History Shorts: snippets of local history

This article is republished with permission from The Conversation How taking a closer look at your family tree can help you get to grips with climate change By  Flossie Kingsbury , Aberystwyth University Engaging people when it comes to climate change can be challenging. Climate conversations are often technical and dry, making it hard to see how it connects to our own lives. As a historical researcher I’ve been figuring out how we can make this connection clearer, and believe that taking a look at our family histories might hold the answer. Tracing our ancestors’ connections to colonialism and industrialisation can help us personally connect with the climate crisis. Photo: Pixabay While climate change might seem abstract or distant, our own history is inherently personal. Tracing a family tree can show how historical events, including those that influenced climate change , altered life courses. Through pilot research with my own family tree, I’ve found that family history can be a

The former Bank of Ireland building at the corner of Belfast's Royal Avenue and North Street has been called one of the finest Modernist buildings in Ireland. Finished in what was presumably once bright white Portland limestone, this Art Deco wonder was built from 1928-1930 and was Grade B+ listed in 1990. It was designed by the architect Joseph Vincent Downes for the Dublin-based firm of McDonnell & Dixon, a practice responsible for many bank and office buildings of different styles in Ireland from the 1900s and which is still in business today! Despite its status, and like so many of the buildings on nearby North Street, the Bank of Ireland building in Belfast seemed destined to fall into a state of disrepair after its closure in 2005.  Thankfully it seems like the bank is to get a new lease of life as part of a significant new tourism and cultural regeneration investment by none other than Belfast City Council. I, for one, will be keen to visit when it opens again in 2028!

This fascinating article describes the effects of a Tunguska-sized airburst over the ancient city of Tall el-Hammam. It was originally published in The Conversation... A giant space rock demolished an ancient Middle Eastern city and everyone in it – possibly inspiring the Biblical story of Sodom Artist’s evidence-based depiction of the blast, which had the power of 1,000 Hiroshimas. Allen West and Jennifer Rice , CC BY-ND Christopher R. Moore , University of South Carolina As the inhabitants of an ancient Middle Eastern city now called Tall el-Hammam went about their daily business one day about 3,600 years ago, they had no idea an unseen icy space rock was speeding toward them at about 38,000 mph (61,000 kph). Flashing through the atmosphere, the rock exploded in a massive fireball about 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) above the ground. The blast was around 1,000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima atomic bomb. The shocked city dwellers wh

Being Anglo-Saxon was a question of language and culture, not genetics, a new study by archaeologists at the University of Sydney and Simon Fraser University in Vancouver highlights. New findings based on studying skeletal remains clearly indicates the Anglo-Saxons were a melting pot of people from both migrant and local cultural groups and not one homogenous group from Western Europe. Professor Keith Dobney at the University of Sydney said the team's results indicate that "the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of early Medieval Britain were strikingly similar to contemporary Britain - full of people of different ancestries sharing a common language and culture". The Anglo-Saxon (or early medieval) period in England runs from the 5th-11th centuries AD. Early Anglo-Saxon dates from around 410-660 AD - with migration occurring throughout all but the final 100 years (ie 410-560AD). Studying ancient skulls Published in PLOS ONE , the collaborative study by Professor Dobney at University o

This is the first in what I hope will be a regular series highlighting new history and archaeology research from around the world, the common denominator being that I find them particularly interesting! New research provides definitive evidence that modern humans were on the Atlantic coast of modern-day Portugal at a time when, if present at all, Neanderthal populations would have been extremely sparse. The discovery has important ramifications for our understanding of the process of modern human dispersal and replacement of Neanderthal populations. The results support a very rapid, unimpeded dispersal of modern humans across western Eurasia and support the notion that climate and environmental change played a significant role in the process. According to the findings, modern humans probably arrived in the westernmost part of Europe 41,000 - 38,000 years ago, about 5,000 years earlier than previously known. An international team of researchers revealed the discovery of stone tools used

The Covid-19 lockdown and economic downturn have affected most strands of society, including museums and other cultural venues. How can they remain relevant in a post pandemic world while trying to generate much needed income? A dynamic digital offering is one answer. London Transport Museum is trying just that with a series of 'virtual' tours from its Hidden London portfolio ; in effect, an intimate series of Zoom meetings focused on two disused underground stations that can't be visited in real life. At £30 a head, these aren't particularly cheap but I couldn't resist buying a ticket to find out if an online visit was worth it. I chose a visit to Brompton Road, a Leslie Green designed station on the Piccadilly line which was open to passengers between 1906 and 1934 (the other available tour is of King William Street station). Passenger numbers at Brompton Road were lower than expected for a station initially built with four lifts (it gradually lost these and other

Familiar, but not mundane They are among our most familiar items of street furniture; indeed there are more than 115,000 throughout the UK. Yet how many of us walk past a post box without considering how long it might have been there? Pillar boxes have been a feature of our streets since the 1850s, when demand for postal services grew following the introduction of the Penny Post in 1840. The novelist Anthony Trollope is remembered as the Post Office official responsible for recommending the introduction of pillar boxes to allow easier posting of private letters. These were first installed on the Channel Islands in 1852, though were introduced to the mainland the following year. Early boxes were green, but red had become the standard colour by 1879. Here are a selection of boxes bearing the VR cipher of Queen Victoria, a little slice of everyday Victorian history. Abingdon (Conduit Road): Abingdon (St Helen's Wharf): Appleton: Bangor (Wales): Great Yarmouth: