Despite what the brain dead moron who was supposedly a teacher may have inculcated in you — history is a fascinating field of study. Often the last thing any political system wants is for people to have a clear idea of how they happen to be where they are. This simple concept was true for the swine of the previous regime, as its true for both the current swine, and the equally porcine oil-cartel-backed coup leaders over in the US. That happy go-lucky and positive rant aside, let’s have a look at some history resources online — suitable for cutting and pasting and starting your own collection of goodies that you don’t have to pay for.
Let’s start off in that time period of screaming horror, poverty and child labour — no, I don’t mean downtown Johannesburg — I’m talking about that period of history known as Victorian England. Nothing much changes in the ‘United Kingdom’ — as can be seen by wading through the large resources available (hosted in Texas, of all places) at Irish History On The Web.
Just to appeal to the prurient interest, get a good feel for what grandpa and grandma used to get horny on those cold winter nights at Historic Vintage Erotica!
Staying in the visual medium, but without as many nipples — what do you do when you need to hunt for old pictures of our ancestors getting up to mischief, slaughtering the last of a species, or posing proudly beside rows of uppity dead ‘Natives’? You could hope your weekly TV guide magazine starts printing photos, or else just go direct to the many links at the Historic Pictures Collection
As long as there’s been human society, there’ve been people doing their best to get away with stuff they shouldn’t have. Go browse through the online collection of Famous Historic Trials.
By now I’d imagine the geeks among us are whimpering at the absence of computers in all this history. Well, go stare thoughtfully at once-expensive computers that have less memory than the average digital watch these days, at The Personal Computer History Archive
Just to show that I really care about making geeks happy, here’s The Virtual History of Computers.
Now you’ve finished laughing at what was considered ‘state-of-the-art’ a few years back — and before you sneer too much, those of us still alive after the coming plagues and wars will no doubt look back at the computers of today in the same way. Let me introduce you to a modern archive resource that I stumbled across. Ignore the completely bland interface, but if you’re hunting pictures of just about any public event or figure from the last forty years or so, try the picture search engine at Los Angeles Photo Collection.
Everyone knows about the various folks who’ve been killed at various points in history, but just for the heck of it, take a look at data on People Almost Assassinated.
Death creeps up on humans in an infinite variety of ways in situations that are often violent as well as sometimes perversely funny. For a huge archive of news reports and historical examples of some of the ways you wouldn’t want to shuffle off this mortal coil, creep cautiously towards Ain’t No Way To Go!
Then for some great glimpses of declassified documents on a wide range of topics, there’s stuff to collect up to make your history teacher look like an idiot, at The Paperless Archives.
Of course, if you have more bandwidth than sense, you could always go sniffing through some of the online archives of old films and shorts. For instance there’s the ‘forest-focused’, but still interesting Old Film.
Or for a further look at Ireland, try the Digital Film Archive.
Alternatively, go grab some audiobooks at Audiobooks For Free (If you’re familiar with IRC, you can always just log into ‘dunebuggy.nj.sandnet.net’ irc server, and join the audiobooks channel and download the serious goodies to your hearts content that way. But it’s probably illegal so just pretend I never said that. I’ve managed to find wildly eclectic material there – -from Aldous Huxley lectures onwards.
Then, just to keep up with the daily weirdness (and to help get you into the idea of collecting and storing news items of interest) – make a point of keeping an eye out at the site named after the world’s first data junkie — Charles Fort. Bookmark The Fortean Times.
To read one of Fort’s books, printed originally in 1919, try The Book of the Damned.
Until the next time, if violently irked history teachers don’t find me
Ian Fraser is a playwright, author, comedian, conspiracy nut, old-time radio collector and self-confessed data-junkie. Winner of numerous Vita and Amstel Awards, he’s been an Internet addict and games-fanatic since around 1995, when the Internet began to make much more sense than theatre.