Tag: History Travel
Wanted: Books From North of the 60th Parallel
by Eva Holland | 04.29.09 | 3:07 PM ET
Growing up, I was fascinated by the idea of the Arctic. I can remember trying out some of the strange place names of the North—Whitehorse and Yellowknife, Great Slave Lake, Tuktoyaktuk—and reading Jack London or reciting The Cremation of Sam McGee in school.
Now, finally, I’m headed “north of 60” (that is, beyond the 60th parallel that divides Canada’s provinces from our northern territories) to spend part of the summer in the Yukon, and it occurs to me: I know almost nothing about the North in the present day.
Email to friend
del.icio.us
Digg
Facebook
Furl
Ma.gnolia
Mixx
Reddit
StumbleUpon
Yahoo! BuzzEating Penguin with Ernest Shackleton in Scotland
by David Farley | 04.09.09 | 1:02 PM ET
In March 1901, the RRS Discovery set sail from Dundee, Scotland, its crew pointing it toward largely unexplored Antarctica. The ship was a wooden three-masted sailing vessel and, as it turned out, the last of its kind to be made in Britain.
But that’s not exactly what makes the RRS Discovery significant. Ten months later, the crew members definitively found what they were looking for. In fact, the ship was stuck, frozen in ice, leaving captains Ernest Shackleton and Robert Falcon Scott with no choice but to wait it out until the spring when the ice would thaw. The next few months were harrowing ones, the crew eventually having to munch on seal liver and roasted penguin (described as tasting like “leather steeped in turpentine”).
From Wilt to Woodstock: A Pop Culture Road Trip
by Chris Epting | 04.06.09 | 10:27 AM ET
Photo by Chris Epting Chris Epting has written numerous books on roadside attractions. Here, he reveals 10 favorite offbeat landmarks.
See the full audio slideshow: »
Civil War Parks Need You
by Sophia Dembling | 03.31.09 | 10:47 AM ET
Continuing on a theme, this Saturday, April 4, is the 13th annual Park Day, an event sponsored by the Civil War Preservation Trust and the History Channel that invites volunteers to help clean and tidy Civil War sites from Florida to Illinois and numerous points between.
Last year’s Park Day attracted a couple of thousand volunteers. Talk history with like-minded folks while you help preserve it. Check the CWPT website for locations, times, activities.
Are We Ready to Honor Confederate History?
by Sophia Dembling | 03.24.09 | 11:32 AM ET
As a Yankee in the South, I’m used to the sensitivities still surrounding the Civil War, aka the War Between the States, aka (‘round these parts) the War of Northern Aggression.
But while visiting Civil War battlefields is standard historical tourism, I wonder if enough time has passed even now for the nation to join Southern states in other observances honoring Confederate history, as this Chicago Tribune article discusses. (And I didn’t realize April was Confederate History Month in Texas. It took an article in a Yankee paper to clue me in to that.)
But the Confederacy is part of our nation’s rich history. We don’t have to embrace it in its entirety to respect its place in our past. Maybe it is time to let it out into the light.
Interview With David Grann: ‘The Lost City of Z’
by Frank Bures | 03.03.09 | 10:32 AM ET
Frank Bures asks the author about exploring the Amazon, writing and the difference between real and faux quests
India: Three Great Books
by Eva Holland | 02.25.09 | 6:32 PM ET
The literature about India is as vast and diverse as the subcontinent that inspired it. In 60 years of independence, the country has produced a truly intimidating list of award-winning writers, from Salman Rushdie and Vikram Seth to Rohinton Mistry and Arundhati Roy, R.K. Narayan or Anita Desai. Faced with the impossibility of choosing just three novels from an endless list of great post-colonial reads, I’ve decided instead to go back further in time, to the days of the British Empire. The colonial period produced a few classics of its own, and since then, with the passing of time, new books have started to arrive that capture the colorful lifestyles, the dark patches of history, and the many oddities and implausibilities of the British Raj. Three great books:
Taking Black History Month to ... India?
by Julia Ross | 02.19.09 | 2:24 PM ET
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is apparently making good use of cultural diplomacy early in her term. Before she departed on her current Asia tour, Clinton sent a delegation of U.S. congressional representatives, civil rights leaders and musicians, including Herbie Hancock and Chaka Khan, to India to commemorate U.S. Black History Month. The group includes Martin Luther King III, who is retracing a trip his parents, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King, took 50 years ago to study Gandhi’s philosophy of nonviolence.
Meanwhile, Hancock, Khan and jazz students from New Orleans will perform at concerts in Mumbai and New Delhi, then jam with students at the Ravi Shankar Institute of the Performing Arts. I’m pleased to see the group continue a long tradition of U.S. jazz ambassadorship abroad.
Going to SXSW? Put the Harry Ransom Center On Your Schedule.
by Sophia Dembling | 02.17.09 | 6:00 PM ET
Photo by Eric Beggs The South by Southwest (or SXSW) film, music and interactive festival is less than a month away. Got your plans and reservations yet? (And did you know that many Austinites flee the city as you arrive? Too much traffic and other mishigos.)
I realize that SXSW is all about the future of this, that and the other, but while you’re in town, I urge you to carve out some time to pay your respects to what many consider a dying art form, the written word, with a stop at the free galleries at the Harry Ransom Center.
For the Love of Her State: A Kansas Day Tour
by Jenna Schnuer | 01.29.09 | 2:45 PM ET
Nobody loves Kansas the way my friend Jodi Rosenberg loves Kansas. At least, nobody I know. She grew up there. She moved away for some years. She moved back. And she’s been talking Kansas up to me from the moment we met at college, 20 years ago. (And, yes, Jodi—I’ll be there soon. I promise.) So, to celebrate Kansas Day and the state’s 148th birthday today, I give you Jodi and her recommendations for the ultimate Kansas experience:
British Man Jailed for Mutilating Antique Maps, Travelogues
by Eva Holland | 01.22.09 | 4:10 PM ET
A wealthy British book collector has been sentenced to two years in prison for stealing from the British Library. Farhad Hakimzadeh had used a scalpel to slice pages and maps out of more than 150 rare books, most dating to the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. His subject matter of choice? “The engagement by West European travellers with Mesopotamia, Persia and the Mogul empire—roughly the area from modern Syria to Bangladesh.” A British Library staffer called Hakimzadeh’s actions “an attack on the nation’s collective memory of its own past,” and added that he had damaged “our historical record with how this country has engaged in that part of the world.”
Sadly, cases of high-profile book vandalism and theft aren’t uncommon—but they never fail to shock me. (The theft, also from the British Library, of some of the first-ever maps of Canada a few years ago hit especially close to home.) I don’t want to get too Orwellian here, but something about the theft and destruction of irreplaceable historical documents, the literal dismantling of our physical historical record, strikes me as deeply sinister. It’s a relief to hear that there’s now one less perp running loose in the stacks.
Cuban Exiles Recall Flights to U.S.
by Julia Ross | 12.29.08 | 3:32 PM ET
For the 265,000 Cubans who fled their homeland on U.S.-sponsored “Freedom Flights” from 1965 to 1973, the emotional 45-minute flight to a new life remains etched in memory. Now, a Miami Herald series on the 50th anniversary of the Cuban revolution has given Cuban-Americans a chance to share photos and memories of their “Freedom Flight” experience, in conjunction with a database that makes names and arrival dates of refugees available to the public for the first time.
In reading through the online recollections submitted by exiles who were children at the time, I was struck by how many remember their first taste of the U.S.—a coke, a ham sandwich, a pack of Wrigley’s gum, many handed out in box lunches at Miami’s airport. Others recall the tense days leading up to their departure, and the clothes, jewelry, and dolls left behind.
With the recent publication of Rachel Kushner’s novel, Telex from Cuba, and Tom Gjelten’s Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba: The Biography of a Cause, along with the much-anticipated release of Steven Soderbergh’s Che next month, it seems Cuban history remains a hot topic in the U.S. Kudos to the Herald for rounding out that history with an important public record.
Morning Links: Roman Gladiators, Michelin Guides, Prehistoric Airports and More
by Jim Benning | 12.26.08 | 11:58 AM ET
- Air travelers will soon be able to buy carbon offsets from self-service kiosks inside San Francisco Airport.
- A British tourist volunteering at an archaeological dig in Jerusalem discovered hundreds of gold coins dating from the 7th century.
- More trouble in Venice: All that water is causing the Campanile on St. Marks Square to tilt.
- The French edition of Michelin restaurant guide gets a new editor and—gasp—she’s not French.
- Thailand’s tourism economy is enduring its worst slump in decades.
- World Hum contributor Doug Lansky put together an audio slideshow about a new hostel in Stockholm—it’s set inside a jumbo jet.
- A three part series on NPR looks at the rise of earthquake tourism in Sichuan.
- Gladiators could soon return to Rome’s Colloseum. Now that’s ultimate fighting.
- Thomas Friedman just flew from Hong Kong’s state-of-the-art airport to New York’s aging Kennedy. His conclusion: It’s time for the U.S. to reboot. Funny, I had the same feeling not long ago, only I was flying from London’s Heathrow to LAX.
Expanding Auto Museums, Shrinking Industry?
by Eva Holland | 08.22.08 | 10:50 AM ET
The Globe and Mail’s Paul French has a run-down of several ambitious new expansions being unveiled at the shrines to BMW, Audi and Porsche in Germany. Ironic timing, all things considered.
Video: Tony Perrottet on the Hunt for Napoleon’s Penis in New Jersey
by Jim Benning | 07.10.08 | 11:20 AM ET
World Hum contributor and “Napoleon’s Privates” author Tony Perrottet just spoke to World Hum about his new book. In this video, he tracks down the traveling relic in New Jersey, of all places:
The Old West’s ‘Non-Renewable Resources’ In Peril
by Eva Holland | 07.08.08 | 10:47 AM ET
When it comes to the preservation of historic landmarks, it’s often “the grand, the notable and the notorious” that get the attention—but sometimes it’s the structures built for everyday use that tell us the most about history, the AP observes. According to this story, in places like Utah and Colorado, it’s those everyday buildings—the remnants of early frontier settlements—that are slowly disappearing. “You could tell this was a place where they were doing everything they could to make it,” one archaeologist said of a historic homestead near Salt Lake City. “That’s the story of the American West for me right there.”
Please Don’t Hack the Earlobes Off Easter Island’s Big Stone Heads
by Jim Benning | 06.30.08 | 12:46 PM ET
Seriously. Archaeologists and others are worried that surging tourism on Easter Island is bad news for the island’s iconic Moais. We noted that, in March, a Finnish tourist cut an earlobe off one head. It turns out that’s but one of many threats to the big stone heads. “More tourism, more deterioration. More visitors, more loss,” an archaeologist tells the AP.
Tony Horwitz on Book TV Sunday
by Jim Benning | 06.06.08 | 1:51 PM ET
The author of “A Voyage Long and Strange,” featured in this World Hum interview, recently talked up his latest work at the great Books & Books in Coral Gables, Florida—in front of C-SPAN cameras. The program will air twice on Sunday.
P.J. O’Rourke at Chicago’s Field Museum
by Jim Benning | 06.04.08 | 11:36 AM ET
The Field Museum of Natural History, that is. He checked out the new permanent exhibit, “The Ancient Americas.” His take? “The savages and barbarians are the museum’s curators,” he writes in The Weekly Standard. “They plunder history, ravage archaeology, do violence to intelligence, and lay waste to wisdom, faith, and common sense.” (Via Arts & Letters Daily)
Photo by tacvbo via Flickr, (Creative Commons).
Tony Horwitz: Rediscovering the New World
by Ben Keene | 05.13.08 | 11:00 AM ET
Ben Keene talks to the author of the new book "A Voyage Long and Strange" about travel, American myths and the importance of visiting places where "history happened"