Dan Snow

'Europe is to be the scene of the most terrible war that she has witnessed since the fall of the Roman Empire'
The Times, today, 1914

‪Today in 1914 Britain was teetering on the edge of the abyss, Lloyd George wrote to his wife: 'I am moving through a nightmare world these days..I am horrified at the prospect of it... But I must bear my share of the ghastly burden though it scorches my flesh to do so.’

Jeanne de Clisson the 'Lioness of Brittany' watched her husband's execution today in 1343. Then went on one of history's most epic revenge sprees. She sailed the Channel becoming a legendary pirate. Capturing & massacring French crews but always left one survivor to tell the tale.

Warship wrecked in 1703 near Kent is more complete than expected - BBC News Archaeologists say the wreck site "remains high risk" as moving sand exposes the wooden vessel.

A huge privilege to work with @danpascoe79.bsky.social, MSDS Marine and Historic England on this amazing maritime project.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Shipwrecks on History Hit right now.

Get some here: access.historyhit.com/videos/shipw...

Harold Godwinson: insufficiently patriotic for Ant.

Five reasons why the allies won WW2.

With James Holland (shown on the occasion when we were mobbed by pigs)

Listen to the podcast right here:

🎧: podfollow.com/dan-snows-hi...

Teetering

We’re on the edge.

😉

The idea of asking this question with including the option of ‘The Failure of the Howe brothers to crush Washington in NY in 1776’ is embarrassing to all concerned.

No breakfast. No coffee.

The acting is exclusively on social media. The tv show is altogether more conventional….

(Tonight 9pm. Channel 5.)

My stunning portrayal of Augustus didn’t go down very well with @k8lister.bsky.social or our director.

Sound on 🔉

Unzoomed Identify cities using satellite images in this daily puzzle game, where each guess zooms out for enhanced clues.

Leonardo painted, Genghis conquered, and now, finally my genius is making itself apparent.

Unzoomed #558 2/6 🟡🟢⚪️⚪️⚪️⚪️
unzoomed.com

Humanist Heritage: Lady Florence Dixie (1855-1905) Those who, like myself, are in communication with the advanced thought and thinkers throughout the world know that hundreds —nay, […]

I'm no football fan but delighted of course to see #Lionesses retain their #WEURO2025 title. Perfect opportunity to remember humanist Florence Dixie, who, unwilling to conform to the strictures of Victorian womanhood, became the 1st president of the British Ladies’ Football Club in 1895.

‪Today is one of the most fateful dates in history: The Austrian Emperor declared war on Serbia in 1914.
It was the beginning of the First World War.

Churchill wrote to his wife: ‘My darling...Everything tends towards catastrophe & collapse. I am interested, geared-up & happy.’

Although he was a serial philanderer from a powerful, fantastically dysfunctional family so the comparison doesn’t hold.

Henry I died from a ‘surfeit of lampreys.’

Watching with a group of mixed race group of 10 year old boys going absolutely chicken oriental about women’s football if any Daily Telegraph columnists want to know about boiling points.

Today in 1184 Henry VI of Germany was having a strategy meeting when the wooden second storey floor collapsed. Most of the courtiers fell through into the latrine cesspit below the ground floor, where more than 50 drowned in liquid excrement.

Today in 1797 Nelson was badly defeated in Tenerife, losing an arm & many of his men.
After a musket ball smashed his arm Nelson demanded: "Dr, I want to get rid of this useless piece of flesh here”.
The severed limb went overboard.

The Catholic Church decided to cancel Martin Luther today in 1520. The papal bull doing so was displayed at the Palazzo della Cancelleria

Not in this new place. Just you watch….

Thank you, British Podcast Awards.

Not for the first time I am begging angry people to put the phone down, walk through actual streets, go to actual pubs, stand on the touch line at local sports clubs, browse Saturday markets, chat with ramblers on footpaths and rediscover beauty & contentedness.

Meanwhile Rasputin was saying:

'You are the Tsar, the father of your people. Dont let the lunatics triumph and destroy you and the people. And if we conquer Germany, what, in truth, will happen to Russia? We all drown in blood: the disaster is great; the misery infinite.'

..[it] would be accompanied or followed by a complete collapse of European credit and industry. In these days, in great industrial states, this would mean a state of things worse than that of 1848, and, irrespective of who were victors in the war, many things might be completely swept away."

Say what you like about Sir Edward Grey, he saw it all coming.
This was him, as Foreign Secretary to the Austrian ambassador shortly before the outbreak of WW1. He predicted the a great power war would... “involve the expenditure of so vast a sum of money & such an interference with trade, that ..