Author: Alex Kulup
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Pineapples: a juicy history
Reading Time: 3 minutes Imagine having to rent a pineapple to display on your mantelpiece, just to show off how rich and trendy you are? That’s exactly what people did during the 17th century.
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Josephine Baker: flapper girl, spy, and civil rights activist
Reading Time: 3 minutes With her slicked-down hair, smoky eyes and dark lips, Josephine Baker was the epitome of the 1920s flapper girl. She became the world’s first internationally recognised African-American entertainer.
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A history of London Underground seat patterns
Reading Time: 3 minutes You might have noticed that rough, patterned fabric your bottom graces if you’re lucky enough to nab the last seat on the London Underground. But did you know that this fabric is called ‘moquette’, and that it has an entire history…
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Sam Cooke: music, mystery and murder
Reading Time: 3 minutes Aged just 33, Sam Cooke, singer, songwriter, entrepreneur, and civil rights activist was shot and killed on the 11th December 1964. His legacy has been described as ‘complicated’ due to the murky circumstances that surround his death. But what really happened…
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Lost buildings: Henry VIII’s Palace of Nonsuch
Reading Time: 2 minutes Once considered to be one of the finest architectural wonders of the world, this lost Tudor palace near Cheam, Surrey (11 miles from Charing Cross, London) stood for 150 years until it was demolished to pay off the gambling debts of…
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The Bear Gardens: a gruesome history of London’s Southbank
Reading Time: 2 minutes Londoners who flocked to see plays during Shakespeare’s time might also have found themselves at the nearby Bear Gardens, where bears, dogs, bulls, rats and even chimps were routinely fought to the death.
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Chocolate: a delicious history
Reading Time: 3 minutes We’ve been consuming chocolate for over 4,000 years. But did you know that the Nazis once plotted to assassinate Winston Churchill using an exploding bar of chocolate? Or that white chocolate was invented by Doctors in Switzerland? Chocolate in Mesoamerica The Ancient…
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A history of rainbows: from the ancients to Issac Newton
Reading Time: 3 minutes What did people think rainbows were, before science? It’s hard to imagine, considering the modern day symbolism of the rainbow, but some ancient societies believed rainbows to be bad omens. Indigenous Australians referred to the rainbow as the ‘Rainbow Serpent’. This ancient…
