Новости за 21.05.2018

The Salem witchcraft trials of the 1690s continue to resonate in American political and popular culture as is evident in the almost daily tweets of President Donald Trump that investigations into collusion between the Russian government and the 2016 Trump Presidential campaign are a hoax and part of a contemporary witch hunt. Trump seeks to discredit investigators by identifying himself with the innocent victims of the Salem witchcraft accusations and executions who are celebrated in such literary... Читать дальше...

Major Rudolf “Rudy” Anderson

The stretch of thirteen now infamous days beginning in mid-October 1962 were the most dangerous in the history of mankind. This was when the world’s two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, appeared on a collision course toward thermo nuclear disaster. This dramatic event followed the frightening discovery by American reconnaissance pilots that the Russians were installing medium range ballistic missile (MRBM) sites on the island of Cuba. But while all-out war... Читать дальше...

Oxford University Press has never forgiven me for something I did as a second-year undergraduate at Oxford. May McIsack, in the fifth volume of the prestigious Oxford History of England series, stated that in the early Fourteenth Century the revenues of Gascony added up to more than the revenues of England. I explained to my tutor that the revenues of Gascony would only be £456 11shillings more than the revenues of England if the pound, or livre, of Gascony was worth the same as the English pound... Читать дальше...

Maurice Jackson is an Associate Professor of History and African American Studies and Affiliated Professor of Music (Jazz) at Georgetown University. He is the author of Let This Voice Be Heard: Anthony Benezet, Father of Atlantic Abolitionism, co-editor with Jackie Bacon ofAfrican-Americans and the Haitian Revolution, co-editor with Susan Kozel of Quakers and their Allies in the Abolitionist Cause, 1754-1808and co-editor with Blair Ruble of DC JAZZ: Stories of Jazz Music in Washington, DC.

A BBC report about a raid on a Nigeria "baby factory,"selling infants for adoption, trafficked for prostitution, and worse, probably shocked and horrified listeners. How many of them, I wondered, knew the history of American baby selling. In the post World War II baby boom years families wanting babies to adopt quickly learned there weren't enough to go around and those with the means turned to baby brokers operating outside or on the edges of the law.

Tea House, Kew Gardens, burned by suffragettes

Parliament Square in London is filled with statues of the famous. But there is no gender balance; all the statues are of men. This year, at last, the male exclusivity is to be broken. A statue has been commissioned of Millicent Fawcett, a leader of the campaign to secure votes for British women.

Fawcett had to wait a long time for recognition. This year is the hundredth anniversary of the Act of Parliament which first granted votes to women. Читать дальше...

Murray Polner, formerly HNN's senior book review editor, blogs at There's No There There. He is the author of No Victory Parades: The Return of the Vietnam Veteran, Branch Rickey: A Biography, and co-editor of We Who Dared Say No To War.

The 48th Vice President of the United States, Mike Pence, has been a miserable disappointment in so many ways. He is certainly no Gerald Ford, who faced a similar situation as the Vice President during the last eight months of the Watergate Scandal under Richard Nixon from December 1973 to August 1974.

HNN Topics:  What's being said on social media and elsewhere 

• Trump's First State of the Union Address 1/30/18
• Mueller Investigation
• JFK Files
• Statues Debate
• Vietnam War Documentary by Ken Burns & Lynn Novick
• 9-11
• Columbus Day
• Books
• Arts
• Women in the News
• Black History
• Gun Violence
• Impeachment
• Peace Talks in Korea
• Trump Nixes Iran Deal: What Historians Are Saying

This... Читать дальше...

Related Link The North Korean Nuclear Crisis in History (Interviews with Mitch Lerner and David Fields)

“Love is in the air” as the world awaits Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding on Saturday. But love is not the only emotion – for where tabloid press photographers are concerned, there is also a lot of fear and loathing. 

The first printing of food stamps. Washington, D.C., April 20, 1939.

As Congress debates the 2018 Farm Bill, a major priority for some Republicans has been changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), often still called food stamps. In particular there has been a push for stricter work requirements, mirroring welfare reform efforts from the 1990s. The amendment for stricter work requirements would put a time limit on how long SNAP clients could substitute job training for work... Читать дальше...

At the end of February, Americans following the national debate over gun control were treated to a surreal sight: worshipers at a church north of Philadelphia called the World Peace and Unification Sanctuary arrived for a blessing ceremony carryingAR-15 rifles. In the wake of a series of civilian shootings, this seemed wildly, even intentionally, provocative: political, some said, rather than really religious. That, of course, depends on where the boundaries of “religious” and “political” lie. Читать дальше...

Sir John Gilbert's 1849 painting: The Plays of Shakespeare, containing scenes and characters from several of William Shakespeare's plays.

The minister feared for the children. Acknowledging the difficulties of raising them “at a time and in a place filled with obstacles and perils,” his sermon deplored new media, which produced “a constant flood of poisonous matter” dangerous to youth. 

Despite considerable media attention paid to Vladimir Putin and Russia’s meddling in American and European politics, the centennial of the Russian Revolution has failed to register on the radar screen of American politics and culture. Academic historians, however, have addressed the Bolshevik anniversary with a number of scholarly volumes which shed some light on the Russian experience and should expand understanding of a nation and society with whom the United States has experienced an adversarial... Читать дальше...

What do Russians think of Donald Trump? Does their thinking contain any insights about him?

In 2012, then candidate for president Mitt Romney declared that Russia was the United States’ “number one geopolitical foe.” In response, Romney’s opponent, President Barack Obama, mocked him mercilessly, taunting, “The 1980’s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back.” For her part, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton opined that, “It’s somewhat dated to be looking backwards.” The press also pounced, including the prestigious New York Times: “His comments display either a shocking... Читать дальше...

Google the words “Trump” and “legitimacy.” As of this writing, there are 686,000 hits, including articles from the New Yorker, Vox,US News and World Report, Politico, the Washington Post, Real Clear Politics, and the Atlantic,eachchallenging or reporting on the political legitimacy of Donald J. Trump. But concerns about legitimacy aren’t one sided. Googling “Robert S. Muller,” often cast as an opposition figure to Trump, and the word “legitimacy” will yield 1,070,000 hits, including articles from theWashington Post... Читать дальше...

Sherif Hussein's son, Emir Abdullah (seated), Hussein Ruhi (far left) and Colonel Cyril Wilson at Jeddah (used with permission from OUP)

In 1770 Boston, a 17-year-old prodigy and autodidact who’d taught herself Greek, Latin, and the principles of prosody wrote an elegy for the most famous preacher in the colonies, an Anglican minister in the growing Methodist tradition named George Whitfield. The poet’s homage to Whitfield, whom she may have heard speak in Boston as he made his tour throughout the colonies from northern New England to Savannah Georgia, and deep into the western frontier, was “exceptionally popular” as the literary critic Henry Louis Gates writes... Читать дальше...

1902 Life magazine cover, depicting water curing by U.S. troops in the Philippines

Every American President from 1901 to 2017, Republican and Democratic, conservative or progressive or moderate, Theodore Roosevelt to Barack Obama, has advanced America domestically in a multitude of ways. Some have contributed more domestic reform than others, but all nineteen of them changed the role of the federal government and the Presidency in a positive manner.

This week the nomination of Gina Haspel to lead the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is expected to go to the Senate for a floor vote. In the maneuvering surrounding this nomination an assortment of reasons have been advanced—by Ms. Haspel herself, senators, and pundits—for why she ought to be confirmed despite the fact that she has not acknowledged her participation in the CIA torture program or forthrightly answered questions about it. These assorted rationales are misleading and here’s why.