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Break’n News History Page. As an aggregate, blog and our own news, Break’n News presents information in photos, videos, and written.

History

The Unsuccessful WWII Plot to Fight the Japanese With Radioactive Foxes

Smithsonian
by Smithsonian09
In the wake of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, “Wild Bill” Donovan, the leader of the Office of Strategic Services—America’s wartime intelligence agency—told his scientists to find a way to “outfox” the Axis enemies. In response, the scientists produced a number of dirty tricks, including explosive pancake mix, incendiary......
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History

Eleven Historic Places in America That Desperately Need Saving

Smithsonian
by Smithsonian016
SMITHSONIANMAG.COM | Sept. 28, 2020, 1:53 p.m. A civil rights landmark in Mississippi, a Native American site in California and a public housing complex in Texas may have little in common at first glance, but a recent list brings them all together in the name of preservation. The National Trust......
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History

Charlotte’s Monument to a Jewish Confederate Was Hated Even Before It Was Built

Smithsonian
by Smithsonian034
From 1948 until just recently, residents and visitors to uptown Charlotte, North Carolina, could have strolled past a Confederate monument and not even known. On a busy, commercial street, in front of a FedEx store, the tombstone-like memorial honored Judah P. Benjamin, a Jewish southerner and the Secretary of State......
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History

Are There Native Descendants of the Lewis and Clark Expedition? And More Questions From Our Readers

Smithsonian
by Smithsonian025
Q: Are there any American Indian descendants of the members of the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery? —Karen Wilson | Helena, Alabama In their journals, the men of the Corps of Discovery alluded to their relations with Indian women. One Nez Perce man named Halahtookit was widely believed to......
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History

How NASA Marketed Its Space Program With Fantastical Depictions of the Future

Smithsonian
by Smithsonian038
Long before scientists and engineers could send astronauts into space, they had to convince the public—and the officials who would fund these first forays—that such a wild undertaking was possible. “You couldn’t just say, ‘We’re going to build rockets,’ and ask people to believe it—you really had to show them......
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History

Germany May Have Banished Nazism, But Its Medieval Anti-Semitism Is Still in Plain Sight

Smithsonian
by Smithsonian045
It takes less than ten minutes to walk the length of the cobblestone street of Judenstasse (“Jew street”) in the sleepy East German town of Lutherstadt Wittenberg. On the street’s western end stands the Wittenberg Schlosskirche, or Castle Church, where, according to legend, Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to......
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History

Nero, History’s Most Despised Emperor, Gets a Makeover

Smithsonian
by Smithsonian064
The Colosseum in Rome draws close to eight million tourists a year, making it one of the world’s most-visited archaeological attractions. I could see the crowds converging on the magnificent first-century amphitheater as I headed across the street to a small park on a hillock. There was almost no one......
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History

Fidel Castro Stayed in Harlem 60 Years Ago to Highlight Racial Injustice in the U.S.

Smithsonian
by Smithsonian028
When the General Assembly of the United Nations opened 60 years ago this week, Fidel Castro, the revolutionary leader of Cuba, audaciously ensured that the world’s attention would be drawn to America’s “race problem.” On the evening of September 19, 1960, Castro—in New York for the international summit—stormed out of......
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History

Alexander von Humboldt: The Man Who History Forgot

Smithsonian
by Smithsonian014
“Alexander von Humboldt and the United States: Art, Nature, and Culture,” now on view at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, reveals how the influential naturalist and explorer shaped American perceptions of nature and the way American cultural identity became grounded in our relationship with the environment. Source link...
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History

How the Revolutionary Thinker Alexander von Humboldt Helped to Create the Smithsonian

Smithsonian
by Smithsonian033
For the last five years, Ximena Velez-Zuazo has been monitoring the playful antics of a colony of Humboldt penguins living on a breakwater off the central coast of Peru. The embankment was built to diffuse the energy of the waves to protect the coastline, but quite unexpectedly, Velez-Zuazo says, it......
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History

Why Black, Indigenous and Other People of Color Experience Greater Harm During the Pandemic

Smithsonian
by Smithsonian062
This article was originally published on the blog for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. It is the final in a five-part series titled “Black Life in Two Pandemics: Histories of Violence”. History, as nearly no one seems to know, is not merely something to be read. And it......
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History

Why ‘Glory’ Still Resonates More Than Three Decades Later

Smithsonian
by Smithsonian073
Thirty-one years ago, the Hollywood movie Glory debuted in theaters, garnering positive reviews from critics and historians as it told the Civil War story of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, the first all-Black regiment raised in the North. Although it had middling success at the box office, the film became......
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History

The Notre-Dame Crypt Reopens for the First Time Since the Fire

Smithsonian
by Smithsonian066
SMITHSONIANMAG.COM | Sept. 9, 2020, 3:49 p.m. In a sign that the universe of Notre-Dame Cathedral is returning to life, the archaeological crypt that sits under its courtyard reopened today—for the first time since flames devoured the cathedral’s roof and toppled its spire in April last year. Before the crypt......
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History

Artist Maren Hassinger Has Spent Her Entire Career Mediating the Current Moment

Smithsonian
by Smithsonian061
The Harlem-based artist Maren Hassinger is known for work that spans performance, installation, sculpture and video. She sees the natural world as a reminder of our shared purpose. On October 19, Hassinger’s Monument, an installation inspired by its location and woven with the help of volunteers from local tree branches......
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History

This Norwegian Island Claims to be the Fabled Land of Thule

Smithsonian
by Smithsonian067
SMITHSONIANMAG.COM | Sept. 8, 2020, 2:01 p.m. On a Monday late in April 2020, the tiny, rocky, sparsely populated Norwegian island of Smøla, which had been sealed off from the outside world for three months, reopened its one point of access, a ferry terminal that connects it to the coastal......
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History

For Generations, Black Women Have Envisioned a Better, Fairer American Politics

Smithsonian
by Smithsonian040
The traditional narrative of American voting rights and of American women’s history, taught in schools for generations, emphasizes the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920 as the pinnacle of achievement for suffragists. A look at the headlines from last month’s centennial commemorations largely confirms women’s suffrage as a critical......
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History

Why Thomas Jefferson Created His Own Bible

Smithsonian
by Smithsonian066
Great religious books are often inseparable from tales of their discovery. Whether it is Joseph Smith unearthing the golden plates that would become the Book of Mormon, or Bedouin shepherds stumbling upon the cave-hidden jars that yielded the Dead Sea Scrolls, part of the significance of some sacred texts is......
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