An idea conceived with good intentions went terribly wrong and ended in tragedy. Fifty years ago this month, on December 6, 1969, the 1960s died. On a sunny Saturday in the dusty hills east of San Francisco, the Altamont Rock Concert dissolved into chaos, leaving four dead and dozens injured. Like so many events of[…]
Art nouveau was the modern art movement that America almost entirely missed. Art nouveau was the modern art movement that America almost entirely missed. Not only is it absent from our streets, it is largely missing from our museums, a void that a traveling exhibit, Designing the New: Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the Glasgow Style, now at the[…]
Mongol religion included a strong element of shamanism mixed with ancestor worship and a belief in natural spirits. By Mark CartwrightHistorian Introduction The Mongol Empire (1206-1368 CE) covered Asia from the Black Sea to the Korean peninsula and so naturally included all manner of religions within its borders, but the Mongols themselves had their own[…]
Many of the Mongol clothes of the medieval period are still worn by nomadic peoples today across Eurasia. By Mark CartwrightHistorian Introduction The clothing worn by the Mongols in the 13th and 14th century CE, like most other aspects of their culture, reflected their nomadic lifestyle in the often harsh climate of the Asian steppe.[…]
This is one of the best, if not the very best, documented events surviving from the ancient world. Introduction The Catiline or Catilinarian Orations are a set of speeches to the Roman Senate given in 63 BC by Marcus Tullius Cicero, one of the year’s consuls, accusing a senator, Lucius Sergius Catilina (Catiline), of leading[…]
The failure of the conspiracy in Rome was a massive blow to Catiline‘s cause. Overview Lucius Sergius Catilina, known in English as Catiline108–62 BC), was a Roman patrician, soldier and senator of the 1st century BC best known for the second Catilinarian conspiracy, an attempt to overthrow the Roman Republic and, in particular, the power[…]