Blog by Intriguing History

This site Intriguing History, started as a project with Maps, post-its and good old fashioned Pins in those Maps, coloured pens and attempts to timeline and connect historic events, themes, people over time.

The Blog part - takes snippets we find, might have share on Instagram and connects relates back to the core content we share on this site.  The project goes forwards in 'fits and starts' as we fit around life , family and of course work.

On the Blog we are currently interested in how we can take images, play on patterns in history, mathematics, science, digital engineering and of course DNA to find a few more connections, have a play with photography, images and Instagram and a few quotes and texts here and there. Take it as the lighter side of life, not intense history stuff but a bit of fun along the way...

 

Who were your ancestors neighbours?

By HLB | January 7, 2012

Surprising connections can be made when you start mapping your family history

Bishops Waltham Origin Maps Names History

By Amanda Moore INW | January 7, 2012

Bishops Waltham: a small market town has a rich story to tell from pre-Doomsday to Cromwell, Trafalger and much more, what intriguing connections might thishave for you and your project?

Royal Society founded 1660 Gresham College and Arundel House

By Amanda Moore INW | January 5, 2012

Royal Society for advancement of Science, a founding father Christopher Wren, Astronomer at Gresham College…? Was your relative a member or fellow of the society?

Jane Austen Centre in Bath

By Amanda Moore INW | January 4, 2012

Family members of Jane Austen…and why not a visit to the Regency Architecture of Bath and a visit to the Jane Austen Centre as well?

Jane Austen’s House and Museum at Chawton Hants

By Amanda Moore INW | January 4, 2012
This entry is part 1 of 1 in the series Jane Austen

It was Chawton where Jane spent the last 8 years of her life in the grace and favour small house provided by the generosity of her brother Edward Austen. Now the location of the Jane Austen House Museum

Jane Austen was born 1775 Steventon Hants

By Amanda Moore INW | January 4, 2012

Jane Austen possibly the greatest female writer of all time and one of the top 5 of both men and women, well thats what the distinguished critic F R Leavis believed…

Newton states laws of motion and gravity in Principia Mathematica 1686-1687

By Amanda Moore INW | January 4, 2012

Newtorn’s major work impacts on thinking of the Enlightenment’s philosophers and social reform…the world is not the centre of the universe!

Descartes Discourse on the Method 1637

By Amanda Moore INW | January 3, 2012

The pursuit of incontrovertible truth…by Descartes

Phrenology- a Victorian obsession?

By HLB | January 3, 2012

In 1824, George Combe’s ‘Elements of Phrenology’ was published. Phrenology was the identification of an individual’s faculties by feeling the shape of the skull. It was argued by Franz Joseph Gall, an Austrian physician, along with Johann Spurzheim that mind and brain were connected, in a way that, different characteristics of mind, would give different shapes to the surface of the brain and that the shape of the brain imposed itself on the skull. Once these characteristics had been discovered then the environment could be altered to the individual, this could be done in schools and asylums. The ‘science’ of phrenology was supported and followed by many leading medical pioneers and in particular medical superintendents of lunatic asylums It became hugely fashionable and who knows how many peoples lives changed course because of ‘phrenological readings’! Intriguing connections Your ancestors may have been asked by their employers to have an assessment by a phrenologist to discover more about their character and suitability for the job they did John Stuart Mill in 1843 spoke out against phrenology, calling it ‘untenable’ Fiction and non fiction works written at the time often described or used the language of phrenology, examples can be found in Charles Dickens ‘Great Expectations’ and ‘David Copperfield’  

René Descartes the father of modern philosophy

By Amanda Moore INW | January 3, 2012

Descartes kicks -off the perod of Enlightenment and the ae of reason…