Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 16 i BBC World Histories Magazine

When the African-American Frederick Douglass–who was a towering figure in the history of US slavery and its abolition–was born into bondage in 1818, a resurgence in slavery was about to begin in the US, Brazil and Cuba. Indeed, despite 1791’s seismic slave uprising in Haiti, which had destroyed that nation’s slave trade and sown the seeds of defiance across the Americas, slavery remained profitable. Yet by the time Douglass died in 1895, slavery had not only vanished from the Americas but had become universally reviled. It was a staggering turnaround. In the course of a lifetime, slavery had been overthrown across the western hemisphere. The story of this transformation is a complex, sometimes confusing one–and at its heart lie the efforts of slaves themselves. In the early 19th century, enslaved…

There was a sense of disbelief that a riot of queer people had not just fought back against the police but made them run In the sweltering heat of a late June night in 1969, a police raid on a dingy bar on the West Side of Manhattan sparked a riot that became the emblem of a revolution. It was the second bust on the bar that week; the police knew that the establishment operated without a liquor licence, and was owned by a mafia mobster who ran an enormous blackmail ring targeting gay men in the city’s financial district. The bar catered to people some saw as the ‘dregs’ of the homosexual community in New York City–drag queens, street kids, drug dealers–none of whom was expected to put up…

The Marquesas are great masses of basalt that rise hundreds of metres above the surface of the sea In the summer of 1888, the Scottish novelist and travel writer Robert Louis Stevenson embarked on a valedictory tour of the South Pacific. His health, never good, was in decline, and he believed, as he later recalled, that he “was come to the afterpiece of life, and had only the nurse and the undertaker to expect”. He was not far wrong: he lived only another six years. His breakthrough novel, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), had proved a literary sensation, bringing him both fame and fortune. Thanks to that success, in San Francisco he was able to charter a luxurious 94-foot schooner called the Casco, on which…

This year marks the 75th anniversary of D-Day, perhaps the most iconic military event of the Second World War. Veterans, politicians and heads of state from all around the world, along with citizens from many countries, will converge on the beaches of Normandy. They will be there to pay homage to those who stormed the shores of northern France in June 1944, launching the “Great Crusade” (as it was dubbed by US General Dwight Eisenhower in his speech to troops that day) to restore freedom to Europe. Much of what we will see, hear and read in the media will focus–not without reason–on individual acts of heroism and sacrifice. But the anniversary of D-Day also offers an opportunity to think about the contemporary relevance of the Second World War and…

On 2 October 1187, the sultan Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub–known commonly today as Saladin–captured Jerusalem for the people of Islam. It was the crowning achievement of his career–an extraordinary triumph that ensured his name has echoed down the centuries. Over the previous years, Saladin had drawn together a fragile coalition of Muslims from across the Middle East to take on and crush the Christians–or ‘Franks’, as the inhabitants of the Crusader States were known–at the battle of Hattin on 4 July 1187, opening the way for the recovery of Islam’s third most important city. Jerusalem is also, of course, the fulcrum of Christianity, and news of its fall inevitably provoked outrage. The desire to avenge this loss triggered the Third Crusade 1, an expedition launched by the greatest rulers…

1955 The Daughters of Bilitis is founded Established by partners Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon (pictured above) in San Francisco, the DOB was the first civil rights organisation for lesbians in the US. Along with the Mattachine Society, it was an early cornerstone of the homophile movement, organising conventions and marches, and publishing The Ladder, a nationwide lesbian magazine. It folded in the 1970s, but not before spawning a myriad of lesbian and feminist organisations that continued its work over the subsequent decades. 21 April 1966 The ‘Sip-in’ challenges liquor laws Mattachine Society members Dick Leitsch, Randy Wicker, Craig Rodwell and John Timmons (below) walked into several restaurants in Lower Manhattan, stated they were gay, and asked to be served. New York State liquor laws forbade establishments from serving homosexual…

How did this project come about? It was a passion project for me. I grew up in the 1970s, in the afterglow of the Apollo project. Those stories drove my own career and led me to work for Nasa. So I really wanted to do something to mark this anniversary, and suggested a podcast to BBC commissioners. It’s become this huge, definitive 12-part podcast piece that explores the whole Apollo programme but revolves around the drama of the final 13 minutes before the moon landing. Which stories or people stood out? It was an honour to track down some of the last surviving astronauts of the Apollo missions. Michael Collins, for instance, is a famously mercurial character, tricky to track down but fascinating in every dimension. His was the first…

The world’s largest island spans well over 800,000 square miles–yet its capital, Nuuk, has a population of fewer than 18,000 people. It is hugely picturesque: a cluster of rainbow-hued wooden houses clinging to a rocky promontory at the mouth of a vast fjord–and its history is equally colourful. The area was settled by Paleo-Eskimo cultures as far back as 2200 BC. Viking-Age pioneers, led by the murderous ex-outlaw Erik the Red, arrived in AD 985. In Nuup Kangerlua, the 100-mile-long fjord system running inland from Nuuk, you can still find ruined stone foundations of farmsteads dotting the steep mountain slopes, relics of the small community known as the Western Settlement founded by Erik’s party. By around 1450 Greenland’s early Norse settlements had failed but, since contact with Europe had long…

1 NEW ORLEANS UNITED STATES Historic apology The mayor of New Orleans, LaToya Cantrell, has issued a formal apology on behalf of the city for the mob killing of 11 Italian-Americans in 1891–one of the worst mass lynchings in American history. After the city’s police chief was shot in October 1890, numerous Italian immigrants were arrested. Thousands of armed vigilantes then stormed Parish Prison and shot, clubbed or hanged 11 of the accused men. Several of the men had been acquitted, and none had yet been found guilty. 2 SANTIAGO CHILE Chile reception Thousands of artefacts taken from Easter Island by Norwegian explorer and ethnographer Thor Heyerdahl, and currently held in Oslo’s Kon-Tiki Museum, are to be returned to Chile following the signing of an agreement in Santiago in March.…

Richard Overy is professor of history at the University of Exeter, and editor of The Times Complete History of the World (William Collins, 2015)…

The afternoon of Sunday, 29 September 1957 was sunny and warm in Ozersk, deep in the interior of the Soviet Union. Many of the inhabitants of the town, set amid the forests of the southern Urals, were attending a football match. When the sound of an explosion rolled over the crowd, few spectators even looked up; they knew that convicts working in the nearby industrial zone had been dynamiting foundations for new buildings, and apparently thought little of it. The match continued. In fact, the explosion had not happened on a construction site. It had occurred in Waste Tank #14 at the Mayak Production Association, a complex of plutonium production reactors and radio-chemical factories staffed by people from Ozersk–and among the most heavily restricted sites in the Soviet Union. Officially,…

POLITICAL STYLE More than just a slogan, the phrase ‘black is beautiful’ had, by the 1960s, galvanised a cultural movement–epitomised by this 1968 picture of a model in New York’s Harlem neighbourhood. This image features in an exhibition of photographs by Kwame Brathwaite, who documented life in Harlem during the 1950s and 60s, when ideas of black beauty were constrained by the fashion industry and informed by racist ideology. In response, Brathwaite devised a series of fashion shows promoting beauty with political overtones, and his images provide fascinating insights into the ways in which fashion, politics and photography overlap. Black is Beautiful: The Photography of Kwame Brathwaite, until 1 September at Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles aperture.org/traveling-exhibitions FACTS AND FAITH The BBC’s ‘Year of Beliefs’ season continues with a new…

Paul Bloomfield is a travel and heritage writer and photographer, co-author of Lonely Planet’s Where to Go When (Lonely Planet, 2016)…