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Tag Archives: History

Ever since I was a child, I have been fascinated by history and archaeology. I think humans perceive the past as a series of events; something like a movie that we can’t really feel or touch. I believe the things that bring us closer to the past are those that truly humanize us – the bodies from Pompeii, the perfectly preserved Inca mummies, the personal objects of those long gone, and more.

I’ve always thought how incredible it would be to see historical events and people the way they actually happened and the way they actually looked. I started Royalty Now in February of 2019, simply as a way for me to see my favorite historical figure, Anne Boleyn, as a modern woman. I wanted to know if she could come to life from the few pale, flat portraits we have of her. I started the account to satisfy my own curiosity about what members of the past would look like if they were standing right in front of me. I’m incredibly thankful for the support and interest the account has received, and can’t wait to see what happens next.

#1

Nefertiti

“This bust of Nefertiti (believed to have been sculpted during her lifetime) is famous for its grace and beauty. Nefertiti lived from approximately 1370 – 1330 BC. She was an Egyptian queen and the wife of Akhenaten, an Egyptian Pharaoh. Akhenaten is famous for his attempt to transition Egypt into a monotheistic society (worshipping only the sun god, Aten), instead of a polytheistic one.”

#2

Julius Caesar

#3

Alexander The Great

“I did some research on his looks and it is recorded that he had curly golden hair and heterochromia (one eye blue and one eye brown or a combo of both), so he was definitely a striking figure.”

#4

Queen Elizabeth I

#5

Agrippina The Younger

“Agrippina the Younger is someone I only recently learned more about but she had a crazy life. She was the sister of Emperor Caligula and the mother of Emperor Nero. I highly recommend giving her a search if you’re interested in that era of Roman history!”

#6

Jane Austen

#7

Anne Boleyn

#8

Madame De Pompadour

“Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, better known as Madame de Pompadour. She first caught the eye of Louis XV at a masked ball in 1745 (it was said that she was dressed as a domino, and he was dressed as a plant) and was his chief mistress thereafter until 1751. Even after she was no longer Louis’ mistress, she was a trusted friend, confidante, and advisor, essentially becoming one of the most powerful women at the French court until her death in 1764.”

#9

Mary, Queen Of Scots

#10

Empress Elisabeth Of Austria

“During her life, Elisabeth (known as Sisi), was known for being beautiful, smart, rebellious and passionate. Definitely worth some digging into if you are interested in late 1800s Europe.”

#11

Louis XIV, The Sun King

#12

Katherine Of Aragon

“This portrait of Katherine of Aragon, wife of King Henry VIII and Queen of England from 1509-1533, has always been my favorite. There are several portraits of her that all range in looks, so it’s hard to tell her true likeness. I think this one captures her piety, meekness, and obedience as documented by historians.”

#13

Louis XV

“Louis XV is lesser known than his predecessor the Sun King and his heir, Louis XVI, but he was the second-longest reigning monarch in French history. I have always known him by his famous mistresses, Madame De Pompadour and Madame du Barry.”

#14

Catherine Parr

“She was the only wife to outlive the king, who was tyrannical in his last years.”

#15

Marie Antionette

#16

Queen Isabella Of Castile

“Queen Isabella of Castile, partner to Ferdinand II of Aragon and the queen who sent Columbus on his way to the “new world” in 1492. “

#17

Emperor Augustus

“Emperor Augustus (born Octavius, the great-nephew of Julius Caesar) was the first emperor of Rome, ending 500 years of republic. He’s an incredibly controversial figure, especially due to the smart and ruthless way he came to power, but he ruled over a time of relative peace in the Roman empire.”

#18

The Grand Duchess Anastasia Romanov

#19

Abraham Lincoln

“Abe Lincoln was the 16th president of the United States from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. Lincoln led the nation through the American Civil War, its bloodiest war and its greatest moral, constitutional, and political crisis. He preserved the Union, abolished slavery, strengthened the federal government, and modernized the U.S. economy.”

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“Christina of Denmark, seen here in an original Hans Holbein portrait, lived from 1521 – 1590. Christina was considered as a possible bride for King Henry VIII of England. Christina was not fond of the English King’s reputation, given that he had divorced his first wife and beheaded his second wife. The originator of one of the greatest quotes about King Henry in history, Christina famously said: “If I had two heads, one should be at the King of England’s disposal.” What an amazing denial to a marriage proposal.”

#21

Madame Du Barry

“This is Madame du Barry – the official mistress of Louis XV after his first love, Madame de Pompadour’s death.”

#22

Eleanor Of Toledo

“Eleanor of Toledo was an astonishing woman. Originally from Toledo, Spain, she was a bride to a famous member of the Medici Family, Cosimo I de Medici. Her husband regularly consulted with her on matters of politics, and she even served as consort during his time away from Florence.”

#23

Caligula

“Caligula, infamous brat and Roman Emperor.”

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“Did you know that Napoleon was most likely 5’7″? That’s taller than King Louis XIV. Some say his perceived smaller stature was due to him looking small in comparison to his huge accomplishments. Others say there was an error when translating his true height from French to English. Who do you think he looks like here?”

#25

Katherine Howard

“Katherine Howard (c. 1523 – 13 February 1542) was Queen of England for only 16 months as the fifth wife of Henry VIII. Katherine was actually the cousin of Henry’s second wife, Anne Boleyn. When they married, he was 49 and she only 16 or 17. Katherine was accused of adultery and executed by the King, ending her short reign as the Queen of England.”

#26

Benjamin Franklin

#27

Henry VIII

#28

King Henry VII

“Here we are with Henry VII, the first tudor monarch, a frequent request from you all. Henry was the last king of England to attain the throne in battle after defeating Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485.”

#29

Mona Lisa

#30

Grace Kelly

“Grace Kelly, American film actress and Princess of Monaco.”

Read more: http://www.boredpanda.com/historical-figures-recreated-history-becca-saladin/

Have you ever wondered what Europe looked like before or during the Second World War (WWII)? Take a look at our “before and after” or “then and now” images and see what the war did to the people, the monuments and the landscapes.

Head over to our site for an interactive version of each image and many, many more!

Let us know what you think about the images below in the comments

#1

Avenue Foch (Occupation Of Paris)

On June 14, 1940, troops of the German Wehrmacht occupy Paris. The picture shows the victory parade of the German 30th Infantry Division on the Avenue Foch in front of General Kurt von Briesen 1886-1941.

#2

Cinema In Żnin During German Occupation

Catholic house transformed by the Germans into a cinema. 1941.

#3

Burning Peterhof

Burning Peterhof Palace after the Nazi invasion. 1941 September

#4

Cherbourg-Octeville

The city center and US troops in June 1944. Several US vehicles are parked on the Quai de Caligny west of the rotary bridge.

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#5

Captured German Soldiers At Juno Beach

Captured German Soldiers at Juno Beach shortly before their deportation to England. In the background, the villa “Denise et Roger” can be seen. It is one of the most famous places in the time of D-Day. 1994, June 6th.

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#6

German Prisoners At The Station In Bernières

Captured German soldiers await their transport at the railway station in Bernières-sur-mer. Today, the old station building serves as the tourist office. 1944.

#7

Place De La Concorde (Liberation Of Paris)

A crowd celebrates the arrival of Allied troops during a victory parade for the liberation of Paris, as suddenly shots from a sniper on one of the roofs are heard. Quickly the Parisians scatter for cover. Although the city was officially abandoned by the Germans, small bands of snipers remained active, which made the victory celebrations risky. 1944, August 29.

#8

Aachen Rathaus

Southside of the Aachen Town Hall at Katschhof at the end of World War II. The town hall is one of the most important buildings in the historic center of Aachen. It was repeatedly rebuilt and expanded over many centuries. The oldest part of the monument is the Granusturm from the time of Charlemagne. During World War II, the town hall suffered badly from several bombing raids. On 14 July 1943, the roof and both City Hall towers burned out, the steel skeletons of the tower domes bent by the heat dominated the appearance of the town hall for a few years. Rebuilding followed in the 50s; last, the two-tower caps were finished in 1978.

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#9

Notre-Dame (Liberation Of Paris)

Priest 105mm self-propelled guns of the French 2nd Armoured Division in front of Notre Dame in Paris, 26 August 1944. Photo of the Imperial War Museum (IWM).

#10

Rentforter Straße

Destroyed tram and houses in the Rentforterstrasse in Gladbeck, end of the Second World War. The house with the gabled facade in the background is the main entrance of the St. Barbara hospital. Today there are no more tramways in Gladbeck. 1945.

#11

Locals Welcome The German Soldiers

In the background is the Assumption Cathedral. 1941.

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#12

Rue St. Placide

August 1944. Since 1940, Paris is occupied by German troops. As the Allied army approaches the capital, this encourages the Parisian population to resist. It comes to a general strike, followed by open revolts. Everywhere in the city (such as here in the rue St. Placide) barricades are erected, and around the 20th of August, the Resistance has taken control of the city. Although militarily inefficient, these barricades had a symbolic character for of the Paris uprising.

#13

The Dam Busters

In May 1943, the Allies dropped specially developed “bouncing bombs” on select dams in Germany’s industrial heartland. The Möhne dam was the hardest hit and 1600 civilians died in the flooding. The attack was dramatized by The Dam Busters (1955).

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#14

German Soldier In Alkmaar

German soldier in Alkmaar at the Langestraat. 1941.

#15

Palais Chaillot

Paris in September 1944, shortly after the recapture. To protect against potential German counterattacks, an anti-aircraft gun is provisionally installed by American soldiers in the park of the Palais de Chaillot.

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#16

View From The Castle Of Caen On The Destroyed City

June 1944.

#17

Hoofdkwartier Wehrmacht

German officers in the headquarters of the Wehrmacht in Huize Voorhout in Alkmaar. 1942.

#18

Pont Neuf/Quai De Conti (Liberation Of Paris)

Barricade on the Pont Neuf at the intersection with the Quai de Conti, August 1944. Since 1940, Paris had been occupied by German troops. As the Allied army approached the capital, this encouraged the Parisian population to resist. It came to a general strike, followed by open revolts. Everywhere in the city barricades were erected, and around the 20th of August, the Resistance took control of the city. Although militarily inefficient, these barricades had a symbolic character for of the Paris uprising.

#19

San Lorenzo, Rome

San Lorenzo, Rome after the allied bombing on 19 July 1943.

#20

San Lorenzo, Rome After The Bombing

San Lorenzo after the bombing in 1943, Princess Marie-José inspecting the damage.

#21

Siege Of Leningrad

The school building destroyed by the Nazi bombing. 1941.

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Aerial shot of Lodz made at the end of WW2 (1942) compared with Google Earth’s view from 2017.

#23

Villa Denise Et Roger At Juno Beach

The villa “Denise et Roger” is one of the most famous places of the time of D-Day. The region around Bernières-Sur-Mer was liberated by Canadian soldiers on June 6. 1944.

#24

Battle Of Rome, Porta San Paolo

September 9th, 1943

#25

The Battle Of Porta San Paolo, Rome

On 10 September 1943, Porta San Paolo was the scene of the last attempt by the Italian army to avoid the German occupation of Rome On the evening of the 9th, the 21st Infantry Division “Granatieri di Sardegna” moved towards the center, engaging in fierce fighting on the Via Laurentina (Tre Fontane locality), around the Exposition Hill (current EUR district) and Forte Ostiense. The German troops marched on the Via Ostiense, towards the heart of Rome. Despite the overwhelming numerical superiority and armament of the enemy, the walls of Porta San Paolo became a defensive bulwark of resistance, protected by barricades and vehicle carcasses. The grenadiers also fought here with courage, along with the numerous civilians.

#26

Wehrmacht Soldiers In Schagen

Wehrmacht Soldiers In the city of Schagen in The Netherlands. 1940.

#27

Alkmaar Mobilization Dutch Soldiers

Mobilization Dutch soldiers before the “Ambachtsschool” in Alkmaar, The Netherlands. 1939

#28

Horses Bring Food To Civilians Hidden In The Abbey

After parts of the city have been liberated by the Allies, horse carts bring food to those who took refuge in the Abbey of Saint-Étienne. 1944, July 10th.

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#29

Old Bunker Alkmaar Flower Shop

An old bunker is now used as a plant shop. Old Photo is taken in 1945, the new one in 2018.

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#30

Opéra Garnier (Occupation Of Paris)

The Opera Garnier decorated with swastikas for a festival of German music during the Occupation of Paris. The Germans organized a series of concerts in the occupied city, including by the Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Herbert von Karajan. 1941.

Note: this post originally had 39 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.

Read more: http://www.boredpanda.com/repotography-world-war-ii-europe-lena-weber/

Byzantine, Gothic, Baroque, Modernist… We are familiar with many different styles of ‘Western’ architecture because they are celebrated and rightly so. Ottoman-style mosques and the pagodas of East Asia are also instantly recognizable, as well as the temples of the pre-colonial civilizations that flourished in Central and South America.

However, the Great Pyramids Of Giza aside, the glories of African architecture are often shamefully overlooked. Sadly, this is a symptom of a larger problem overall, where the rich diversity and culture of the African continent is largely glossed over in international media. Most reporting from the continent focuses only on issues that reinforce negative stereotypes – those of poverty, disease and war.

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There is much to appreciate about pre-colonial Africa – which is barely ever mentioned outside of history books. Up to 10,000 different states and autonomous groups with distinct languages and customs existed, and many advanced kingdoms and empires – such as the Asante Union, the Mossi Kingdom and the Zulu Kingdom – thrived before Europeans arrived with their guns, slavery and religion.

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A Twitter account called ‘Igbo Excellence’ (the Igbo people are an ethnic group from south and eastern Nigeria) decided that it was time to showcase some of the best African architecture, and his thread went viral as people appreciated these overlooked gems.

Image credits: 1ncognito___

Starting with Nubian – an ethnolinguistic group of Africans indigenous to present-day Sudan and southern Egypt believed to be one of the earliest cradles of civilization, Igbo Excellence posted examples from different areas and eras of African history, reminding us of the long and varied histories of peoples all across this vast continent.

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The mud mosques of the Sahel, including the magnificent Great Mosque of Djenné in Mali, are particularly impressive. The entire community of Djenné takes an active role in the mosque’s maintenance via a unique annual festival. This includes music and food, but has the primary objective of repairing the damage inflicted on the mosque in the past year, which is mostly erosion caused by the annual rains and cracks caused by changes in temperature and humidity.

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 The Great Mosque of Djenné has incredible cultural significance not just for the town but for the country as a whole – it features on the coat of arms of Mali. I would love to visit it one day!

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Africa did not escape communist-era brutalism, with this monolith below dedicated to Angola’s first president Agostinho Neto towering over the skyline of the capital city, Luanda. It commemorates the president’s contribution to the overthrow of Portuguese colonial rule over Angola, which became a self-declared socialist state from its independence in 1975 until 1992. Angola’s current flag is said to be inspired by the Hammer and Sickle.

Other, more modern forms of Afro-futuristic architecture can be found in countries such as Ghana and Burkina Faso.

Image credits: 1ncognito___

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Somali architecture is a rich and diverse tradition of engineering and design. Spanning the ancient, medieval and early modern periods in Greater Somalia, it also includes the fusion of Somali architecture with Western designs in contemporary times.

It involves multiple different construction types, such as:

Stone cities, castles, citadels, fortresses, mosques, towers, megaliths, menhirs, dolmens, stone circles, monuments, temples, aqueducts, and lighthouses.

Image credits: 1ncognito___

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Swahili architecture is a term used today to designate a whole range of diverse building traditions practiced or once practiced along the eastern and southeastern coasts of Africa.

What is today seen as typically Swahili architecture is still very visible in the thriving urban centers of Mombasa, Lamu and Zanzibar.

Image credits: 1ncognito___

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The architecture of Madagascar, a large island nation off the east coast of mainland Africa, is unique in the continent. It bears a strong resemblance to the construction norms and methods of Southern Borneo from which the earliest inhabitants of Madagascar are believed to have immigrated.

Throughout Madagascar and the Kalimantan region of Borneo, most traditional houses follow a rectangular rather than round form and feature a steeply sloped, peaked roof supported by a central pillar.

Image credits: 1ncognito___

As you can see, there is plenty to admire in the diverse and unique styles of architecture from all across the continent.

The original post by Igbo Excellence has so far attracted over 600k like and retweets, as people discover and rediscover this rich cultural heritage. People added their own examples as well, giving us a newfound appreciation for the wonder of African architecture!

Scroll down to see the rest of the examples for yourself and let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

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Read more: http://www.boredpanda.com/african-architecture-styles-igbo-excellence/

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Some pictures, however, are worth at least a million. I’m talking about photographs that nearly everyone recognizes and that will forever be etched into our shared history. Even though these legendary photos might be known by all, far from everyone knows about the superstar photographers who took them. Even less know about the cameras they used to capture history in the making. Buckle up, amigos, you’re about to become photography buffs!

#1

“Earthrise” By William Anders, 1968 / Modified Hasselblad 500 El

Earthrise is a photograph of Earth and some of the Moon’s surface that was taken from lunar orbit by astronaut William Anders during the Apollo 8 mission. The photograph was taken from lunar orbit on December 24, 1968, 16:00 UTC, with a highly modified Hasselblad 500 EL with an electric drive. The camera had a simple sighting ring rather than the standard reflex viewfinder and was loaded with a 70 mm film magazine containing custom Ektachrome film developed by Kodak. Immediately prior, Anders had been photographing the lunar surface with a 250 mm lens; the lens was subsequently used for the Earthrise images.

One of the most iconic photos in history is, without a doubt, The Burning Monk. We’ve all seen this photo in school books, on the news, and in most-famous photo lists. The monk’s name was Thích Quảng Đức. He self-immolated in Saigon on June 11, 1963, to protest the South Vietnamese government’s persecution of Buddhists. The person who captured this selfless sacrifice for the greater good was photographer, Malcolm Browne. He passed away in 2012 but his legacy lives on.

#2

“Burning Monk” By Malcolm Browne, 1963 / Petri

Thích Quảng Đức was a Vietnamese Mahayana Buddhist monk who burned himself to death at a busy Saigon road intersection on 11 June, 1963. He was protesting the persecution of Buddhists by the South Vietnamese government.

Malcolm Browne used a Japanese-made Petri camera to take this iconic photo. Browne admitted in an old interview that he couldn’t remember what exposure he used.

“I was thinking only about the fact it was a self-illuminated subject that required an exposure of about, oh say, f10 or whatever it was, I don’t really remember. I was using a cheap Japanese camera by the name of Petri,” Browne told Time in an interview about that historic day. “I was very familiar with it, but I wanted to make sure that I not only got the settings right on the camera each time and focused it properly, but that also, I was reloading fast enough to keep up with the action. I took about ten rolls of film because I was shooting constantly.”

#3

Lyle Owerko, 2001 / Fuji 645zi

Filmmaker and photographer Lyle Owerko was in NY during the fateful day back in 2001. So it happened that he had his camera ready and when the tragedy struck, he took some of the photos that soon would become historical and end up as the cover photo of TIME.

Another photo I’m sure you’re all intimately familiar with is the famous Kiss in Times Square. Alfred Eisenstaedt captured a sailor kissing a random woman on Victory Over Japan Day, August 14, 1945. This photo captured America’s heart. Eisenstaedt used a Leica iiia camera to capture the passionate embrace. The camera eventually sold for $147,000 at auction!

#4

“Tank Man” By Jeff Widener, 1989 / Nikon Fe2

Tank Man (also known as the Unknown Protester or Unknown Rebel) is the nickname of an unidentified Chinese man who stood in front of a column of tanks leaving Tiananmen Square on June 5, 1989, the morning after the Chinese military had suppressed the Tiananmen Square protests by force. As the lead tank maneuvered to pass by the man, he repeatedly shifted his position in order to obstruct the tank’s attempted path around him. The incident was filmed and smuggled out to a worldwide audience.

Some people still use Leica camera models today, however, it’s a pretty expensive hobby to have. Vintage Leica iii cameras such as the one used by Yevgeny Khaldei cost upwards of $1,000. However, for those of you who want a more modern camera, Leica is still innovating and making new products. I personally had the pleasure of using a Leica M4 model, just like the one Eddie Adams used, a few times during photography class in high school. Not going to lie to you, it was awesome and felt very natural to use.

#5

“Afghan Girl” By Steve McCurry, 1984 / Nikon Fm2

Afghan Girl is a 1984 photographic portrait by journalist Steve McCurry. It appeared on the June 1985 cover of National Geographic. The identity of the photo’s subject was not initially known but in early 2002, she was identified as Sharbat Gula. She was an Afghan child who was living in the Nasir Bagh refugee camp in Pakistan during the time of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan when she was photographed.

You can still get secondhand Speed Graphic cameras, like the ones Yasushi Nago and Sam Shere used, for one to several hundred dollars, depending on where you look.

If you’ve ever wondered who made the first commercial camera, then wonder no more! It was George Eastman, founder of Kodak. He built the camera in 1888. However, it was the size of a microwave. By 1900, Eastman released the Kodak Brownie, a simple and cheap camera. An improved model was made just a year later.

#6

“The Hindenburg Disaster” By Sam Shere, 1937 / Speed Graphic

The Hindenburg disaster occurred on May 6, 1937, in Manchester Township, New Jersey, United States. The German passenger airship LZ 129 Hindenburg caught fire and was destroyed during its attempt to dock . On board were 97 people; there were 36 fatalities. 

Around 1930, world-class photographers started using 35mm cameras so they could take pictures of events as they happened instead of making staged portraits. Around the same time, Polaroid created the iconic camera that developed pictures inside itself. The late 1970s saw the advent of “point and shoot” cameras, while the first digital camera good enough to be used by professionals came in 1991, again thanks to Kodak. Eventually, cameras became so tiny, you could incorporate them into phones. Sharp Corporation made the first camera phone (the model J-SH04) and it was released in 2000.

#7

“Fire Escape Collapse” By Stanley Forman, 1975 / Nikon F

The photograph shows 19-year-old Diana Bryant and her 2-year-old goddaughter Tiare Jones falling from the collapsed fire escape of a burning apartment building on Marlborough Street in Boston on July 22, 1975. The fire escape at the fifth floor collapsed as a turntable ladder on a fire truck was being extended to pick up the two at the height of approximately 50 feet.

#8

“D-Day” By Robert Capa, 1944 / Contax Ii

This photo is part of a series known as the Magnificent Eleven, a group of photos of D-Day taken by war photographer Robert Capa. Capa was with one of the earliest waves of troops landing on the American invasion beach, Omaha Beach. While under fire, Capa took 106 pictures, all but eleven of which were destroyed in a processing accident in the Life magazine photo lab in London. The pictures have been widely celebrated, and Steven Spielberg is said to have been inspired by them when filming Saving Private Ryan.

#9

Abbey Road Album Cover By Iain Macmillan, 1969 / Hasselblad

On 9 November, 1966, John Lennon met Yoko Ono at the Indica Gallery and later on, she introduced him to Iain Macmillan. In 1969, John invited him to photograph the Abbey Road cover. The Beatles recorded most of their music at the EMI Studios on Abbey Road, St John’s Wood, London. They decided to name their last album after the road. Later, EMI changed the name of the studio to the Abbey Road Studios.

Macmillan took the legendary Abbey Road photo using a Hasselblad camera with a 50mm wide-angle lens, aperture f22, at 1/500 seconds.

#10

“Migrant Mother” By Dorothea Lange, 1936 / Graflex Super D

On March 6, 1936, after picking beets in the Imperial Valley, Florence Owens Thompson and her family were traveling on US Highway 101 towards Watsonville, when the car’s timing chain snapped and they coasted to a stop just inside a pea-pickers’ camp on Nipomo Mesa. They were shocked to find so many people camping there—as many as 2,500 to 3,500. A notice had been sent out for pickers, but the crops had been destroyed by freezing rain, leaving them without work or pay. While Jim Hill, her partner, and two of Thompson’s sons went into town to get the car’s damaged radiator repaired, she and some of the children set up a temporary camp. As Thompson waited, photographer Dorothea Lange, working for the Resettlement Administration, drove up and started taking photos of Florence and her family.

#11

“V-J Day In Times Square” By Alfred Eisenstaedt, 1945 / Leica Iiia

The photo portrays a US Navy sailor grabbing and kissing a stranger on Victory over Japan Day (“V-J Day”) in New York City’s Times Square on August 14, 1945. Kissing was a favorite pose encouraged by media photographers of service personnel during the war, but photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt was photographing a spontaneous event that occurred in Times Square soon before the announcement of the end of the war with Japan was made by US President Harry S. Truman at seven o’clock. The photograph does not clearly show the face of either person involved, and numerous people have claimed to be the subjects.

#12

“Raising The Flag On Iwo Jima” By Joe Rosenthal, 1945 / Speed Graphic

This is an iconic photograph taken by Joe Rosenthal on February 23, 1945, which depicts six United States Marines raising a US flag atop Mount Suribachi during the Battle of Iwo Jima in World War II.

Three Marines in the photograph, Sergeant Michael Strank, Corporal Harlon Block, and Private First Class Franklin Sousley were killed in action over the next few days. The other three surviving flag-raisers in the photograph were Corporals (then Private First Class) Rene Gagnon, Ira Hayes, and Harold Schultz.

#13

“Raising A Flag Over The Reichstag” By Yevgeny Khaldei, 1945 / Leica Iii

This photo is an iconic World War II photograph, taken during the Battle of Berlin on 2 May, 1945. The Battle of Berlin was the final major offensive of the European theatre of World War II. The battle for Berlin lasted from late 20 April, 1945, until 2 May and was one of the bloodiest in history.

Owing to the secrecy of the Soviet media, the identities of the men in the picture were often disputed, as was that of the photographer, Yevgeny Khaldei, who was identified only after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. It became a symbol of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany.

#14

“Invasion 68: Prague”, By Josef Koudelka, 1968 / Exacta Varex

Josef Koudelka had returned from a project photographing gypsies in Romania just two days before the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968. He witnessed and recorded the military forces of the Warsaw Pact as they invaded Prague and crushed reforms of the so-called Prague Spring. Koudelka’s negatives were smuggled out of Prague to the Magnum agency, and published anonymously in The Sunday Times Magazine under the initials P. P. (Prague Photographer) for fear of reprisal to him and his family.

Koudelka documented the overthrow of Alexander Dubcek’s government with his Exakta Varex camera.

#15

“The Terror Of War” By Nick Ut, 1972 / Leica M3

Huỳnh Công Út, known professionally as Nick Ut, is a Vietnamese American photographer. His best-known photo features a naked 9-year-old girl, Phan Thị Kim Phúc, running towards the camera from a South Vietnamese napalm strike that mistakenly hit Trảng Bàng village instead of nearby North Vietnamese troops. The photo was taken on June 8, 1972.

#16

Paul Goresh / Minolta Xg-1

On the evening of 8 December, 1980, English musician John Lennon, formerly of the Beatles, was fatally shot in the archway of the Dakota, his residence in New York City. The perpetrator was Mark David Chapman. That day, Lennon and Yoko Ono left the Dakota for a recording session. As they were walking to a limousine, they were approached by Chapman who was seeking an autograph. Photographer and Lennon fan, Paul Goresh took a photo of Lennon signing Chapman’s album. 

The Lennons spent several hours at the Record Plant studio before returning to the Dakota later in the evening. The Lennons passed Chapman and walked toward the archway entrance of the building. As Lennon passed by, he glanced briefly at Chapman, appearing to recognize him from earlier. From the street behind them, Chapman took aim at the center of Lennon’s back and fired five bullets at him.

#17

“Tokyo Stabbing” By Yasushi Nagao, 1960 / Speed Graphic

On October 12, 1960, Japanese politician Inejiro Asanuma was assassinated by 17-year-old Otoya Yamaguchi, a nationalist, during a televised political debate for the coming elections for the House of Representatives. Yamaguchi rushed onstage and ran his sword through Asanuma’s ribs on the left side, killing him. Japanese television company NHK was videorecording the debate for later transmission and the tape of Asanuma’s assassination was shown many times to millions of viewers. The photograph of Asanuma’s assassination won its photographer Yasushi Nagao both the Pulitzer Prize and World Press Photo of the Year.

See Also on Bored Panda

Guerrillero Heroico (“Heroic Guerrilla Fighter”) is an iconic photograph of Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara taken by Alberto Korda. It was captured on March 5, 1960, in Havana, Cuba, at a memorial service for victims of the La Coubre explosion. By the end of the 1960s, the image, in conjunction with Guevara’s subsequent actions and eventual execution, helped solidify the charismatic and controversial leader as a cultural icon. Korda has said that at the moment he shot the picture, he was drawn to Guevara’s facial expression, which showed “absolute implacability” as well as anger and pain. Years later, Korda would say that the photograph showed Che’s firm and stoic character. Guevara was 31 years old at the time the photograph was taken.

#19

“The Shooting Of Lee Harvey Oswald” By Robert Jackson, 1963 / Nikon S3

Lee Harvey Oswald was an American Marxist and former U.S. Marine who assassinated United States President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. Two days later, Oswald was fatally shot by local nightclub owner Jack Ruby on live television in the basement of Dallas Police Headquarters.

#20

“The Soiling Of Old Glory” By Stanley Forman, 1976 / Nikon F

The Soiling of Old Glory is a Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph taken by Stanley Forman during the Boston busing crisis. It depicts a white teenager, Joseph Rakes, assaulting a black man – lawyer and civil rights activist Ted Landsmark – with a flagpole bearing the American flag (also known as Old Glory). Forman took the photo on April 5, 1976, during one in a series of protests against court-ordered desegregation busing.

Read more: http://www.boredpanda.com/cameras-used-famous-historical-photographs/

Museums aren’t forces to be trifled with. They’re huge. They hold a plethora of information. They’re smarter than you. And they can apparently battle with much more vigor than any of us.

Twitter user @bednarz decided to throw two of London’s most influential museums into the online battle ring by asking a highly controversial question: science or history?

The Natural History Museum stepped up instantly, but the Science Museum was also quick to snap back. The two continued with some tasteful back-and-forth:

When @bednarz tried to call it quits, the museums did not falter. The momentum continued on both sides of the field.

The duel commences for a lot longer, which you can catch on this entertaining and almost neverending thread.

Though we can’t tell you who the winner is (it’s your decision, after all!), the Victoria and Albert Museum reminded us that it’s really just all about LOVE.

H/T IFLScience


These are the spuds you’re looking for...

Read more: https://www.dailydot.com/parsec/london-history-science-museum-battle-twitter/

German writer Norman Ohlers astonishing account of methamphetamine addiction in the Third Reich changes what we know about the second world war

The German writer Norman Ohler lives on the top floor of a 19th-century apartment building on the south bank of the river Spree in Kreuzberg, Berlin. Visiting him there is a vertiginous experience. For one thing, he works and likes to entertain visitors in what he calls his writing tower, a flimsy-seeming, glass-walled turret perched right on the very edge of the roof. (Look down, if you dare, and you will see his little boat moored far below.) For another, there is the fact that from this vantage point it is possible to discern two Berlins, one thrusting and breezy, the other spectral and grey. To our left, busy with traffic, is the Oberbaum Bridge, where there was once a cold war checkpoint, and beyond it the longest remaining section of the Berlin Wall, its doleful length rudely interrupted by the block of luxury flats that went up in 2013. As for the large building immediately opposite, these days its the home of Universal Music. Not so very long ago, however, it was the GDRs egg storage facility.

Does all this press on Ohler as he sits at his desk, the light bouncing off the screen of his laptop? Is it ghostly sometimes? Yes, it is strange, he says, smiling at my giddiness. But then he has long believed in a certain kind of time travel. I remember the 90s. The wall had just come down, and I was experimenting with party drugs like ecstasy and LSD. The techno scene had started up, and there were all these empty buildings in the east where the youth [from east and west] would meet for the first time. They were hardcore, some of those guys from the east they didnt understand foreigners at all and the ecstasy helped them to lose some of their hatred and suspicion. Sometimes, then, you could step into a room, and you could just see the past. Of course, its not like that now. I dont take drugs any more. But I can remember it, and maybe that was why I was able to write this book.

Norman
Norman Ohler photographed in Berlin last week. Photograph: MalteJaeger/laif

The book in question is The Total Rush or, to use its superior English title, Blitzed which reveals the astonishing and hitherto largely untold story of the Third Reichs relationship with drugs, including cocaine, heroin, morphine and, above all, methamphetamines (aka crystal meth), and of their effect not only on Hitlers final days the Fhrer, by Ohlers account, was an absolute junkie with ruined veins by the time he retreated to the last of his bunkers but on the Wehrmachts successful invasion of France in 1940. Published in Germany last year, where it became a bestseller, it has since been translated into 18 languages, a fact that delights Ohler, but also amazes him.

Its not only that he is as Der Spiegel helpfully pointed out a non-historian (the author of three novels and the co-writer of the Wim Wenders film Palermo Shooting, this is his first work of nonfiction). Its that there was anything new to be said at all. Arrange all the books that have been written about the Nazis end to end and theyd be longer than the Spree.

I guess drugs werent a priority for the historians, he says. A crazy guy like me had to come along. Still, crazy or not, he has done a remarkable job. If Blitzed is gripping, it is also convincing. Ian Kershaw, the British historian who is probably the worlds leading authority on Hitler and Nazi Germany, has described it as a serious piece of scholarship.

Unlikely as it sounds, it was Ohlers friend, the Berlin DJ Alexander Kramer, who first put him on to the idea. Hes like a medium for that time, says Ohler. He has this huge library, and he knows all the music from the 20s. One night he said to me: Do you know the massive role drugs played in National Socialism? I told him that I didnt, but that it sounded true and I knew immediately it would be the subject of my next book.

His plan was to write a novel, but with his first visit to the archives that changed completely. There he found the papers of Dr Theodor Morell, Hitlers personal physician, previously only a minor character in most studies of the Fhrer. I knew then that this was already better than fiction. In the months that followed, supported by the late, great German historian of the Third Reich Hans Mommsen, Ohler travelled from archive to archive, carefully gathering his material and how much of it there was! He didnt use half of what he found. Look at this, he says, jumping up. When he returns, in his hand is a copy of a letter from Martin Bormann, Hitlers private secretary, in which he suggests that the medication Morell is giving the Fhrer needs to be regulated for the sake of his increasingly wobbly health.

The story Ohler tells begins in the days of the Weimar Republic, when Germanys pharmaceutical industry was thriving the country was a leading exporter both of opiates, such as morphine, and of cocaine and drugs were available on every street corner. It was during this period that Hitlers inner circle established an image of him as an unassailable figure who was willing to work tirelessly on behalf of his country, and who would permit no toxins not even coffee to enter his body.

He is all genius and body, reported one of his allies in 1930. And he mortifies that body in a way that would shock people like us! He doesnt drink, he practically only eats vegetables, and he doesnt touch women. No wonder that when the Nazis seized power in 1933, seductive poisons were immediately outlawed. In the years that followed, drug users would be deemed criminally insane; some would be killed by the state using a lethal injection; others would be sent to concentration camps. Drug use also began to be associated with Jews. The Nazi partys office of racial purity claimed that the Jewish character was essentially drug-dependent. Both needed to be eradicated from Germany.

Some drugs, however, had their uses, particularly in a society hell bent on keeping up with the energetic Hitler (Germany awake! the Nazis ordered, and the nation had no choice but to snap to attention). A substance that could integrate shirkers, malingerers, defeatists and whiners into the labour market might even be sanctioned. At a company called Temmler in Berlin, Dr Fritz Hauschild, its head chemist, inspired by the successful use of the American amphetamine Benzedrine at the 1936 Olympic Games, began trying to develop his own wonder drug and a year later, he patented the first German methyl-amphetamine. Pervitin, as it was known, quickly became a sensation, used as a confidence booster and performance enhancer by everyone from secretaries to actors to train drivers (initially, it could be bought without prescription). It even made its way into confectionery. Hildebrand chocolates are always a delight, went the slogan. Women were recommended to eat two or three, after which they would be able to get through their housework in no time at all with the added bonus that they would also lose weight, given the deleterious effect Pervitin had on the appetite. Ohler describes it as National Socialism in pill form.

Workers
Workers at the Temmler factory in Berlin produced 35m tablets of Pervitin for the German army and Luftwaffe in 1940. Photograph: Temmler Pharma GmbH & Co KG, Marburg

Naturally, it wasnt long before soldiers were relying on it too. In Blitzed, Ohler reproduces a letter sent in 1939 by Heinrich Bll, the future Nobel laureate, from the frontline to his parents back at home, in which he begs them for Pervitin, the only way he knew to fight the great enemy sleep. In Berlin, it was the job of Dr Otto Ranke, the director of the Institute for General and Defence Physiology, to protect the Wehrmachts animated machines ie its soldiers from wear, and after conducting some tests he concluded that Pervitin was indeed excellent medicine for exhausted soldiers. Not only did it make sleep unnecessary (Ranke, who would himself become addicted to the drug, observed that he could work for 50 hours on Pervitin without feeling fatigued), it also switched off inhibitions, making fighting easier, or at any rate less terrifying.

In 1940, as plans were made to invade France through the Ardennes mountains, a stimulant decree was sent out to army doctors, recommending that soldiers take one tablet per day, two at night in short sequence, and another one or two tablets after two or three hours if necessary. The Wehrmacht ordered 35m tablets for the army and Luftwaffe, and the Temmler factory increased production. The likes of Bll, its fair to say, wouldnt need to ask their parents for Pervitin again.

Was Blitzkrieg, then, largely the result of the Wehrmachts reliance on crystal meth? How far is Ohler willing to go with this? He smiles. Well, Mommsen always told me not to be mono-causal. But the invasion of France was made possible by the drugs. No drugs, no invasion. When Hitler heard about the plan to invade through Ardennes, he loved it [the allies were massed in northern Belgium]. But the high command said: its not possible, at night we have to rest, and they [the allies] will retreat and we will be stuck in the mountains. But then the stimulant decree was released, and that enabled them to stay awake for three days and three nights. Rommel [who then led one of the panzer divisions] and all those tank commanders were high and without the tanks, they certainly wouldnt have won.

A
Pervitin: Nazi Germanys drug of choice.

Thereafter, drugs were regarded as an effective weapon by high command, one that could be deployed against the greatest odds. In 1944-45, for instance, when it was increasingly clear that victory against the allies was all but impossible, the German navy developed a range of one-man U-boats; the fantastical idea was that these pint-sized submarines would make their way up the Thames estuary. But since they could only be used if the lone marines piloting them could stay awake for days at a time, Dr Gerhard Orzechowski, the head pharmacologist of the naval supreme command on the Baltic, had no choice but to begin working on the development of a new super-medication a cocaine chewing gum that would be the hardest drug German soldiers had ever taken. It was tested at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, on a track used to trial new shoe soles for German factories; prisoners were required to walk and walk until they dropped.

It was crazy, horrifying, says Ohler, quietly. Even Mommsen was shocked by this. He had never heard about it before. The young marines, strapped in their metal boxes, unable to move at all and cut off from the outside world, suffered psychotic episodes as the drugs took hold, and frequently got lost, at which point the fact that they could stay awake for up to seven days became irrelevant. It was unreal, says Ohler. This wasnt reality. But if youre fighting an enemy bigger than yourself, you have no choice. You must, somehow, exceed your own strength. Thats why terrorists use suicide bombers. Its an unfair weapon. If youre going to send a bomb into a crowd of civilians, of course youre going to have a success.

Meanwhile, in Berlin, Hitler was experiencing his own unreality, with his only ally in the world his podgy, insecure personal physician, Dr Morell. In the late 20s, Morell had grown a thriving private practice in Berlin, his reputation built on the modish vitamin injections he liked to give his patients. He met Hitler after he treated Heinrich Hoffman, the official Reich photographer, and sensing an opportunity quickly ingratiated himself with the Fhrer, who had long suffered from severe intestinal pains. Morell prescribed Mutaflor, a preparation based on bacteria, and when his patients condition Patient A, as Hitler was thereafter known began to improve, their codependent relationship began. Both were isolated. Hitler increasingly trusted no one but his doctor, while Morell relied solely on the Fhrer for his position.

When Hitler fell seriously ill in 1941, however, the vitamin injections that Morell had counted on no longer had any effect and so he began to ramp things up. First, there were injections of animal hormones for this most notorious of vegetarians, and then a whole series of ever stronger medications until, at last, he began giving him a wonder drug called Eukodal, a designer opiate and close cousin of heroin whose chief characteristic was its potential to induce a euphoric state in the patient (today it is known as oxycodone). It wasnt long before Hitler was receiving injections of Eukodal several times a day. Eventually he would combine it with twice daily doses of the high grade cocaine he had originally been prescribed for a problem with his ears, following an explosion in the Wolfs Lair, his bunker on the eastern front.

Did Morell deliberately turn Hitler into an addict? Or was he simply powerless to resist the Fhrers addictive personality? I dont think it was deliberate, says Ohler. But Hitler trusted him. When those around him tried to remove Morell in the fall of 1944, Hitler stood up for him though by then, he knew that if he was to go, he [Hitler] would be finished. They got along very well. Morell loved to give injections, and Hitler liked to have them. He didnt like pills because of his weak stomach and he wanted a quick effect. He was time-pressed; he thought he was going to die young. When did Hitler realise he was an addict? Quite late. Someone quotes him as saying to Morell: youve been giving me opiates all the time. But mostly, they talked about it in oblique terms. Hitler didnt like to refer to the Eukodal. Maybe he was trying to block it off from his mind. And like any dealer, Morell was never going to say: yeah, youre addicted, and I have something to feed that for you. So he talked in terms of health rather than addiction? Yes, exactly.

The effect of the drugs could appear to onlookers to be little short of miraculous. One minute the Fhrer was so frail he could barely stand up. The next, he would be ranting unstoppably at Mussolini. Ah, yes: Mussolini. In Italy, Blitzed will come with an extra chapter. I found out that Mussolini patient D, for Il Duce was another of Morells patients. After the Germans installed him as the puppet leader of the Republic of Italy in 1943, they ordered him to be put under the eyes of the doctor. Again, Ohler springs up. Again, he returns with a document in his hand. Theres not enough material to say he was an addict. But he was being given the same drugs as Hitler. Every week there was a doctorly report. He runs his finger along the typewritten lines, translating for me as he goes. He has improved, he is playing tennis again, the swelling of his liver is normal Its like hes a racehorse.

An
An unwell-looking Adolf Hitler in July 1944. Photograph: ullsteinbild/Getty Images

For Hitler, though, a crisis was coming. When the factories where Pervitin and Eukodal were made were bombed by the allies, supplies of his favourite drugs began to run out, and by February 1945 he was suffering withdrawal. Bowed and drooling and stabbing at his skin with a pair of golden tweezers, he cut a pitiful sight. Everyone describes the bad health of Hitler in those final days [in the Fhrerbunker in Berlin], says Ohler. But theres no clear explanation for it. It has been suggested that he was suffering from Parkinsons disease. To me, though, its pretty clear that it was partly withdrawal. He grins. Yeah, it must have been pretty awful. Hes losing a world war, and hes coming off drugs.

Two months later, Hitler and his new wife, Eva Braun (like Leni Riefenstahl, another of Morells patients), killed themselves, as the world knows. What happened to Morell? We know he survived, but did he get away unscathed?

I think a lot of Nazis did get away with it, says Ohler. But not him. He wasnt able to shed his skin, make a new career, get rich on his memoirs even though he could have said, truly, that he hadnt committed any war crimes. He lost his mind. He disintegrated. Hes a tragic figure. He wasnt evil. He was only an opportunist.

In 1947, the Americans, having tried and failed to extract useful information from him, deposited Morell in Munich. There he was picked up by a half-Jewish Red Cross nurse who took pity on this dishevelled, shoeless figure. She delivered him to the hospital in Tegernsee, where he died a year later.

Blitzed looks set to reframe the way certain aspects of the Third Reich will be viewed in the future. But Ohlers thesis doesnt, of course, make National Socialism any more fathomable, and for him, perhaps, there is an element of disappointment in this, for he has been seeking to understand it ever since he was a boy (the son of a judge, he grew up close to the border with France). It was the whole reason why I wanted to write, he says. I thought with writing that you could counter propaganda.

His maternal grandfather worked as a railway engineer during the war, the head of a small station in occupied Bohemia. One day at school we watched a film of the liberation of a concentration camp, and it was so shocking to me. That same day, I asked him about the trains going to the camps. He told me that he saw one in the winter coming from the west, and that he said to himself: these are Russian POWs. But since it came from the west, and he heard children, and it was a cattle train, he kind of realised something weird was happening.

I wasnt much older than 10, and I was trying to understand: what kind of person is this, my grandfather? Because he continued being a railway engineer. He didnt join the resistance. He said the SS was guarding the train, and he was afraid, and so he just went back into his little office to continue with his drawings. He always said Hitler wasnt so bad. In the 80s, you used to hear that a lot: that it was all exaggerated, that Hitler didnt know about the bad things, that he created order.

He pauses. You think it [nazism] was orderly. But it was complete chaos. I suppose working on Blitzed has helped me understand that at least. Meth kept people in the system without their having to think about it. His hope is that his book will be read by a younger generation of Germans who would rather look to the future than dwell on the past. Is the right rising again? Is that why he wants them to read it? It is quite a dangerous time. I hate these attacks on foreigners, but then our governments do it, too, in Iraq and places. Our democracies havent done a very good job in this globalised world. That said, he doesnt think the new party of the right, Alternative for Germany, may be the threat it appears (in elections earlier this month, it outperformed Angela Merkels Christian Democrats). The right wing always had so little purchase here [after the war] because of our history, he says. When I was young, you would never even see a German flag. The first time I did was in 1990, when Germany won the World Cup. So perhaps this is just a correction.

Before I head to the airport, Ohler agrees to take me to see what remains of the Temmler factory which last time he looked still stood in Berlin-Johannisthal, a part of the city that used to be in the east and so it is that we set off on a bright blue day (in the movies, the east seems always to be grey and cold) in search of what remains of Dr Hauschilds white-tiled laboratory. Twenty minutes later, we pull up in a residential street, all window boxes and net curtains, as quiet as the grave. Oh, my God, he says, unfolding his long, thin legs from the car. Wow. Its completely gone.

For a few moments, we peer wonderingly through a chain link fence at the barren expanse of dust and concrete, and the neat white and red houses beyond it. But theres nothing to be done: try as I might, I cant superimpose the eery monochrome photographs Ive seen of the factory in Blitzed on to this Technicolor suburban scene. What was almost tangible to me on Ohlers roof, only half an hour ago, now takes on the unreal quality of a dream or, perhaps, just a very bad trip.

Blitzed is published by Penguin on 6 October (20). Click here to order a copy for 16.40 go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/sep/25/blitzed-norman-ohler-adolf-hitler-nazi-drug-abuse-interview

Nearly 90,000 Indian soldiers laid down their lives for Britain in the second world war, yet the scale of that sacrifice and the troubled history of the imperial project is barely recognised

When I was a child in Lahore in Pakistan, my parents employed adriver called Sultan. Sultan, a retired soldier, was from a village near Jhelum. He was a cheerful man in his 60s who readily joined in our games ofbadminton. But to me the most interesting fact about Sultan was that he could speak Italian. Afragmentary, broken Italian, but Italian nonetheless, picked up as a prisoner of war in Italy. He called me signorina and taught me three Italian words: si, grazie and buongiorno. Decades later, when I told my children about Sultan, they were gobsmacked. What was a Pakistani villager doing fighting in Italy? He wasnt Pakistani then, Iexplained, he was Indian. Sultan was one of more than two million Indian soldiers who fought for the allies in the second world war. No! Really? they breathed.

My children (daughter 17, son 15) were born and raised in London and have had the good fortune to attend fantastic schools where they have been offered, alongside the usual array of subjects, a rich diet of music, drama, art, sport and languages. Their extracurricular clubs include Arabic, feminism, astronomy, mindfulness and carpentry. In my convent school in Lahore, I had to listen inrespectful silence. In London, they are encouraged to question and argue.

Yet, for all the range and candour of their education, they havent once encountered Britains colonial past in school. My daughter is now in her second year of A-levels. She has studied history from the age of nine, but the closest she has cometo any mention of empire was in her GCSE syllabus that included the run-up to the second world war. While studying the Treaty of Versailles, she learned that some countries had colonies at the time and, as part of Germanys punishment, it was stripped of its colonial possessions. Period.

Though she read about the brutal battles in thePacific and North Africa, no mention was made of the 2.5 million Indian soldiers who volunteered to fight in the second world war or the 1.3 million who served in 1914-18. There was nothing about the 87,000 jawans killed in 1939-45. Shehad no notion of the massive contribution India and Britains other colonies made to the war effort. Hence her astonishment at Sultans Italian connection.

Of course, my kids know that their grandparents, along with the citizens of almost half the globe, were once British subjects. But they have acquired this knowledge at home, not at school. Aged 11, my son learned in a geography class that one of the many reasons Ghana (the Gold Coast to its 19th-century British rulers) was economically less developed was because of its colonial past. It had been stripped of its wealth by the British. Just one bland sentence. Now, in secondary school, he is currently reading a past Booker winner, The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga. For half-term, his English teacher has asked him to read another novel about India. The list she hasgiven him includes Rudyard Kiplings Kim, EM Forsters APassage to India and Salman Rushdies Midnights Children. I imagine some mention ofcolonialism will be made when discussing those texts.

But even this is off-piste learning, the initiative of an individual teacher; it is not part of the curriculum. Last year, my daughter, who is studying history of art at A-level, was taken to see Tate Britains exhibition Art and Empire. Her teacher thought it important for the paper on orientalism and, something of a political activist in her youth, gave them an impassioned lecture on Britains imperial past. But the historical context was not obligatory in the curriculum. Students were required to restrict themselves to a technical visual analysis of the paintings they studied, not explore the political background that produced them.

Dr Mukulika Banerjee, director of the South Asia Centre and associate professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics, talks of British students who arrive at university completely ignorant about the empire, that vital part of their history. When we talk of Syria today, they have no knowledge of Britains role in the Middle East in the last century. When discussing burning political questions today, they have no historical context to draw on that links Britains own past with those events. Similarly, they have no clue about the history of the immigration. They dont understand why people of other ethnicities came to Britain in the first place. They havent learned any of it at school. So, in their second year at university, when my students discover the extent of their ignorance, they are furious.

I dont know whether this amnesia is due to embarrassment or fear of reparations or, indeed, asinister desire to keep the electorate ignorant and pliable. Whatever the original rationale, the ugly xenophobia unleashed since the EU referendum has brought home the urgent need to reform history textbooks and address this abyss at their heart. Without it, they are distorted, dishonest. I used to laugh when British people asked me where Ihad learned my English. (Despite 20years inthis country, I still have a strong Pakistani accent.) Post-Brexit, I am not amused. And its no good pretending that the history of Malaysia, Nigeria, India or Kenya is world history and therefore not relevant to the modern British curriculum. It is British history. To quote Kipling, that controversial yet compelling poet of empire: What should they know of England who only England know?

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/oct/30/empire-shaped-world-abyss-heart-dishonest-history-textbooks

Fortifying the Mexican border has become central to Donald Trumps election campaign, while Brexit has led to plans for a great wall of Calais. Why have walls taken on such symbolic power and at what cost?

In August, Donald Trump went to Mexico to meet with President Pea Nieto. The question of why the Mexican leader set up this meeting baffled his few supporters and his many foes, but immediately after a supposedly cordial encounter at which Pea Nieto supposedly voiced Mexicos concerns about Trumps racism, the Republican candidate crossed the border to Arizona, where, within hours, he was repeating his tagline. To great applause, he declared: We will build a great wall along the southern border, and Mexico will pay for the wall. One hundred percent. Asked in another interview about other foreign visits he might make to inform his policies, he proudly said: Ive got no time to travel America needs my attention now. But can you pay attention to America while ignoring everywhere else? Except in the most literal sense, no country is an island.

Such provincialism is not exclusive to America. In May, two months before he was announced as the UKs new foreign secretary, Boris Johnson won a prize for the best rude limerick written about Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoan. He had previously referred to Barack Obama as a part-Kenyan president. This smug, ungenerous rudeness might play well to some audiences at home, but it bespeaks a frightening disregard for the psychic intimacy that statecraft ordinarily requires.

The Brexit campaign drew on such jingoism to trivialise Europes hard-won peace. Given that most people dislike anyone who dislikes them, one major cost of Brexit is the sacrifice of good will it has occasioned. The unknown and its terrors are the topic of virtually every sci-fi movie and thriller. Brexit makes those countries that were once enemies into the unknown again; its belligerent reclusion invites enmity back into the equation. Trumps egotism reflects a US egotism; the presumption or at least the pretence that the nation holds all the cards. Brexit reflects the same tendency in the UK. Both Trump and the Brexit campaign have exploited the real and urgent vulnerability of the traditional working class, but neither stands to help that demographic.

It can feel disorienting to contemplate borders as negotiable rather than fixed. History demonstrates that there are always people who wish to expand their borders to include additional territory, and those who wish to close them to preclude immigration. Old maps reflect constantly evolving political divisions; those territories that coincide with geological formations can have a reassuring aura of permanence, but even these can be breached. Walls seem to take over from geography, and DonaldTrump isnt the only one to contemplate their fortressing singularity. Britain is planning to build the great wall of Calais, as it has been named in some areas of the press, in the hope of reducing illegal immigration into the UK, though it seems likely the wall will simply make refugees adopt a more circuitous route. Franois Guennoc of Auberge des Migrants, a French aid group working in Calais, has said, When you put walls up anywhere in the world, people find ways to go round them. Its a waste of money. It could make it more dangerous for people, it will push up tariffs for people smugglers and people will end up taking more risks. There has likewise been talk of a wall between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. And many citizens, post-Brexit, want to build a trade wall (a metaphoric rather than concrete structure) to protect local manufacturing.

Fall
West Berliners break down a section of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989. Photograph: Sipa Press / Rex Features

More than a quarter-century after the destruction of the Berlin Wall which seemed such an imprisoning symbol walls are back in the headlines. How have they come to be so popular in a time when globalism would seem to be knocking down walls? Perhaps it is as a direct rebuttal to that liberalism. The American poet Robert Frost proposed in his poem Mending Wall that nature abhors these barricades: Before I built a wall Id ask to know / What I was walling in or walling out, / And to whom I was like to give offence. / Something there is that doesnt love a wall, / That wants it down. To which the man next door in the poem can only say: Good fences make good neighbors. But history shows that in many instances, good fences make real enemies. Walls are concrete symbols of exclusion, and exclusion is seldom a diplomatic move.

When George W Bush was elected to the presidency of the United States, his only travels abroad had been a few beach trips to Mexico, two journeys to Israel, three days in Rome to see one of his daughters in 1998, and a visit to China with his parents in 1975. There are people who are constrained from travel by their circumstances, but Bush had grown up with remarkable privilege and had simply chosen to ignore the world beyond him. His lack of curiosity was stunning, and his failure to consider travel a prerequisite to negotiating his countrys place in a larger world smacked of arrogance and incompetence: the very characteristics that led him to launch a thankless conflict in Iraq that in turn created a Middle East tragedy without surcease. Alexander von Humboldt, the great 19th-century naturalist, said: There is no worldview so dangerous as the worldview of those who have not viewed the world. Too often, policy is determined by just such people.

I write this as a dual citizen of the US and the UK. Even translating between these two countries takes a good deal of savvy. Before I moved to the UK in my early 20s, I was enthusiastic about Britain, had British friends in America, and had visited often. I now see that I had no idea what anyone in England thought or felt. I subsequently came to love Britain for reasons other than those that had made me a juvenile Anglophile. But that primary experience taught me how easy it is to suppose you know a place into which you have only superficial insight. The maxim know thyself is a good starting point, but if you dont know anyone else, you arent qualified to opine on the world. You can read about a place and meet its representatives, but that is no substitute for going there.

Yet cultural and linguistic translation have received short shrift in both the US and the UK. Post-9/11, under Bush, more than 50 Arabic-language translators were fired from the US military on the grounds that they were gay leaving the government unable to process the vast quantity of information it was collecting from sources. This was a stunning assertion of the primacy of social conservatism over terribly real security challenges. It grew out of a pervasive paranoia about the other a propensity to wall out difference rather than engage with it. When I visited the CIA a few years ago, a senior official said that the agency policy was never to keep an agent in any given country for too long, lest he develop mixed loyalties. That potential danger was more urgent, apparently, than having someone stay long enough to understand fully the country where he was working.

Under the present systems in the US and the UK, diplomats do not stay in any country long enough to know it well; most people in the foreign services move every two to four years. In a gesture of false economy, Gordon Brown closed the Foreign Office language school in 2007, though it was reopened four years later. In April, the Telegraph revealed that: Just one in 40 British diplomats is fluent in the language of the country where they work, with the majority lacking even [the] basic grasp sufficient for day-to-day exchanges. Diplomats were quoted as saying that they moved so often that learning the new languages needed to engage with the societies in which they worked seemed pointless. But there is no question that governance and business objectives are realised best by people speaking a common language.

Donald
Donald Trumps egotism reflects a US egotism; the presumption or at least the pretence that the nation hold all the cards. Photograph: Brian Snyder/Reuters

Of course, travel is expensive, and many people have neither the time nor the capital to visit far-flung lands. They must experience foreign places through art, literature, music, food and film; through the books and journalism of those reporters who receive the dwindling funding to travel and report impartially; through talking to emigrants who have arrived in their societies.

Travel is not merely a pleasant diversion for the well-to-do but a responsibility; the necessary remedy to our perilously frightened times. At a moment when many politicians are stoking anxiety, there is new urgency to the arguments for going out and recognising that we are all in the game together. International relations are the province not of governments alone but of entire populations. Travel is both a window and a mirror. You cannot know abroad except by going there, and you cannot know home except by going abroad. How you view your country from inside another one is very different from how you see it from within.

The British and American streetscapes have become multicultural, and so have the media. People are far more likely to eat cuisines of far-flung ethnicities; citizens of enemy countries play online games together. Images of people who are different are pervasive and ubiquitous. Yet, echoing their governments, many citizens have descended into rank mistrust of what is foreign. If one does not understand a person, Carl Jung wrote in his Mysterium Coniunctionis, one tends to regard him as a fool. Both parties lose in that scenario. In national as in personal relationships, it is easier to resolve tensions when you can figure out what the other is thinking.

I came to know the former US secretary of defense Robert McNamara when he was in his 80s. The architect of the Vietnam war had destroyed a country, occasioned a million needless deaths and accomplished nothing for it all. He turned out to be a congenial senior citizen, regretful of the gruesome crossroads of history that he had traversed. He described returning to Vietnam and meeting some of his military counterparts there. The conversation, as he recalled it, consisted of the Vietnamese asking Why did you do X?, to which McNamara would say, Well, because you did Y, which meant such-and-such. Then the Vietnamese would counter: No, no, no, it meant the exact opposite of that! But then you did this thing that was clearly an attempt to escalate! To which McNamara would comment, No, we did that to try to quiet things down, because we thought you …. And so on and on and on.

McNamaras errors proceeded from his ignorance of his opponents a problem much exacerbated by the dismissal of Asia experts from the US government and universities during the purges of McCarthyism. McNamara was applying off-base assumptions to a place he had completely misunderstood. To learn a place is like getting to know a person; it is an exercise in depth psychology. You must understand those with whom you communicate in order to understand the content of their communication. It takes modesty to recognise that your coherence is someone elses incoherence, and vice versa. We argued in the language of war, McNamara said to me, which I wrongly thought was a universal language.

Visiting the place from which someone speaks often inflects your understanding of what he says. I interviewed Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, son of the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, when I was writing about Libya. Beautifully dressed in a Savile Row suit, eloquent in English, socially well connected and gracious in his grand fashion, Saif was in many ways persuasive. He was also ominously self-absorbed and a patent liar. His buoyant narrative of Libyan life was so much at odds with what I saw and heard first-hand that it almost seemed like performance art. A few years after my visit, I was invited to a breakfast for Saif Gaddafi by a prestigious foreign policy association. After his 20-minute oration, each of us was invited to ask a question. I was astonished by the deferential posture of the interlocutors, many of them seasoned diplomats. When my turn came, I said: Everything you have promised will happen is the same as you were promising five years ago, and none of it has so far come to pass. On what basis are we to presume that those promises now have merit? I was admonished afterwards for having been rude to a gifted statesman who represented our best hopes for North Africa. Saif Gaddafi is now wanted for prosecution by the international criminal court for crimes against humanity, after his disastrous behaviour in the Libyan revolution, during which he announced that rivers of blood would flow if the populist uprising continued. A witness can be of more value than a policy analyst. An amateur witness, free of conceptual bias, sometimes sees the plainest truth. One should never be blinded by tailoring.

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A French anti-riot police officer in Calais trying to prevent illegal migrants from hiding in trucks heading for England in June 2015. Photograph: Philippe Huguen/AFP/Getty Images

I started traveling out of curiosity, but I have come to believe in travels political importance; that encouraging a nations citizenry to travel may be as important as encouraging school attendance, environmental conservation or national thrift. If every young adult were required to spend two weeks in a foreign country, two thirds of the worlds diplomatic problems might be solved. It wouldnt matter what countries they visited or what they did during their stays. They would simply need to come to terms with the fact that there are other places, and that people live differently there; that some phenomena are universal, and others culturally particular. The craven language of scarcity that seeks to guide our aggression and constrict our immigration policies can be defused only when we understand that there are different priorities here and there. Travel, then, is not merely a luxury or an educational strategy, but a moral imperative for those who have the means for it. It is a corrective lens that helps focus the earths blurred reality.

When I was in Afghanistan in February 2002, a friend arranged for me to speak to a group of three educated, liberal women. They arrived wearing burqas, which they promptly removed, but I wondered why they were wearing them at all. The Taliban had fallen, and the law no longer required it. The first woman said: I always assumed I would be rid of this thing if times changed. But now I am afraid that the change is not stable. If I go out without a burqa and the Taliban returns to power, perhaps I will be labelled an enemy and stoned to death. The second said: I would like to give it up, but the standards of our society have not yet shifted, and if I go out without wearing this and I am raped, they will tell me it is my own fault. The third said: I hate this garment and I always assumed that I would give it up as soon as the Taliban was out. But over time, you get used to being invisible. It defines you. And the prospect of being visible again then seems extremely stressful. So much needs to change within individuals, before a change in society ensues. How can one understand those processes of change except by witnessing them?

Building walls, keeping foreigners out, trivialising the delicate peace that has settled on Europe after the horrors of the two world wars, and expressing overt prejudice toward immigrant populations, are all increasingly presented as viable foreign policies and security procedures. This month, the New York Times reported from Copenhagen about Johnny Christensen, a stout and silver-whiskered retired bank employee, [who] always thought of himself as sympathetic to people fleeing war, and welcoming to immigrants. But after more than 36,000 mostly Muslim asylum seekers poured into Denmark over the past two years, Mr Christensen, 65, said, Ive become a racist. Then he added Just kick them out, and aimed a kick at an imaginary target. Julie Jeeg, a law student who fights against racism in Denmark, said: Denmark is closing in on itself. People are retreating inward. In Britain, there was a 46% rise in hate crimes in the week following the Brexit vote, and the rate of such attacks has continued to escalate since.

If we wish to understand what brings immigrants to our shores, we would do well to make the experience more reciprocal by visiting theirs. If we try fitting in elsewhere, even temporarily, we will be positioned to help people from elsewhere fit in here. Until we are all free, the American poet Emma Lazarus wrote, we are none of us free. Every voice that is muzzled, every voyage towards understanding that falls prey to jingoistic alarmism, detracts from the collective intelligence on which all of us draw. Peace is achieved through intimacy, and discord through alienation. In 1997, the Burmese Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi asked her friends in the west: Please use your liberty to promote ours. Our liberty is contingent on everyone elses. When nations fail at kindness, they cheat themselves.

Fortifying national identity through exclusion is not just bigoted and benighted but also dangerous. When I reported from Gaddafis Libya, all of the people I met in government who had an essentially pro-western stance had studied in the US or the UK, while those who were vehemently anti-western had not. In Afghanistan, the people who had talked extensively to foreign nationals were much more open to thinking broadly about their countrys relationship with the west than were those who lacked such exposure. Its hard to love a place you have never visited. Nations fear one another less wisely when their fear arises from ignorance. Excluding immigrants from suspect countries will actually damage our security, by preventing those who would have spoken best of us from finding out what there is to admire here. In the end, xenophobia is a vulnerability masquerading as a fortification.

Far and Away by Andrew Solomon is published by Chatto & Windus on 29 September.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/sep/16/against-the-wall-mexico-calais-division

The mass migration of African Americans out of the US south forever changed the countrys cultural fabric and Wilkersons history of this period is full of sacrifice and hope

Isabel Wilkersons 2010 bestseller offered a long overdue account of an event in the United States that had a major impact on the cultural fabric of the country: the migration of African Americans out of the south during the early and mid 20th century. When we speak about the history of US migration, this diaspora is rarely mentioned. Cities like New York, Detroit, Chicago and Oakland were end points for many black Americans fleeing Jim Crow and segregation often by the same railroad that took settlers out west. Would Detroit have produced the historic music of Motown without the hope of a better life that propelled some black southerners on their way to the mid-west? While many made this journey, this well-researched tome focuses on three people who left the south filled with hope during different periods: Ida Mae Gladney, George Starling and Dr Robert Foster.

The

Starling was intelligent, a man who dreamed of life beyond the citrus groves and was always destined for college. While he eventually owned a brownstone in New York City, it could not save his unhappy marriage. As fate would have it, he got a job on the railroad a job that frequently brought him back to the south, the very place he had so longed to escape. He eventually made enough peace with the south to go back to live there as an old man.

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Truth teller Isabel Wilkerson at her home in Atlanta, Georgia. Photograph: Alamy

Gladney and her family snuck out of Mississippi by a night train. To her mothers chagrin, she followed the path trodden by her siblings, who had already ventured to Ohio, Syracuse and Milwaukee. She became a nurses aide, and her close-knit family eventually saved enough to purchase a multi-family home in Chicago. She lived well into old age, and her children kept her room just as it was for many years after her death.

Fosters father told him to follow his dreams, as his own had fallen apart. So Foster packed up his 1949 Buick and drove alone out of Monroe, Louisiana, in search of a better life in California. According to Wilkerson: Perhaps he might have stayed had they let him practise surgery like he was trained to do, or let him walk into the Palace and try on a suit like anyone else of his station. He sent for his wife and daughters after he had established a private practice in Los Angeles. He had a thriving career, threw fabulous parties, and became the go-to doctor to many other southern migrs including the musician Ray Charles.

Against all odds, these brave souls turned hope into action to create the best lives they could under difficult circumstances. Their new lives were not without disappointments: they dealt with grief and loss, seeing their adopted neighbourhoods take a turn for the worse, with new forms of racism. But they also gave hope to younger generations that they might also start afresh even if their new lives were only slightly better than the ones they left behind.

My family placed their own stakes in this migration in their various journeys from South Carolina to Boston. Growing up in Boston had its challenges, but I had an amazing education that set me on the path I follow today. As an adult, I also migrated in search of my own other sun, via a three-day train ride from Boston to Los Angeles, one week after graduating college. I was the only person in my family to live out there, so I was a bit of a pioneer. Years later, I made my way back east and now proudly call myself a New Yorker.

The Warmth of Other Suns shows how hope can get people through the most intense situations, but action is required to make them something more than a dream. These actions will likely involve sacrifices but they may not be in vain. Individual hopes can collectively change history.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2016/sep/08/books-to-give-you-hope-the-warmth-of-other-suns-by-isabel-wilkerson

1964s voter registration drive mobilised black people in Mississippi, using skills quickly adopted by protesters against Vietnam. Participants recall the souths bigotry and their bid to shape a new society

Barack Obama (born in 1961) wrote in his memoir The Audacity of Hope: Ive always felt a curious relationship to the 60s. In a sense, Im a pure product of that era. Obama came of age after the dust settled and, like many members of his generation, he is unscarred by the decades political and cultural wars, yet a direct beneficiary of them.

Your opinion of the 60s today whether you think the rebellion pushed the US towards Shangri-la or Armageddon may depend on your political views. Former president Bill Clinton (born in 1946 and a Yale Law School student of Charles Reich) describes this divide: If you look back on the 60s and, on balance, you think there was more good than harm, then youre probably a Democrat. If you think there was more harm than good, youre probably a Republican.

What follows is an oral history, the core of which comes from interviews I conducted between 2012 and 2015 with members of the Vietnam antiwar movement of the late 60s.

Born in 1963, I approached each interview as an intergenerational exploration into a decade that I was too young to know, but which always fascinated me. I grew up in New York City in the late 1960s and early 70s; my earliest political memories are of feminist and antiwar activist Bella Abzugs election to the House of Representatives in 1970, and the first African American woman to run for president, New York congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, in 1972. Photos of these two pioneers covered the walls of my Upper West Side bedroom. They were my hometown heroines.

When I graduated from high school in 1981, at the dawn of the Reagan Revolution, former hippies such as Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield had become ice cream entrepreneurs, and California kids who had taken LSD in high school were starting personal computer companies in the Bay Area. Some members of the New Left switched to the right, but most dropped their radical ideals and adopted more centrist liberal ones.

When I went to college, I didnt think twice about co-ed dorms, womens and African American studies departments, tenured female professors and premarital sex. Wars were being fought covertly, the draft would never come back and the streets were mostly quiet, except for those of us who protested against apartheid in South Africa. When I graduated in 1985, free to pursue the career of my choice, I still felt I had missed the party. The turmoil and passion of the 1960s was a hazy memory and even hazier was the understanding of what could possibly have mattered so much. Why had so many people just 15 years before taken to the streets and sacrificed their lives, their livelihoods, their comfort, even their sanity?

The roots of the Vietnam antiwar protest movement can be traced to the American crusade for civil rights. In August 1964, Congress authorised the use of troops in Vietnam in response to the Gulf of Tonkin incident the alleged North Vietnamese attack on a US naval ship. That same month, civil rights workers were putting their lives on the line for voter registration in the Mississippi Summer Project. Seven months later, on Sunday 7 March 1965, John Lewis and 600 protesters were filmed being beaten as they walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, at the start of their march to Montgomery for voting rights; the images of the attack on a nonviolent protest vividly dramatised the stakes of the struggle. Just one day after Bloody Sunday, the first US combat troops landed in Vietnam. I dont see how President Johnson can send troops to Vietnam and cant send troops to Selma, Alabama, Lewis, chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), remarked.

The military draft exploded soon after, ultimately calling 2.2 million men to fight in Vietnam. Skills learned on the battleground for racial equality in the south mass civil disobedience and grassroots organisation were soon employed in the new campaign against the war in Vietnam. In reaction to the disproportionate number of black soldiers being killed in Vietnam, SNCC activists organised one of the first anti-draft demonstrations, at the Atlanta induction centre in 1966 and coined the slogan Hell no, we wont go! The war over there was soon to become a war over here.

David Harris

(Stanford student, draft resistance organiser and ex-husband of protest singer Joan Baez, later journalist and author)

I came from Fresno, California, where I was Fresno high school boy of the year in 1963. Several weeks after I got to Stanford, there was a meeting about volunteers going to Mississippi. This was the first time that the black students in Mississippi had issued an invitation to white students to come down and they invited students from Stanford and Yale. In the fall of 64, I started classes and was meeting my girlfriend for dinner and she said: I was at a meeting. Theres a car going down to Mississippi tomorrow.

They were running a parallel election in Mississippi called the Freedom Vote, to show what would happen if black people were allowed to vote, and they needed volunteers, so I said: Im going. I told my brother to call my parents after I was gone and I got a seat in the car and left that night.

Two days later, we were in Mississippi. I was worried about missing the great adventure of my time. You didnt have to have an ideology or politics to go to Mississippi in those days. You just had to have values.

That summer of 64 we had all been watching what was going on in Mississippi, so it was a no-brainer for me. Campaigning for the right of black people not to be lynched for trying to vote was a pretty easy call. So I went. I was 18 years old.

Wesley Brown

(Black Panther, draft resister, novelist, playwright, teacher)

My family moved to East Elmhurst, right near LaGuardia airport [in New Yorks Queens], in 1952. It was formerly an Italian neighbourhood, but as more blacks moved in, of course, the whites made their departure. By 1955, it was nearly an all-black neighbourhood. These were working-class blacks trying to move up. They saved their money like my parents, and bought a home, and tried to enter the lower middle class. My father was a machinist at a tool and die factory in the Bronx, where he worked for about 40 years.

Queens at that time was called Gods country. If you could get out of the projects and buy a house in Queens, you were on your way. It was a very solid, tightknit community where parents wanted to make a better life for their kids. In fact, Eric Holder, President Obamas first attorney general, lived on our block. My sister used to babysit him and his younger brother, Billy. So it was that kind of neighbourhood. Everyone was trying to do the right thing, be responsible and trying to make a way for themselves and their families. And, of course, that leads to a certain amount of conservatism, a wish not to stir things up.

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A freedom marcher lies unconscious in Selma, Alabama, after being attacked by the police. Photograph: Bettmann Archive

These were black folks who knew their history, because they were only the second generation born after emancipation. My fathers grandmother was born into slavery and he knew her. She would show him her thumb, which was all splayed out and deformed, because when she did something that the overseer didnt like, he would take a razor blade and split her thumb open, and it would never heal sufficiently before he would open it up again. My father was born in North Carolina and was the tenth of 12 children. These black folks knew what this country had been through with slavery and segregation and they werent prepared for their children being boisterous and assertive in a way that they couldnt afford to be.

DH Four of us were working together in a team trying to register people for the Freedom Vote, in the black part of a town called Lambert. After working all morning, we came back to where the car was parked and the three guys wanted to go to the post office to mail some letters and I said: Ill stay here by the car. Im standing by our car and up pulls a pickup truck with two white guys in it. They get out. Ones got a shotgun; the other ones got a pistol. The guy with the shotgun sticks it right up against my nose and says: Nigger lover, Im giving you five minutes to get out of town before I blow your head off. Im an 18-year-old Stanford student. Well, what do you mean? Who are you? And he just says: Nigger, I said five minutes. At that point, the other three guys came back, took one look at the situation and we all jumped in the car and left Lambert, Mississippi.

WB I remember vividly the photographs in Jet magazine of Emmett Till in his casket in 1955. His mother wanted an open casket so people could see what was done to him his misshapen face that was bludgeoned into nonrecognition.*

And I remember watching those kids in Little Rock in 57 trying to go to Central High and Eisenhower finally getting the National Guard to come in, so that they could go to school without being killed.

The memory of those images and the virulent hatred directed at those kids was indelible for me. And, of course, there were the Freedom Rides, the lunch counter sit-ins [in whites-only cafes and bars], and the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott. We got our first television in 1949, so all of these images were a part of my coming of age.

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An FBI poster seeking information as to the whereabouts of three civil rights campaigners. Photograph: MPI/Getty Images

DH We learned how to organise by working with SNCC in Mississippi, and perhaps much more important was the spirit of Mississippi; there was a kind of inspiration in the heroism of the black people in Mississippi. Its really hard to recapture what that was like. For example, we were working in Quitman County; the county seat is called Marks. There was a 75-year-old black woman there who walked into the registrar of voters office and said: I want to register to vote. They arrested her, threw her in jail, tortured her with an electric cattle prod and then released her from jail. She walked out of jail and down the street to the registrar of voters office and said: I want to register to vote. These are people whose names are lost to history, but when you have that kind of encounter, somehow you get a whole new perspective on whats of value and how to behave in the face of oppression and the strength that any single person or a group of people can bring with their own will.

The third thing that came out of Mississippi was the experience of seeing America from a different perspective. You see what was being done to black people for simply trying to exercise the rights that we supposedly won with hard-fought battles a hundred years ago. And to see not only that that was going on, but how the rest of the country had turned a blind eye to it and talked bullshit about the southern way of life and courtly manners. Isnt it sweet? These were mean, vicious, narrow-minded people, who were standing on the backs of people who were helpless to fight back. And everybody in America let that happen. So suddenly, you come back from that and you cant look at it the same way.

It was precisely that perspective that brought the Vietnam war into focus.

WB So I was at SUNY Oswego [a State University of New York campus] in January 1965, on Lake Ontario, in central New York, and some SNCC workers came to speak.

I was already feeling that I wanted to be a part of something that was going on that I felt would make a difference. I was about 20 years old at that point. Their visit changed my life in many ways and I decided to go to Mississippi.

My parents couldnt believe that I would put myself in harms way, given what had happened in Mississippi the year before. They left the south in the 30s, as many blacks did, because of the Depression, to find work in the north as part of the great migration. They couldnt believe that I would return to a place that they left.

I remember taking a port authority bus in June of 1965 to Memphis, about a 28-hour bus ride, and then having to get another bus to Holly Springs, Mississippi. So that began the four months I spent in northern Mississippi, right near the Tennessee border, working on voter registration.

DH Right after I got back from Mississippi came the first major escalations of the Vietnam war, when all of a sudden we went from adviser status to deploying full combat units there, and the rise to 600,000 troops began. I marched in my first antiwar march about six months after I got back from Mississippi.

My father was an officer in the army reserve for 20 years. My brother ended up a captain in the 82nd Airborne Division. Ive had ancestors in every war starting with the revolution. Like all my generation, I assumed that we would have a war to fight. We grew up watching Victory at Sea on television. But when the war that they had for us came, it was obvious this wasnt what I thought I would be doing. This wasnt about freedom or democracy or wearing white hats or helping people.

This was essentially keeping a bunch of scumbags in power and prolonging the French empire. Coming back from Mississippi, I could believe it.

WB A few days after my arrival, I was sent to Jackson, Mississippi, for a demonstration with the intent of filling up the jails. Within minutes of getting out of the car in Jackson, I was arrested and thrown into a field house with hundreds of protesters, because the city jails were full. Before bail was set, the lawyers were interviewing people and they asked me: Do you want us to get in touch with your family to let them know where you are? It was Fathers Day and this lawyer talked to my father and wished him happy Fathers Day for me. After I got out a week later, I contacted my parents and I let them know that I was OK. It was a very emotional and not a happy time for them.

Like any parents, my father and mother did not want their children to have to go through the things they had gone through when they lived in the south. They shared my beliefs but didnt want me to have to deal with the consequences of my beliefs. My father used to say: You cant get up in the face of the powers that be. You have to find a way to work around the system, but if you make too much noise and draw attention to yourself, youre just setting yourself up for a fall.

DH I considered myself part of the movement from the day I left for Mississippi.

What we call The Movement, capital T, capital M, was a commitment to justice and the values of democracy. They called us the New Left because it wasnt an ideology. There wasnt a specific politics attached to it. What it was was a set of values finding ways to express themselves.

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Young men burn their draft cards at an anti-Vietnam war demonstration outside the Pentagon in 1967. Photograph: Bettmann Archive

I was in marches, I was in rallies and demonstrations. But there was always the larger question of the conscription system. In that era, when any male turned 18, he had to go to the post office and register for the Selective Service System. When you registered for Selective Service, they gave you two cards. One was proof that you had registered and the other indicated your classification. Because under the Selective Service, there were various classifications, starting from 1-A, which meant you were cannon fodder, to you were going to get a notice soon in the mail saying: Report to 4-F, which meant you were physically unable to perform and therefore exempt. In between that, the largest one was 2-S, which was the student deferment. Anybody in college making, quote, reasonable progress towards a degree had a temporary exemption until they finished their education. So that was the system that covered all of our lives all of the male lives, anyway.

Always there was floating out there, what happens when they call your number? We, understandably, focused on that a lot. I mean, there were people going to graduate school so that they wouldnt get drafted. There were people getting married so they wouldnt get drafted, because early on, being married was an exemption. They werent going to draft family men. They thought if I want to take a year off and just go to Paris and write poetry, youre headed for the tall grass if you do that. This defined everybodys life.

WB After I left Mississippi and returned to college, I went to the school registrar with a friend and we asked that our student deferment classifications not be sent to the Selective Service, because we felt that it discriminated against blacks who didnt have the opportunity to go to college. The registrar went ballistic but honoured my request, and my classification was changed to 1-A, which meant I was subject to be drafted.

But because I had been arrested in Mississippi, my classification was changed to 1-Y, which meant that if you had an outstanding legal charge against you, you wouldnt be among the first who would be called.

DH What got me was a sense of moral responsibility; whether you like it or not, its your war. This is yours. You participate in a society; youre responsible for what the society does. I had read a lot about the Indian revolution and Gandhi and the use of satyagraha, or truth force.

I, like everybody, watched what was going on with the war, in which more and more people were doing things that Americans were never supposed to do.

Ultimately, we killed 2 million people, for Christs sake, and left God knows how many people crippled for life, including generation after generation. I got elected Stanford student body president at the end of my year, in 66. Nobody expected me to be student body president, including me.

Everyone put on their suits and ties and did whistlestop campaigns around the campus and I was in my movement uniform: blue work shirt, Levis, moccasins.

I had what passed for long hair in those days. It was over my ears.

That was considered amazing in those days. This was at the same time Haight-Ashbury was forming 30 miles north in San Francisco.

There was this kind of lead cultural edge. I had one big musical rally for my campaign, in which, to get a sound system for the rally, we traded a lid of marijuana with Jefferson Airplane for the use of their system.

Part of our platform was ending co-operation with the war in Vietnam, legalising marijuana. We threw it all in there, because I didnt care. Hey, if I lose, I lose. Im counting on losing. I took 60% of the fraternity vote in the election. Go figure.

This is an edited extract from Witness to the Revolution by Clara Bingham. 2016 by Clara Bingham. Reprinted by arrangement with Random House

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jul/01/civil-rights-america-1960s-activists-voting-rights-vietnam