A Day In History

Homo habilis is one of the first members chronologically of the Homo family. It stands at the base of our family tree and is considered one of the first real tool users. At one point thought the be the direct ancestor of modern humans; the importance of a proven, evidenced beginning point to our evolutionary branch cannot be overstated. Whether that is Homo habilis is, as always, debated. When we...

The Great Depression in the United States of America, commenced very suddenly with the crash to the stock market in 1929. This sent the country into a severe economic crisis which lasted from 1929 until 1939, the effects of which saw people suddenly losing their jobs, income, homes and overall livelihoods. Up to one quarter of the population became unemployed and for others, wages were cut up to 6...

Homo Naledi – does it form part of our earliest ancestors or is it simply a different species, a close relative alongside our ancestors? Can we with any credibility and surety say that Homo Naledi formed part of the evolution process of modern humans or was it merely a different species within the Homo genome, which followed its own parallel branch? These questions lead to a far greater question,...

When Did Slavery Start? The Origins of Slavery. The history of slavery is as long as the history of humanity and spans almost every single culture and ethnicity. As long as humans have had civilisation, we’ve had ways to subjugate each other. Basically, we all suck. Welcome to A Day In History! Long before the ancient Greeks, Romans, Persians and other civilisations, were even older ones, with few...

History is truthechoed through the hallways of time, breathing in the memories of many, livingon in through the shape of presentday society which it has chiseled, the past resonating in the present. History contains the experiences of many, it is our stories – the essence of which make us human. Today we will be going on a journey, back into the Gulag of the Soviet Union, we will allow the prisone...

“Hold the cross high, so I may see it through the flames” – these are the haunting final words uttered by our crossdressing female patron saint of France. The notorious ‘Maid of Orléans’or more widely known as Joan of Arcis perhaps one of the most controversial characters in all French history, her story, shrouded in mystery and still finds us questioning more than 600 years later. Was she merely...

In recent years historians have established that slavery during the Viking era was far more common than once believed. And it is during this era that for the first time, Scandinavians made the capture and use of slaves a key part of their economy and military campaigns. In fact, some historians now argue that the Vikings were responsible for more human trafficking in the period 7501050 C.E, than a...

Denisovan is the term for a group of Hominins that thrived in the middle of the Pleistocene and covered some of the most populated areas in modern history. From frozen mountains to tropical islands, blizzards to beaches this group lived throughout Eurasia, Australia, and many Pacific Islands. Using mitochondrial DNA scientists can track past migrations of Denisovans and even tell us where their le...

The Trail of Tears refers to the forced displacement of what white American colonizers called “The Five Civilised Tribes”.Over twenty years between 1830 and 1850; somewhere around 60,000 to 100,000 Native Americans were forced from their homes into the land the new Government had decided would be “Indian Territory”. During their removal, countless died from exposure, disease, and starvation. Their...

Once upon a time, our species of humans – homo sapiens were not the only ones to walk the earth. The homo genome has been found in multiple subspecies and the estimations on how many other human species there were changes with new evidence found. But there is an accepted 9 to 12 subspecies of humans most archaeologists and scientists agree on. They are included but not limited to homo habilis, hom...

Throughout history, the word plague has invariably been used to describe any infectious disease, but today it refers specifically to the bacterial infection of the strain Yersinia pestis: commonly known as bubonic plague. As human populations in the Middle Ages expanded but medical knowledge failed to progress from the times of the Ancient Greeks, great sweeping outbreaks of infectious disease wer...

The Aztecs were a civilisation who lived in Central Mexico from 1300 to 1521. History has painted the Aztecs as a strange civilisation, one capable of great intelligence and architectural marvels, who simultaneously worshipped a bunch of strange, angry gods and routinely ritually sacrificed each other to them. A lot of our beliefs about the Aztecs trace back to 1519 and the Spanish conquerors of t...

From the lowest slaves to the highestranking ministers, for almost four thousand years eunuchs were a presence in courts across the world. As a social class of trusted servants, eunuchs served Egyptian pharaohs, Chinese emperors, middleeastern kings, caliphates and sultans, and in many places became wellrespected confidants, advisors, generals and patriarchs. But their unique position often led to...

Wife Selling in Victorian EnglandRemember the show wife swap? Well, that was basically Victorian England. Even now in some communities and religions, divorce is looked down upon as unsavoury, or wrong, and great lengths are taken to avoid it. So go back a few hundred years and add on the British sense of propriety, traditional values and the belief that women were property and you can imagine the...

During the medieval period, imposing castles were scattered all over Europe and the Middle East, overlooking the towns or villages they controlled, and housing a powerful king or noble. To any invading force or envious rival, a strong castle was essential in projecting the force its occupant held. Before the medieval period, the Western Roman Empire had long enjoyed power across the continent than...

For 3000 years, Egypt was a titan of the Mediterranean region. Ruled by a King or Queen, using the title of Pharaoh, they enjoyed almost limitless power and wealth. But by the time Julius Caesar dominated the Roman Republic as dictator, Egypt was a shadow of its former glory. As Rome stretched its influence over the country, civil war and a vicious power grab erupted. Aided by the Pharaoh Cleopatr...

Beyond the courts and castles of the lords, kings and emperors, life in the medieval period for most was tough and gruelling. Keeping the higher classes rich, and the bigger cities fed, the peasants toiled from sunrise to sunset, often little more than slaves. With long days of backbreaking work, oppressive masters, barely enough food to survive, terrible living conditions, and waves of disease, t...

The Roman Empire, in some form or another, existed for around 1500 years, rising from the Ancient Italian capital and going on to dominate Europe and the Mediterranean. Stretching from Britain in the West to Iran in the East and North Africa in the south, the empire was forever at war maintaining and expanding its gigantic borders. This made the life of a Roman soldier a tough and dangerous one, t...

Long before other human subspecies like the Neanderthals, Denisovans and homo sapiens came the homo erectus, the first real example of a human species. Although homo erectus could be split into multiple subspecies categories due to the length of their existence it’s not incorrect to refer to them all simply as homo erectus, so for ease in this video, we will be referring to the species as a whole...

While remembered today simply as the katanawielding Japanese warriors of old, the life of a samurai was actually far more complex. For 700 years, the samurai were the ruling political power in Japan, serving as a noble military class, embracing their culture as a strict lifestyle on and off the battlefield. Experts in martial arts, swordsmanship, horseback riding, and archery, an honourable samura...

In the year 536 AD, a major global event saw the world plunged into darkness and despair. Temperatures plummeted, crops failed, people starved, and the colder climate became the perfect breeding ground for disease. Modern scholars have called 536, not just a terrible year in human history, but perhaps the worst year to ever be alive. It began the coldest decade in 2500 years and its effects were s...

One of the most commonly held misconceptions about ancient Egypt is that slaves were used to build the pyramids. But recent archaeological evidence has found that this is not true, and it’s now suggested it was either farmers who built the pyramids when flooding meant they could not work on their own lands or that a workforce of labourers dedicated their entire lives to the task. That’s not to say...

A Day In The Life Of A Soldier At The Battle Of StalingradOn the 23rd August 1942, the Axis Powers led by Nazi Germany entered the Soviet city of Stalingrad. Hitler expected a quick victory, but almost 5 months of fighting later, the Battle of Stalingrad proved the beginning of the end for Hitler’s Nazi Germany, and was one of the bloodiest in the entire Second World War. At its end, there were al...

The Ottoman Empire is one of the largest and longest running Empires in history, spanning 623 years from 1299 to 1922; and 3 continents including the Balkans in SouthEastern Europe, Arabia and Central Asia, and coastal Northern Africa. Like many great empires that came before it, the Ottoman Empire was based on slavery, but unlike most examples of slavery, in the Ottoman Empire, slaves were white....

A Brief History Of How Homo Sapiens Survived The Last IceAgeThe last Ice Age was during the palaeolithic and early Mesolithic periods of human history, beginning 100,000 years ago and ending 25,000 years ago, By the time it was over, homo sapiens were the only human species to have survived its brutal conditions. First of all – what was the Ice Age? The Ice Age or Last Glacial Period was the time...