Two brilliant history websites
I’m a huge fan of history, having just yesterday finished the excellent America - The Last Best Hope by William Bennett. Before that I was reading 1491, a highly speculative but excellent read on the continents of North and South America before the Europeans arrived. I can highly recommend both books. I also use the internet heavily in my search for history and have found a couple of good resources I wanted to share with you.
Wikipedia has great history articles…
The first site I check when I feel the history bug ich is Wikipedia. There I read up on everything from T.E. Lawrence to the Antikythera mechanism to the city of Bethlehem. But for all of the never ending exploration that Wikipedia offers, it isn’t very personal. I’ve often asked myself what it would be like to be at that certain place at that certain time. To see something as it happened. What did the people then think? What did they feel? What did they fear?
but Eyewitness to History is a living record.
By pure accident I stumbled across Eyewitness to History today. It records and archives eyewitness accounts from the people who were there. Who saw the event take place. I’ve got to tell you I’m hooked. Where else can you answer questions like this:
- What was it like to be there as the last breath escaped the dying lips of the Third Reich?
- How did Thomas Jefferson come to draft the Declaration of Independence?
- What were Captain Robert Scott’s last recorded words on his doomed march to the South Pole?
You can find personal accounts with answers to these questions and many more at Eyewitness to History.
History: read regularly and repeat not.
