History Fix

In 1911 Shipbuilder magazine featured an ocean liner under construction in Belfast, Ireland. It was called Titanic and it was the largest moveable object ever built. With new state of the art technology, the magazine claimed Titanic was “practically unsinkable,” a reputation that stuck… until April of 1912 when the RMS Titanic began its maiden voyage from Southampton, England to New York harbor. F...

“Downton Abbey” is a popular period drama set in Edwardian England that details the life of the Crawley family, their motley crew of servants and of course Dame Maggie Smith playing the ever witty and sharp tongued granny. Love her. But Downton, with its iconic Gothic facade is a real place. It’s actually called Highclere Castle and, did you know the real story of its inhabitants is truly stranger...

“Murder is murder whether committed by the villain skulking in the dark or by uniformed men stepping to the strains of martial music. Murder is murder and somebody must answer.” Those are the words of John G Burnett, a translator for the US Army during the forced removal of indigenous Americans that took place between 1830 and 1850. During this “displacement,” tens of thousands of indigenous peopl...

In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue. I’m sure you’re familiar with the singsong mnemonic meant for remembering the year Christopher Columbus stumbled upon islands in the Caribbean. This set off a chain reaction of European exploration that transformed two continents. But did you know Viking explorers actually reached North America 500 years before Columbus? Let’s fix that.  Sources:  https://ww...

Computer science is a field completely dominated by men. Charles Babbage, Alan Turing, Tim Berners-Lee, Steve Jobs, the list goes on and on. But on that list, pretty high up on that list is Ada Lovelace. Although the world overlooked her contributions for an entire century, did you know the very first computer programmer was actually a woman? Let’s fix that.  Sources:  Biography.com Encyclopedia B...

He was said to embody the devil himself - extraordinarily tall with a wild black beard and hair tied up with lit fuses. His eyes, like embers, burned with a demonic glow and even the fiercest of men cowered at the sight of his flag. History paints Blackbeard as one of the most feared pirates of the seven seas, but did you know there’s no evidence that he actually killed anyone? Let’s fix that.  So...

Roughly 5 stories beneath the streets of Paris you’ll find the bones of over 6 million people stacked in neat rows and arranged in grotesquely intricate designs. The Paris Catacombs attract over 500,000 visitors each year, but do you know why such a shockingly morbid site exists? Let’s fix that. Sources:  https://www.catacombes.paris.fr/en/history ​​ https://lister.history.ox.ac.uk/index-page_id=4...