history – Page 3 – Scott's Blog

Citizenship

2025-09-06Europe, football, history, India, Japan, learnings, personal, Poland, Russia, South Korea, sports, Ukraine, Uncategorized, United Kingdom, United States

Citizenship [is a] relationship between an individual and a state to which the individual owes allegiance and in turn is entitled to its protection. Citizenship implies the status of freedom with accompanying responsibilities. Citizens…

Random Learnings #60

2025-09-01Europe, history, learnings, personal, Poland

I knew that the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact split Poland between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. I knew that post-war Poland's eastern borders moved west, the Soviet Union demanding the…

Polish Brand of Communism

2025-08-18Europe, history, learnings, personal, Poland

In February 1977 Tomasz Strzyżewski, censor no C-36 of the Kraków Main Office for Control of Press, Publications and Public Performances, boarded the ferry to Sweden at Świnoujście, Poland, for…

When Name Recognition Is Not Good

2025-08-14Europe, Germany, history, learnings, personal

The Netflix show Five Came Back: The Reference Films consists of twelve government-sponsored propaganda films. The first episode is Nazi Concentration Camps is about the well-known and appalling conditions the…

The Treaty of Versailles and Germany

2025-08-11Austria, Europe, France, Germany, history, learnings, personal, Russia, United Kingdom

The Treaty of Versailles held Germany (a.k.a Germany Empire), and Germany alone, responsible for World War I: not Serbia who planned the assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand; not the Austrian-Hungarian Empire…

Profits Over Patriotism

2025-08-10history, learnings, personal

Thomas J. Watson, president of IBM, made a bold claim in an editorial published before the United States entered World War II: We are either internationalists or isolationists, and I…

The Future De-Trumpization of the US

2025-07-25culture, history, learnings, personal

Nikita Khrushchev became First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union after Stalin's death by executing Beria and winning the power struggle with Stalin's heir apparent, Malenkov. Politically…

Textbooks With Bias

2025-07-22history, learnings, personal

The New Eclectic Series: Elementary Geography is an 1896 geography textbook targeting young children, likely fourth to sixth grade. The textbook is chaptered with number paragraphs which describe facts (actual…

1896 British America

2025-07-22Canada, history, learnings, North America, personal

The 1896 textbook The New Eclectic Series: Elementary Geography includes a map of British America - Canada - as defined by the British North America Act, 1867 which created the…

Correction Respectfully Requested

2025-07-20culture, history, learnings, personal, television

This map is displayed about halfway through the documentary Chernobyl: Secrets, Lies and the Untold Truths. Can you spot anything interesting? The Chernobyl nuclear disaster occurred in 1986, therefore the…