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Half-term holidays give London Stansted busiest passenger day in airport history

Over 100,000 passengers passed through the airport on 27 October




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'A Cinderella story' - Billam-Smith's bid for history

As Chris Billam-Smith's unification bout against Gilberto Ramirez nears, BBC Sport speaks to those closest to him.




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Understanding through history

War is back in daily headlines. It’s devastating to think about the impact on children here and where the actual fighting is taking place.




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A brief history of America's love affair with fluoridated water — and why it's now up for debate

Too much fluoride can make your teeth brown, but getting a little bit is a dentist's dream. Here's the complete history of fluoridated water.




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Do you like party games and music history? Try HITSTER

I recently attended a weekend-long birthday getaway for an old college friend, and as soon as I arrived, he pulled out a box and said, "You have to play this game."

And he was right.

Hitster describes itself as a Music Party Board Game, and that's accurate. — Read the rest

The post Do you like party games and music history? Try HITSTER appeared first on Boing Boing.




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Celebrating Black History Month at Chatham House

Celebrating Black History Month at Chatham House 24 October 2024 — 6:00PM TO 8:00PM Anonymous (not verified) Chatham House

Join us for the ‘Beyond expectations: The impact and legacy of migration exhibition 2024’ exhibition and drinks reception.

About the Photographer  

Neil Kenlock, a photographer and media professional, has lived in London since arriving from Jamaica in 1963 to join his parents. He spent the early years of his career as a professional photographer, specialising in fashion, beauty, celebrities, and the cultural lifestyles of Black people in the UK. In the late 1960s and 1970s, he captured images of the UK Black Panther movement and documented demonstrations and anti-racism protests across the country.

“Neil Kenlock helps us to better understand the story of London’s Black communities and to appreciate the huge artistic and cultural impact they have had on all our lives. He is a significant photographer whose work documents a key chapter in London’s post-war history.” — Mike Seaborne, former curator of photographs at the Museum of London.

About the exhibition

This exhibition unveils a collection of photographs by Neil Kenlock, capturing Black British individuals who migrated from their homelands and settled in the UK. Curated by his daughter Emelia Kenlock, the series explores the theme of ‘expectations’ and its enduring legacy, featuring African and Caribbean subjects who brought their skills, passions, and dreams—contributions that have profoundly shaped British culture today.

Reflecting on the work, Kenlock stated: “Over 50 years since the concept of ‘black excellence’ first manifested, and more than 70 years since the Windrush, I truly hope this exhibition will add to the national cultural narrative and resonate with new audiences.” 




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The Human Plasma Proteome: History, Character, and Diagnostic Prospects

N. Leigh Anderson
Nov 1, 2002; 1:845-867
Reviews/Perspectives




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Undercurrents: Episode 28 – The History of Women at Chatham House




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Screening Room: Parts of a Circle - History of the Karabakh Conflict




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Sir David Attenborough and the BBC Studios Natural History Unit awarded Chatham House Prize 2019 for ocean advocacy

Sir David Attenborough and the BBC Studios Natural History Unit awarded Chatham House Prize 2019 for ocean advocacy News Release sysadmin 18 November 2019

The 2019 Chatham House Prize is awarded to Sir David Attenborough and Julian Hector, head of BBC Studios Natural History Unit, for the galvanizing impact of the Blue Planet II series on tackling ocean plastic pollution.




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New Chatham House History Examines our Defining Moments

New Chatham House History Examines our Defining Moments News Release NCapeling 18 January 2021

'A History of Chatham House: its People and Influence from the 1920s to the 2020s' will examine the impact on policymaking of our first 100 years.




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The history of model railroading the the Walthers 1970 O Scale Catalog

Tangled Bank posted a photo:




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The history of model railroading the the Walthers 1970 O Scale Catalog

Tangled Bank posted a photo:




history

The history of model railroading the the Walthers 1970 O Scale Catalog

Tangled Bank posted a photo:




history

Beyoncé makes Grammy history

NEW YORK (AP): When it comes to the 2025 Grammy Award nominations, Cowboy Carter rules. Its superstar singer, Beyonce, leads the nods with 11, bringing her career total to 99 nominations. That makes her the most nominated artiste in Grammy history...




history

Chatham House History: Five Key Moments on Africa

9 July 2020

Christopher Vandome

Research Fellow, Africa Programme
To mark the centenary of Chatham House, the Africa programme curated an exhibition of archive material which charts how the institute has been both a major forum for discussion on Africa, and an important platform for African leaders to engage in international affairs.

Mandela1a.jpg

President Nelson Mandela of South Africa addresses an audience at an event co-hosted by Chatham House, the CBI and COSAT on July 10, 1996.

As with any history, Chatham House has a long and complex one. Progress has come in fits and starts, sometimes driven by wider social change, but often led by individuals within the institute. When examining the institute's work on Africa, five seminal moments from the history really stood out.

The Founders

Lionel Curtis is credited as the founder of the institute, having proposed the idea at a meeting at the Hotel Majestic while attending the Treaty of Versailles talks.

Curtis served in South Africa during the Second Boer war and subsequent period of unification. He was one of the cohort of officials that served under Lord Milner, later dubbed ‘Milner’s Kindergarten’. Several of this group were involved in the foundation of the institute.

A Century of Supporting African Engagement in International Affairs

A short presentation highlighting how Chatham House has been both a major forum for discussion on Africa, and an important platform for African leaders.

His experiences in South Africa undoubtedly informed his political philosophy - a strong belief in liberal imperialism. This is captured in the emblems of empire inlaid into the roundtable which is still in the Chatham House library, given to Curtis as a wedding gift.

But more importantly than his political philosophy, Curtis was an astute social networker and fundraiser who unlocked the finance required to establish the institute. Curtis’s papers in the Chatham House archives depict his almost obsessive following of the career of the South African diamond tycoon Sir Abe Bailey that eventually led to the first significant endowment to the institute - after the building. South African Prime Minister Jan Smuts, a friend of Curtis and early champion of the institute, spoke at a dinner in honour of Bailey’s contribution.

Curtis’s connections meant much of the early finance came from South Africa, including from Otto Beit and Percy Molteno, who was also an early financer of the African National Congress (ANC).

Hailey’s Africa Survey

In 1938, Chatham House published Lord Hailey’s monumental Africa Survey. Its detailed 1,837 pages of study came to represent a seismic shift in attitudes towards the continent. Lord Lothian’s foreword emphasises that it grew from an idea of Smuts from 1929, although these origins remain disputed.

What is known is that Oxford University had submitted a proposal for a study of the continent to an American foundation which rejected it on the grounds that they didn’t want American money to be used to expand Smut’s doctrine of dominion. The group then merged their own plan into an emerging study by progressive missionary Joseph Oldham.

Curtis brought in his friend Lord Hailey to lead the initiative. Hailey was a distinguished civil servant who served in India but never in Africa. The project moved to Chatham House and received a substantial grant from the Carnegie Foundation. Having been originally conceived as a study to reinforce segregationist ideas, the final survey was groundbreaking. Its underlying assumption of basic racial equality debunked the premises of segregation and re-set British attitudes towards Africa.

This shift in mindset was hugely significant at the time, but the work would later be criticized for not including any African voices. And, despite carrying his name, Lord Lothian wrote very little of the text. He fell ill, in part due to the pressure of the four-year project, and the work was largely written by notable Africanists Lucy Mair, Charlotte Leubuscher, and Margery Perham. The Africa Survey was updated and reprinted in 1956, including a pull-out map depicting newly-independent Sudan. A sign of real change.

Independence and National Liberation

The 1960s was a decade of transformation both on the continent and at Chatham House. The institute became an important conduit for newly-independent African states to engage in international affairs, hosting several independence presidents, including Prime Minister Modibo Keita of Mali, President Léopold Senghor of Senegal, and President Julius Nyerere of Tanzania. Many of these speeches were republished in the Institute’s journal, International Affairs.

In January 1962, the Nigerian government invited Chatham House to host a conference in Lagos on the external international relations of the newly-independent African states. But it wasn’t just presidents that were offered a platform. Liberation leaders were also invited to speak as well as conduct research.

African Liberation – The Historical and Contemporary Significance of Re-discovered Nationalist Speeches at Chatham House of Dr Eduardo Mondlane and Oliver Tambo

Two speeches at Chatham House in 1968 and 1985 by African nationalist leaders Dr Eduardo Mondlane and Oliver Tambo at key moments of their liberation struggle for majority rule are re-examined for their significance.

Dr Bernard Chidzero, a later finance minister in independent Zimbabwe, wrote on African nationalism in International Affairs in 1960, and conducted a multi-year study at the institute resulting in the publication of a book. In 1968, Eduardo Mondlane, founding president of FRELIMO, made an important speech on the nationalist fight for independence in Mozambique.

In 1961, Kenneth Younger, a new director of the institute, increased its research capacity on Africa through significant new hires. Catherine Hoskyns’s 1965 book on the Congo crisis became the seminal study on the topic. Dennis Austin, who had experience in West Africa, wrote the definitive work on Ghana’s transition to independence in 1964.

African Institutes

Chatham House has also been involved in the establishment of think-tanks across the world, including three in Africa.

The South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA) was founded in 1934, in response to proposals made by Chatham House the previous year at the inaugural British Commonwealth Relations Conference. An East African Institute of International Affairs was also established in Nairobi but did not survive. The Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA) was formed in 1961 in Lagos. Its founding director general Dr L A Fabunmi, said ‘the main task of the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs will be to create, develop, and sustain an African perspective in world affairs’.

Chatham House has maintained a good working relationship with its sister institutes. In 2005 a special edition of International Affairs was launched at NIIA, the first time in the journal’s history it was launched outside the UK. And SAIIA staff and leaders are regular contributors to Chatham House events and research, including a partnership on the study of Central and Eastern European relations with Africa.

The Africa Programme

Created in 2002. this was the first time Chatham House had a dedicated research team working on Africa, producing a sustained and balanced assessment of events on the continent. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, work on Africa had been conducted by regionally-focused study groups, and the personal interests of the director for studies, Dr Jack Spence – a leading authority on South African foreign policy. An earlier attempt to create a more formal programme in the late 1990s fell victim to staff turnover.

In 1998, the British Angola Forum (BAF) was formed and found a home at Chatham House. It marked a departure from the institute’s focus on post-colonial 'Anglophone Africa'. At the end of Angola's civil war in 2002, under the leadership of Dr Alex Vines, the BAF morphed into a continent-wide programme.

Since then, the Africa Programme has produced more than 160 original research publications, and organizes between 120-140 events on Africa every year. The Africa Programme is marking the centenary of the institute with a major research theme on Foreign Relations and African Agency in International Relations.

Chatham House’s work on Africa has its roots in the liberal imperialism of the post war leaders. But throughout the last 100 years, it has been a platform for progress, playing a vital role in informing policymakers and facilitating debate on African affairs, as well as highlighting African perspectives on global issues.

The exhibition on the History of Africa at Chatham House was first displayed at the world-renowned fine art auctioneers and valuers Bonham’s in London for a reception in February 2020 marking the centenary of the Institute. It was curated by Christopher Vandome with the assistance of the Chatham House Library, and digitized with the help of the Institute’s communications department. Please contact the Library team for further information regarding the archive.

Chatham House Centenary:
Throughout our centenary year in 2020, Chatham House marks a century of influence, independent analysis and trusted dialogue with a number of exciting initiatives. Throughout the year, we explore key political moments from the institute's history and reflect on how Chatham House and other think-tanks should approach the future.




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Generics have a chequered recent history




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Long History Underlies Fight Over Religious-School Funding

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North Dakota Introduces Native American History

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Tribal leaders back bill on teaching Native American history




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Tribal leaders back bill on teaching Native American history




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Alaska: A Brief History of the State and Its Schools

Alaskan schooling developed on many fronts. An illustrated timeline adds historical context for the growth of the state's education system, from the territory’s earliest Native inhabitants to today.




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2024 NSW Premier’s History Awards – Call for nominations

Wednesday 14 February 2024
Call for nominations.




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NSW Premier’s History Award winners announced

$85,000 in prize money was awarded as part of NSW History Week. 




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How Century-Old Paintings Reveal the Indigenous Roots and Natural History of New England Landscapes

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What the Long History of Mail-In Voting in the U.S. Reveals About the Election Process

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This Captivating Guide Uncovers the History and Mystery of Dinosaurs in 50 Fossils

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A Brief History of Book Banning in America

Book-banning might seem like a relic of less enlightened times, but the practice is back in a big way. The American Library Association reports (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/american-library-association-names-2022s-most-banned-books-180982048/) that 2022 saw more attempts to have books removed from public libraries than in any prior year this century — indeed, it documented more than twice as many attempted bans in 2022 than in 2021. In schools, attempts to keep certain books out of the hands of students have been even more aggressive and draconian. What’s new about these efforts is the subject that binds the most-challenged titles: Most of them address themes of LGBT+ identity or gender expression. In this episode, we talk with journalist Colleen Connolly about Thomas Morton’s New English Canaan, the first book ever to be suppressed in North America. What did the Puritans find so threatening about it, and how has this book echoed through subsequent centuries? Then we’re joined by Dr. Carla Hayden, Librarian of Congress, for a wide-ranging conversation about the history of book bans in the United States, how a resurgent wave of book bans in many states differs from those of prior eras, and why organized attempts to prevent specific people from reading specific books usually fail. A transcript of this episode can be found here (http://smithsonianmag.com/history/a-brief-history-of-banned-books-in-america-180983011) . Read Colleen’s Smithsonian story about New English Canaan here (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-americas-first-banned-book-survived-and-became-an-anti-authoritarian-icon-180982971/) . Find prior episodes of our show here (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/podcast/) . There’s More to That is a production of Smithsonian magazine and PRX Productions. From the magazine, our team is Chris Klimek, Debra Rosenberg and Brian Wolly. From PRX, our team is Jessica Miller, Adriana Rosas Rivera, Genevieve Sponsler, Terence Bernardo, and Edwin Ochoa. The Executive Producer of PRX Productions is Jocelyn Gonzales. Fact-checking by Stephanie Abramson. Episode artwork by Emily Lankiewicz. Music by APM Music.




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Walking Through Civil War History

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He's (Not) Just Ken: The True History of Barbie’s Beau

He is (K)enough… or is he? With filmmaker Greta Gerwig's Barbie breaking box-office records—and devoting much of its story to Ken's existential crisis—we wondered if there's any more to Barbie's perennial plus-one. Journalist and lifelong Barbie fan Emily Tamkin talks us through Ken’s development, or lack thereof, over the decades. Read Emily’s “A Cultural History of Barbie,” and Chris’s brief Ken history “Not Your Average Beau,” here (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/cultural-history-barbie-180982115/) or in the June 2023 issue of Smithsonian. Emily is the author of The Influence of Soros: Politics, Power, and the Struggle for an Open Society and Bad Jews: A History of American Jewish Politics and Identities. Learn more about Emily and her work here (https://www.emilytamkin.com/) , or subscribe to her Substack newsletter (https://emilyctamkin.substack.com/) . There’s More to That is a production of Smithsonian magazine and PRX Productions. From the magazine, our team is Chris Klimek, Debra Rosenberg and Brian Wolly. From PRX, our team is Jessica Miller, Genevieve Sponsler, Adriana Rozas Rivera, Terence Bernardo, and Edwin Ochoa. The Executive Producer of PRX Productions is Jocelyn Gonzales. Episode artwork by Emily Lankiewicz. Music by APM Music.




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The History of the Potato

From the Americas to Europe then back again, there's more to the potato than meets the eyes.




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3-D Scanning: Bringing History Back to Life

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The History of Coffee Culture in America

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Anne Kelly Knowles Uses GIS Tools to Re-Write History

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Inside American History’s Dollhouse

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The Freedom Riders History

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Nintendo Switches Things Up With a New Museum That Embraces Nostalgia and Celebrates Gaming History

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Jill Biden Unveils a Reimagined White House Tour, Which Invites Visitors to 'Touch, Hear and See' History

The public tours of the historic residence hadn't been overhauled in decades. For two years, the first lady's office has been working to make them more interactive and educational