Teaching
History Online
Number
65: 22nd December, 2002
Introduction
1.
History
Textbooks
2.
Wall
Street Crash
3.
Virtual
Tour of the Mary Rose
4.
History
of Medicine
5.
Salem
Witch Trial
6.
European
Witch-Hunts
7. Bonus
Marchers
8. New
Deal Network
9. French
Revolution
Introduction
Spartacus Educational
publishes Teaching
History Online every week. The newsletter includes news, reviews
of websites and articles on using ICT in the history classroom. Members
of the mailing list are
invited to submit information for inclusion in future editions of
Teaching
History Online. In this way we hope to create a community
of people involved in using the Internet to teach history. Currently
there are 23,300 subscribers to the newsletter.
John Simkin
spartacus@pavilion.co.uk
History
Textbooks: A proposal by the Italian parliament aimed at eliminating
alleged left wing bias from school history books has prompted a massive
and furious reaction from the country's academics. The parliamentary
culture committee has called on the education ministry to exercise
direct control over which history books are used in schools. In response,
6,000 people expressed support for an appeal by the writer Umberto
Eco, called Hands Off Our Textbooks, within 48 hours of it being put
on the Internet, organizers said yesterday. Eco
expressed disquiet at the possibility that official censorship - once
the prerogative of the fascist regime's ministry of popular culture
- might be on the agenda once again.
Wall
Street Crash: On 29th October, 1929, investors sold sixteen million
shares at a loss of $10 billion, twice the amount of money in circulation
in the whole country at the time. This website provides an overview
of the crash and attempts to answer the questions: Why did so many
people in the U.S. invest in the stock market during 1929? What caused
the 1929 Crash? How did the US Government reaction to the crash? Did
the Stock Market Crash Cause the Great Depression?
Virtual
Tour of the Mary Rose: This BBC website enables you to explore
the Tudor flagship, the Mary Rose, which was the flagship of Henry
VIII until it sank in 1545. The Mary Rose was built between 1509-11
and named after the King's favourite sister, Mary Tudor. The Mary
Rose was raised in 1982 and is now undergoing restoration in Portsmouth.
You'll need a free VRML plug-in such as Cortona to view this website.
History
of Medicine: Chris Trueman of Sackville School, East Grinstead,
has produced this material for students doing exam courses. This includes:
Medicine in Ancient Egypt; Medicine in Ancient Greece; Hippocrates;
Medicine in Ancient Rome; Claudius Galen; Medical Developments in
the Middle Ages; Edward Jenner; Joseph Lister; Louis Pasteur; Robert
Koch; Microbes and Landmark Discoveries; Public Health 1900 to 1929;
Alexander Fleming and Penicillin; Howard Florey and Penicillin; Changes
in Medicine 1919 to 1939; Medical Advances since World War Two; the
National Health Service and Christian Barnard.
Salem
Witch Trial: In 1692 nineteen witches were executed at Salem,
Massachusetts. This very impressive website provides a documentary
archive of this tragedy. It includes court records, record books,
personal letters, contemporary books and maps of the area. There is
also a Salem Witch Trials game that is similar to Trivial Pursuit,
with the goal at the end depending on the character each team represents.
European
Witch-Hunts: For three centuries of early modern European history,
diverse societies were consumed by a panic over alleged witches in
their midst. Witch-hunts, especially in Central Europe, resulted in
the trial, torture, and execution of tens of thousands of victims,
about three-quarters of whom were women. This website provides an
illustrated overview of the subject.
Bonus
Marchers: In 1924 Congress voted $3,500,000,000 to the American
veterans of the First World War. In order to prevent an immediate
strain on its funds, the Government decided to pay the money over
a 20 year period. During the Great Depression, many of these veterans
found it difficult to find work. An increasing number came to the
conclusion that the money would be more useful to them in this time
of need than when the bonus was due. In 1932 John Patman of Texas,
introduced the Veteran's Bonus Bill which mandated the immediate cash
payment of the endowment promised to the men who fought in the war.
This website explains what happened when 10,000 of these ex-soldiers
marched on Washington in an attempt to persuade Congress to pass the
Patman Bill.
New
Deal Network:
In October, 1996, the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute (FERI),
in collaboration with the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library,
Marist College, and IBM, launched the New Deal Network (NDN), a research
and teaching resource on the World Wide Web devoted to the public
works and arts projects of the New Deal. At the core of the NDN is
a database of photographs, political cartoons, and texts (speeches,
letters, and other historic documents from the New Deal period). Currently
there are over 20,000 items in this database, many of them previously
accessible only to scholars. Unlike many databases on the Web, which
represent the holdings of a particular institution, NDN is drawing
from a wide variety of sources around the country to create a theme-based
archive.
Book
Section
The
French Revolution: John Clare's book is an essential and unique
resource for teaching and learning about the issues and events that
characterized France before and after revolution. Discover how Louis
XVI's tried to stop the revolutionaries from meeting by booking the
hall they were using for a game of tennis; why London jewellers had
to employ a thousand workers to cope with the amount of jewels sold
by escaping French aristocrats; and how Danton advised the executioner
to hold up his guillotined head as the crowd would find it was well
worth seeing?
.
Available from Amazon Books
(order below)
