It’s been a typically busy year developing ActiveHistory with new resources based on the interests of my students and feedback from visitors to the website! A rundown of resources and events can be found *here*.  

Assess the causes of the 1967 6-Day War This sample sourcework exercise is based on the IB History syllabus and comes complete with model answers which I have written myself to share with my own students.

I’ve updated the ClassTools online citation generator so you can now choose from one of four citation styles. Try it out here!

I’ve just put the finishing touches to a new ClassTools template (http://www.classtools.net/timer) which I hope you will find useful. Unlike other online timers, this one is designed to work on tablet devices as well as standard computers. You can also add multiple timers, run them in sequence or all at once, add a tune / YouTube video to…

I am a historical documentary addict. So maybe I should try my hand at writing the perfect historical documentary script using all of my favourite clichés. What follows is my ‘one size fits all’ documentary script which I plan to simply adjust as necessary as the commissions inevitably come rolling in. My “One Size Fits All”…

Historiography – Why do dictators emerge? This activity encourages students to investigate the theories of six different historians (Marx, Davies, Huntington, Gurr, Tilly, Skocpol) whom have formulated theories regarding the causes for the rise of dictators. These theories are compared, contrasted and linked: structuralists are separated from intentionalists. Finally, students consider which of the dictators…

Feedback Process In this lesson, students start to compare and contrast the different methods and conditions used by different dictators to obtain power. Working in pairs, small groups and then as a class, they identify the most prevalent methods and conditions. They then identify exactly which dictators match these criteria and makes notes from the…

Research Template Students use this template to record their findings about the key “Methods” and “Conditions” which led to the rise to power of the dictator they have researched.

Introductory Historiography and Research Task Each student chooses one dictator from the IB Syllabus Africa: Kenya-Kenyatta; Tanzania-Nyerere Americas: Argentina-Peron; Cuba-Castro Europe and the Middle East: Germany-Hitler; USSR-Stalin; Egypt-Nasser Asia and Oceania: China-Mao; Indonesia-Sukarno

Part of the ‘Critical Thinking’ PSHCE unit. In this activity, the teacher will take the role of someone with a “Green Hat”. They will choose (or ask the class to vote on) one of the “Imagine a world…” discussion point which are listed overleaf (or invent one of their own). When the discussion point has…

Death of Adolf Eichmann, German Nazi leader who organised the identification and transportation of Jews from occupied Europe to extermination camps. (Executed)

Mathias Rust, a 19-year-old amateur pilot from West Germany, illegally landed his plane in Red Square, Moscow

Neville Chamberlain became British Prime Minister.

One of the most popular applications I’ve developed in the past couple of years has been “Fakebook“, a Fake Facebook Profile Generator that students can use to create engaging narratives of people, places and concepts. I’ve been working on developing the code over the past fortnight so that the application is much quicker (for example…

American actress Marilyn Monroe famously sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to President John F. Kennedy during a birthday party/fundraiser at Madison Square Garden, New York

‘Pravda’, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, was first published. (Ceased publication 1996)

Death of Bram Stoker, Irish novelist and short story writer, best known for his novel ‘Dracula’.

The British liner ‘RMS Titanic’ sank in the Atlantic after hitting an iceberg on her maiden voyage to New York. More than 1,500 people were killed.

Birth of Alexander Herzen, Russian political thinker, activist and writer, known as the ‘father of Russian socialism’, his work led to the emancipation of the serfs

Death of Robert Falcon Scott, British Antarctic explorer. He and his team perished while returning from his second Antarctic expedition

Birth of Prince Felix Yusupov, Russian nobleman and mining heir, best known for killing Rasputin

Death of Lawrence Oates, British Antarctic explorer, a member of Scott’s ill-fated expedition, who famously said ‘I am just going outside and may be some time’ as he walked into a blizzard where he faced certain death

American Civil War: the first battle between two ironclad warships – the ‘USS Monitor’ versus the ‘CSS Virginia’, at Hampton Roads, Virginia. Result: indecisive

The Beatles gave their first performance on BBC radio in the UK, on the show ‘Teenagers’ Turn: Here We Go’. (Recorded 7th March, broadcast 8th)

French aviator Henri Seimet made the first non-stop flight from Paris to London

Birth of Augustus Pugin, British architect, designer, design theorist and writer, best remembered for his use of the Gothic Revival style in the Palace of Westminster and many churches

British poet Lord Byron gave his maiden speech in the House of Lords, in which he defended Luddite violence against industrialisation, saying they had been driven to it because they had no other choice.

U.S. President Richard Nixon became the first president to visit China. His visit led to a significant improvement in U.S. – Chinese relations

John Glenn became the first American astronaut to orbit the Earth, making 3 orbits in the space capsule ‘Friendship 7’

Death of Elizabeth Siddal, British poet, artist and artists’ model. Wife of the artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti and model for Millais’ “Ophelia”

American spy plane pilot Gary Powers was released from jail in the USSR in an exchange deal with the USA, who released Soviet spy Rudolf Abel.

Death of Joseph Lister, British surgeon who pioneered the use of antiseptics in surgery and promoted sterile surgery.

Death of Aleksandr Pushkin, Russian poet, novelist, dramatist, and short story writer, widely considered to be the greatest Russian poet and the founder of modern Russian literature

Julia Ward Howe’s poem ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’ was first published in ‘The Atlantic Monthly’. Set to the music of ‘John Brown’s Body’, it became a popular Union song during the American Civil War

I have created an auto-updating gallery of ‘Fakebook’ examples created by students and teachers around the world in a wide variety of subjects. Why not try Fakebook out with your own classes as a way of getting thinking about timelines of events / biographical summaries and relationships between historical figures?

Death of George Harrison, British rock guitarist, singer and songwriter (The Beatles)

Death of Cary Grant, British-born American film actor (‘Bringing Up Baby’, ‘Gunga Din’, ‘His Girl Friday’, ‘The Philadelphia Story’, ‘To Catch A Thief’, ‘North by Northwest’, and more)

Germany and Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact, an agreement to collaborate against the threat of Soviet Communism

Death of Freddie Mercury, Zanzibar-born British rock singer and songwriter (Queen)

Death of Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera, Spanish politician, founder of the Spanish fascist party, the Falange. (Executed)

Birth of John Bright, British politician and political reformer, co-founder of the Anti-Corn Law League, and a campaigner for free trade

Death of Vyacheslav Molotov, Russian statesman and diplomat

American Civil War: Battle of Belmont, Missouri. A minor battle with an inconclusive outcome, but notable as it was Ulysses S. Grant’s first experience of battlefield command. (He would later become commander of the Union Army, and U.S. President)

Alex Ferguson was appointed manager of Manchester United FC

The first aerial bombing raid. In the Italo-Turkish War, Italian pilot Giulio Gavotti dropped 4 small bombs on Turkish troops in Libya

William Shakespeare’s play ‘The Tempest’ was first performed, at Whitehall Palace, London, UK

De-Stalinisation: former Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s body was removed from Lenin’s mausoleum in Red Square, Moscow and reburied within the Kremlin walls, out of public view.

Private Eye is a fortnightly British satirical and current affairs magazine, edited by Ian Hislop. Since its first publication in 1961, Private Eye has been a prominent critic and lampooner of public figures and entities that it deemed guilty of any of the sins of incompetence, inefficiency, corruption, pomposity or self-importance and it has become…

Death of Gene Roddenberry, American screenwriter and producer, creator of ‘Star Trek’

Apple Computer released the first iPod digital music player

Algerian War – Paris massacre: French police attacked Algerian protesters who were staging a peaceful demonstration in Paris. (The exact number of Algerians killed is unknown – at least 40, but possibly more than 200)

NASA’s Galileo spacecraft flew within 112 miles (181 km) of Jupiter’s moon Io, sending back images and data

The Reykjavik summit in Iceland, aimed at reducing the nuclear arsenals of the USA and USSR, ended in failure. U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev failed to reach agreement on the USA’s Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI) – also known as ‘Star Wars’

Death of Theodor Geisel, ‘Dr. Seuss’, popular American children’s writer, illustrator and film-maker (‘How the Grinch Stole Christmas’, ‘The Cat in the Hat’, ‘Green Eggs and Ham’, and many more)

The American rock band Nirvana released the album ‘Nevermind’.

Ötzi the Iceman, a 5,300-year-old mummified body, was discovered by a tourist in the Tirolean Alps on the Italian-Austrian border.

Greenpeace, the international environmental group, was founded in Vancouver, Canada

Vikings to return to Stamford Bridge

War hits home on Downton Abbey

The USA returned Pablo Picasso’s painting ‘Guernica’ to Spain. Picasso had refused to allow it to return until democracy had been restored. It was put on display in Spain on 25th Oct – the centenary of Picasso’s birth.

Is This the Face of Jack The Ripper?

David Starkey is a master of the past, not the present

Medieval artefacts hidden in church’s secret room

25 years ago today – 31 Aug 1986 Death of Henry Moore, British sculptor

30 years ago today – 25 Aug 1981 The U.S. space probe Voyager 2 reached Saturn and sent back images and data from the planet. (It travelled on to Uranus (1986) and Neptune (1989) before leaving the solar system)

30 years ago today – 24 Aug 1981 Mark Chapman was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison for the murder of British rock musician John Lennon