Fac 51 The Haçienda was a nightclub and music venue, most famous during the ‘Madchester’ years of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Zoey Strzalecki investigates its history. The recent ban of Twitter and YouTube in Turkey has highlighted the tension between the state and the citizen. James Brannan examines how and why states turn […]
Sati is a Hindu funerary custom where a widow immolates herself on her husband’s funeral pyre or commits suicide in another manner shortly after her husband’s death. The now-obsolete act first dates back to the fourth century BCE and is considered to have originated within the Kshatriya (warrior) caste in India. The practice was widespread among […]
Unless you have been deliberately avoiding all forms of news media since December 2010, there is a good chance you will have heard of the Arab Spring. It is potentially one of the most momentous series of events to occur across the Middle East since the break-up of the Ottoman Empire. For the most part, […]
In a momentous act of devotional citizenship and spirited patriotism, tens of thousands of Russian women volunteered to join the country’s ‘Battalions of Death’. They offered their allegiance, and even their lives, to protect ‘Mother Russia’ from the foreign aggressors of World War I. Russia’s female volunteers echoed history’s celebrated female warriors, the likes […]
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” When conflict broke out between bands of American revolutionaries and British soldiers in April 1775, few had the ultimate objective […]
Christmas. Christ’s Mass. For us in Britain, it’s very much a commercialised affair that is bombarded on our TVs, radios and in our wider culture from late October onwards until Christmas itself. For many Britons, it has evolved into an almost secular festival with greater emphasis on its communal festivity than its religious connotations. Christmas […]
In approximately 100 days between April and June of 1994, an estimated 800,000 Rwandans were slaughtered by Hutu extremists. The extremists targeted members of the Tutsi minority community who made up approximately 15% of the Rwandan population, as well as any political opponents. With the twentieth anniversary this year, this article aims to provide a […]
Colin Campbell Cooper, Wikimedia Commons. Colin Campbell Cooper was an internationally renowned artist most popular for his works that celebrate the wonders of city life. In addition to painting, he was an avid traveller and from his education in Paris to his journeys around Asia, all his travels greatly influenced his work. Born and raised […]
He wasn’t an anarchist. He didn’t manage to blow up parliament. He wasn’t even the mastermind behind the Gunpowder plot. Why then do we remember Guy Fawkes in the way we do? Why has his very image become synonymous with resistance to authority and promotion of anarchy? Guido Fawkes was born Guy Fawkes on the […]
In one of the most horrific acts of atrocity committed by military personnel, on the 16th March 1968, soldiers of Charlie Company of the Americal Division’s 11th Infantry Brigade brutally murdered almost the entire population of the small hamlet of My Lai in South Vietnam. The My Lai hamlet was believed to be a […]
Unless you have been deliberately avoiding all forms of news media since December 2010, there is a good chance you will have heard of the Arab Spring. It is potentially one of the most momentous series of events to occur across the Middle East since the break-up of the Ottoman Empire. For the most part, […]
As the centenary of the outbreak of World War One is commemorated across Britain, people remember relatives that gave their lives. Perhaps the most compelling of these memorials contains 888,246 red, ceramic poppies filling the moat of the Tower of London, one for each British and colonial soldier who died in action. However, the men […]