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History has been made based on travel, from the most daring to conquer remote places to the most routine. Without these trips, contacts between different cultures would not have occurred and the world today would be completely different.
Short and long distance. Around the year 1300 BC the world, the western one at least, moved over very short distances and even trade was a risky business, as evidenced by the shipwreck off Uluburun, on the Turkish coast, of a ship loaded with gifts and which gave idea of what commerce was like then. In the 16th century, navigation was much more ambitious – Miguel López de Legazpi conquered the Philippines – but just as uncertain – he did not return and died in 1572 in Manila.
From cinema to revolution. Early Hollywood star Tina Modotti dropped everything and set out with her camera to photograph the revolution, first in Mexico and then in the Spanish Civil War. An exhibition now shows his work. The communism that Modotti embraced then represented progress, although decades later, her technological innovations (such as the disastrous Soviet competitor of the Concorde) revealed the shortcomings of the system.
slaveholder and convert Huge contingents of Africans endured first forced travel and then the exploitation of slavery. One of the most outstanding soldiers of the Union in the Civil War, George H. Thomas, a supporter of slavery, joined the Yankee ranks despite being from the South. His was an ideological journey. After seeing how black soldiers displayed great courage on the battlefield, he became a strong advocate of equality.
Journey to the other world. There are other types of trips, those whose destination is the afterlife. Between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, Barcelona became a first-rate center for European spiritualism, a discipline that had revolutionary power. The last years of the 19th century was precisely the moment in which Picasso set foot in the city for the first time. From that moment on, his relationship with Catalonia was intense and permanent.
Enmities. There are friends who are famous. And enmities that are even more so, such as that between Mozart and Salieri, which the latest installment of the History and Life podcast deals with, and which even gave rise to the idea that the former died of poisoning by his rival. However, it seems that in reality, the relationship between the two was correct and that the reason for Mozart's death was not murder.
war of euphemisms In 1915 the Austrian linguist Leo Spitzer was assigned to censor the letters that Italian prisoners of war sent to their relatives. One of Spitzer's goals was to censor letters that contained the word hunger or similar. The inmates, who knew about the censorship, twisted the language with, for example, references to “lieutenants Magrini and Stecchetti” (from lean –thin- and stecca –rod-). In jotdown.
Eloquent gestures. At the beginning of the last decade, the French writer François Caradec wrote a book about the meaning of the gestures that are made with the mouth around the world. The book collected gestures from the 19th and 20th centuries that today globalization has largely swept away. This MIT press reader article excerpts from the work. It's worth it for the illustrations alone. (in English)
Fake weapons. Although the war in Ukraine is the most technologically advanced that has been fought so far, in reality it is still a conflict in which the destruction and suffering is the same as in previous cases. And even the techniques used. Various reports have spoken in recent weeks of a Czech company that manufactures inflatable plastic battle tanks to confuse enemies and that is now facing an increase in orders. Although those responsible have not wanted to reveal whether their products are being used in Ukraine, since the invasion their sales have grown by 30%.
The use of dummy tanks (watch out for this hilarious selection from Retronaut) to confuse the enemy in their aerial observations is nothing new. It was already used in the Great War and later in World War II by several contenders, although its best-known use was in the weeks prior to the Normandy landings with the aim of hiding the true quarterings from German reconnaissance flights. The problem is that in 1944 the German aviation was no longer in a position to carry out these missions and therefore the stratagem had no effect. As technological as it is, warfare is still sometimes extremely simple.
