fiction, we can start by imagining the answers to these questions:

• Who originally made it and why? Was it a gift, or did someone wealthy order it?

• After that, who used it? The maker? Did a friend or family member inherit it? Did they think of the maker fondly every time they looked at it, or were they bad at using it, leading them to resent the maker?

• When did it change hands and why? Did it leave Toledo before the 1492 expulsion of non-Christians from Spain? Who took it, and why?

• What was it used for? Did someone rely on it to travel safely on a long journey? Did they use it to tell fortunes in secret? Did a scholar rely on it for calculations?

• How did it help or hurt people—even the ones who didn’t use it? Did it make someone long for an escape or hate what the stars suggested for them? Did it lead a family home or a loved one away?

• Can the astrolabe hold the answer to a question, the answer someone has been searching for all along?

• Did the people who wrote the Hebrew and Western numeral inscriptions know the original Arabic creator? Were they friends, rivals, enemies? Was it a single family, journeying from Toledo to Verona over generations?

Obviously, there are more questions we could ask of it—more specific ones, follow-ups, etc. For example, we could ask if the tool is magic and explore a historical fantasy thread. Or we could ask if it’s part of a larger conspiracy and become the next Dan Brown. Whatever your genre is, answering those questions can help you build the foundations of a story.

In the story I’ve been working on, my characters steal this astrolabe to gain admittance to a secret society. Their journey to get from where they stole it from to the secret society is long, and on the way, they realize the tool is more useful than the people they’d give it to. At some point, they scratch in the Hebrew markings to make it easier for them all to use equally and form their own team.

To be clear: You can do this with any historical artifact. I think this one is particularly fascinating because it highlights a moment in time outside the norm of Medieval European society as we think of it, but you can do the same exercise with shoes, a hairpin, or a map.

If you’re up for it, imagine the answers to some of those questions in the comments below.

Leave a comment

I hope you’re staying warm wherever you are! This cold weather is nothing to mess with, but it seems like the power grids are holding so far in Texas, so I’m hopeful that will continue to be the case.

This week, I published a review of The House of Barbary, a retelling of Bluebeard set in 17th-century Switzerland. Absolutely worth checking out if you’re interested in fairytale retellings.

Also, just wanted to give everyone a quick heads up that there will not be a round-up next week because I will be visiting friends. I’ll be back on February 8th!

Now, this week in history acting unruly in the news…

• My favorite of the week: Welcome to Belalp Hexe, the witch’s skiing descent and festival of Switzerland. This just made my bucket list; I must attend someday.

• Runner up: We’re in a nostalgic moment—just look at the 2016 trend on social media, not to mention that nostalgia is the foundation of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign. But there are moments through history when nostalgia was considered a medical issue. The treatments could be brutal.

• Fascinating: A history of tribology, or how friction has made human history.

• A history of feminisms and the (futile?) search for the one true feminism.

• Take a look at the history of the Chinese zodiac.

  

• The world’s oldest known rock art was just discovered in Indonesia. It is about 3,000 years older than the European rock art previously thought to be the oldest in the world.

• On the same island (Sulawesi), new evidence also suggests that modern humans lived alongside a species of human that is now extinct.

• Learn about the enslaved gardener who transformed pecans into a cash crop—and the other unsung heroes of modern biology.

• In Nineveh (modern-day Iraq), King Ashurbanipal amassed one of the largest libraries in the world by being absolutely ruthless.

• We’re still rounding up 2025 with this list of the most incredible archaeological discoveries of the year.

• Early modern pregnancy and the men desperate to control it.

• A question I didn’t know we were asking: What really happened in the final days of George V’s life?

• How did men’s legs become markers of class, civility, and sexuality?

  

• Can the basilica that inspired Notre-Dame be restored to its former glory?

• What do we do with coywolves and other animals that escape easy classification?

• The Longchamp Affair, or an early debate about American citizenship.

• Assuming all is good and above board, I’m happy to see this: Members of the Rappahannock tribe are working with archaeologists to document the rivers they call home, but were separated from with the arrival of European settlers.

  • This reminds me of part of Is A River Alive?, which I cannot stop recommending. One of my favorite reads last year and an urgently necessary one today.

• High-status Anglo-Saxon buildings dating to 750 CE were found in Northern England near Skipsea Castle.

• A 500,000-year-old elephant bone tool that has been languishing in an archive since 1990 has finally been identified.

• Mummified cheetahs were just found in caves in Saudi Arabia, where none currently live in the wild.

• Two 2,400-year-old tombs and a shrine (maybe!) have been found in Rome.

• New fossil discoveries are encouraging scientists at the University of Chicago to rethink early hominin species.

• When did the Reformation actually end?

• The long history of technologically-assisted writing.

• Speaking of anxiety about Chat-GPT, here’s a history of how filmmakers created fake images before computer technology rose to help them.