History Notes

Andy Warhol’s 32 Campbell’s Soup Cans have become a canonical symbol of American Pop Art. Warhol, an American commercial illustrator from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania turned fine artist, author, publisher, painter, and film director, first showed the work on July 9, 1962 in the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles, California. It was his first solo exhibition. Written by Brenna Miller. Narration by Dr. Nichol...

Created by writer Joe Simon and artist Jack Kirby in the eponymous Captain America Comics #1, the patriotic hero became a breakout star for Timely Comics. Written by R. Joseph Parrott. Narration by Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle. Video production by Cody Patton, Laura Seeger, and Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle. A textual version of this video is available at https://origins.osu.edu/milestones/captain-americ...

Barely three years after independence from British colonial rule, Nigeria, the most populous nation in Africa, collapsed into a civil war.   Written and narrated by Ousman Murzik Kobo. Audio production by Svetlana Ter-Grigoryan, Laura Seeger, and Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle.  A textual version of this video is available at https://origins.osu.edu/milestones/nigerian-civil-war-biafra-anniversary .  ...

Between 1946-1948, around 1,500 people in Guatemala—including prisoners, soldiers, prostitutes, psychiatric patients, and children—were enrolled without consent in unethical studies related to the testing and treatment of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) including syphilis, gonorrhea and chancroid. Written by Lydia Dixon. Narration by Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle. Audio production by Cody Patto...

In July 1956, the international order was disrupted by the Suez Crisis, a complicated imbroglio marked by the intersection of European decolonization, the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Cold War, and the growth of U.S. power. Written by Peter Hahn. Narration by Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle. Video production by Laura Seeger and Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle. A textual version of this video is available at htt...

World War II was a total war—a mobilization of nearly all human and natural resources. That meant it was also a war that shaped and was shaped by nature. Written by Thomas B. Robertson. Narration by Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle. Audio production by Cody Patton, Laura Seeger, and Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle. A textual version of this podcast is available at https://origins.osu.edu/connecting-history/nat...

The region of western Ukraine makes up just a small percentage of the territory and population of present-day Ukraine, but has historically played an outsized role in the 20th century struggles for control of eastern Europe.    Written by Kathryn David. Narration by Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle. Audio production by Svetlana Ter-Grigoryan, Laura Seeger, and Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle. A textu...

On July 21, 1969, American astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first human being to set foot on an entirely different world. His famous words crackled across 238,900 miles of space and electrified those listening back home on Earth: “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.”   Written by Lisa Ruth Rand. Narration by Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle. Audio production by Cody Pat...

The Second Opium War not only forced that narcotic drug deep into China’s politics, public health, and economics but also cemented the country’s status as both a prize and a battleground for Euro-American imperialist powers. Written by Miriam Kingsberg Kadia. Narration by Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle. Audio production by Svetlana Ter-Grigoryan, Laura Seeger and Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle. A textual ve...

It is undeniable that some individuals do change the course of history through sheer force of will – not to mention a remarkable degree of luck. Such a person was Liu Bang, who rose from obscurity to be crowned emperor of China 2215 years ago on the 28th of February, 202 BCE.   Written by Benjamin Breen. Narration by Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle. Audio production by Cody Patton, Laura Seeger and...

Süleyman, who would be known to the west as “the Magnificent,” began his reign as sultan of the Ottoman Empire in September 1520. Written by Colin Jude Murtha. Narration by Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle. A textual version of this video is available at https://origins.osu.edu/milestones/suleyman-suleiman-the-magnificent-ottoman-empire Audio production by Cody Patton, Laura Seeger and Dr. Nicholas B. Br...

When the Second World War (WWII) ended in 1945 and the rest of Europe was beginning to rebuild itself, Greece entered into a second war, more vicious than that fought against the Axis powers.  Written by Amikam Nachmani. Narration by Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle.  The author dedicates this video in memory of Prof. Andre Gerolymatos (1951-2019).   A textual version of this video is avai...

December 16, 1971 marked the end of the Bangladesh Liberation War, a short-lived conflict between India and Pakistan that established the People’s Republic of Bangladesh from the territory of the former province of East Pakistan. Written by Eric A. Strahorn. Narration by Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle. A textual version of this video is available at https://origins.osu.edu/milestones/bangladesh-liberat...

Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring shocked the American public when it was published in the summer of 1962. Carson hooked readers by describing a fictional town where spring no longer marked the singing of birds, the buzzing of bees, or the laughter of children.    Written by Cody Patton. Narration by Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle.  A textual version of this video is available at https://ori...

Architecture is a way of understanding the world: recording its history, sharing its culture, and connecting with people. We need to consider Ukraine’s architecture during war first and foremost because it is important to the Ukrainian people. Ukrainians are not only fighting for the right to live on their territory, they are fighting to preserve their heritage and collective memory. Written and n...

Although Americans today may take the tactical and operational brilliance of their military forces for granted, such has not always been the case. Perhaps no historical event illustrates the potential disaster awaiting military forces put in a hopeless strategic situation than the fall of the Philippines in the spring of 1942.   Written by Peter Mansoor. Narration by Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle...

On a summer day in August 1920, in the middle of war, a group of Ukrainians performed Macbeth. In these wartime conditions, they did a play about the murder of a king and the ensuing chaos and devastation, painfully relevant to all audiences who had endured not only World War I, but also the fierce battles for control of this region after the Romanov and Habsburg empires collapsed. Audiences and a...

The war cost tens of thousands of lives, civilian and warrior alike. It was a war of atrocity, massacre, and systematic violence. By the end, a few thousand Spaniards under the command of Hernando Cortés fighting alongside many times more Indigenous warriors from places like Tlaxcala and Huexotzinco had destroyed one of the greatest cities of the early modern world, the seat of the Aztec Empire. W...

When Ukrainian troops liberated the town of Borodyanka from Russian occupation in early April, 2022 they discovered the damage done to its Taras Shevchenko monument. Bullets had hit the great poet’s forehead. The pillar holding him up had been damaged by shells.  The symbolism of the Russian attack on the monument was obvious. Taras Shevchenko is not just the founder of the modern Ukrainian l...

The decade of war and revolution between 1914 and 1924 is critical for understanding both Russian and Ukrainian statehood up to the present day.  Written by Joshua A. Sanborn. Narration by Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle. A textual version of this video is available at https://origins.osu.edu/read/ukraine-war-and-revolution. This is a production of Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective...

When the Russian Empire collapsed in 1917 during World War I, the lands of today’s Ukraine became a battleground of violence and instability until 1922. Multiple communities of former tsarist imperial subjects imagined the future in radically different ways. Written by Mayhill Fowler. Narration by Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle. A textual version of this video is available at origins.osu.edu/read/sovie...

Emily Channell-Justice explores the goals and lived experiences of Ukraine’s watershed Euromaidan protests of 2013-14. The dreams, values, and actions of Maidan’s heroes remain a driving force in Ukraine’s perseverance today, and they will empower Ukrainians to rebuild their country after the war.  Written and narrated by Emily Channell-Justice. A textual version of this video is available at...

On January 1st, 1818, Mary Shelley, at age nineteen, published the gothic novel Frankenstein . The novel dramatizes the clash of two cultures—the Enlightenment that celebrated reason and science and the Romantic age that celebrated passion and art. Our video highlights how Mary Shelley's family and those around her influenced her creation of the novel. Written by Stephen Kern. Narration by Dr. Nic...

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine has returned to its pre-revolutionary position as a major agricultural exporter of key commodities. With Russia currently controlling a large portion of Ukraine’s cultivated agricultural land in the south, as well as blockading ports on the Black Sea, a significant amount of grain for export is stranded in Ukraine.    Written by Ian...

The Russian government’s rationale for the war in Ukraine is not about oil, coal, or natural resources. It is about asserting specious historical claims. However, It is important to understand the history of Rus to place this conflict in its proper historical context.    Written by Christian Raffensperger. Narration by Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle. A textual version of this video is availab...