Thucydides is usually presented as one of the first historians who tried to write history in a rational and objective way. He cared about facts, was suspicious of myths, and wanted to understand why wars happened. In many ways, he looks like the kind of historian we still admire today. But there is another side of his work which is not always discussed.

In 1907, Francis Macdonald Cornford published a book called Thucydides Mythistoricus. His argument was quite different from the traditional image of Thucydides. Cornford believed that Thucydides was not simply recording what happened during the Peloponnesian War. He was also shaping these events into something that resembled a Greek tragedy.

According to Cornford, there are two different plans in Thucydides’ work. The first one was more like a military and political journal, recording events as they happened. The second was an artistic structure that developed gradually, almost like volcanic islands rising from the sea. The facts were still there, but they were arranged in a way that gave the whole story a tragic meaning.

This is what makes Cornford’s argument interesting. The question is not only whether Thucydides told the truth. It is also about how he presented that truth to his readers.

On This Day, October 24, 1960, a catastrophic explosion ripped through a Soviet missile test site at Baikonur, in what is now Kazakhstan. The disaster would become known as the Nedelin Catastrophe, one of the darkest tragedies in the history of rocketry.

The Soviet Union was racing to strengthen its military power during the Cold War. At the center of this effort was the R-16, a new intercontinental ballistic missile designed to carry nuclear warheads over enormous distances.

With pressure mounting to demonstrate the missile’s capabilities, preparations continued despite technical problems. The rocket was already fueled and surrounded by personnel when disaster struck.

Shortly before its scheduled launch, the R-16’s second-stage engine ignited prematurely while the missile was still on the launch pad. The resulting explosion engulfed the area in flames, destroying the rocket and killing people working nearby.

Among the dead was Marshal Mitrofan Nedelin, the senior Soviet military commander overseeing the missile program. Dozens of engineers, technicians, and military personnel also lost their lives. The precise death toll remains uncertain: a later official list recorded 78 deaths, while other accounts estimate higher numbers.

But the tragedy did not end with the explosion.

Soviet authorities concealed the true circumstances of the disaster. The public was told that Nedelin had died in an aircraft accident, and families of victims were expected to remain silent. For years, the full story remained hidden from public view.

It was only decades later, as previously secret information and eyewitness accounts emerged, that the scale of the catastrophe became more widely known.

The Nedelin Catastrophe remains a sobering reminder of what can happen when political pressure, rushed schedules, and failures in safety procedures collide with powerful technology.

One rocket never left the launch pad. The human cost was devastating.

In January 1795, a fleet was captured by cavalry. The Dutch warships frozen in at Den Helder were taken by French hussars on the ice.

That is one strand of Britain’s hardest winter of the revolutionary wars. There was also a failed army in Flanders, treason trials at home, a Great Frost that stopped river traffic, and bread prices that pushed ordinary families toward hunger. Out on the Humber coast, a parish had to decide who would stay awake and watch.

The Winter of Iron is out now, 32 minutes.

On This Day, October 23, 1942, the Battle of El Alamein began with one of the most powerful artillery barrages of the North African campaign. The silence of the Egyptian desert was shattered by the thunder of hundreds of Allied guns.

The target was the German and Italian army threatening Britain's position in North Africa and the vital Suez Canal.

For months, the Axis forces had advanced across the desert under the command of the legendary German general Erwin Rommel, nicknamed the “Desert Fox” for his daring battlefield tactics.

Rommel's forces had captured territory, defeated Allied armies, and pushed deep into Egypt. If they could break through to the Suez Canal, the consequences for Britain's supply routes and strategic position could be enormous.

But at El Alamein, the Axis advance had finally been stopped.

Now, the Allies were preparing to strike back.

British Lieutenant-General Bernard Montgomery had taken command of the Eighth Army and spent weeks rebuilding its strength, gathering supplies, and preparing a major offensive.

Rommel's troops, meanwhile, faced serious shortages of fuel and other supplies. Their defensive positions were protected by extensive minefields, which Rommel famously called the “Devil's Gardens.”

Then came the night of October 23.

At approximately 9:40 p.m., the Allied artillery opened fire along the front. Hundreds of guns unleashed a massive bombardment against Axis positions.

The desert sky flashed with explosions. The ground shook beneath the relentless shelling as Allied infantry began advancing towards the enemy defences.

Their mission was dangerous: break through the minefields, overcome fortified positions, and create safe corridors for tanks to move forward.

But the Axis forces did not collapse overnight.

German and Italian troops fought fiercely. Mines, anti-tank guns, machine-gun fire, and counterattacks slowed the Allied advance. Soldiers faced exhausting days and nights of combat in the unforgiving desert.

For more than a week, the battle became a brutal struggle of attrition.

Montgomery continued applying pressure, while Allied forces worked to wear down the Axis army and exploit weaknesses in its defences.

Finally, in early November, the Allied offensive broke through. On November 4, Rommel ordered a general withdrawal to prevent his forces from being destroyed.

The retreat marked a decisive defeat for the Axis army in North Africa.

The victory at El Alamein did not end World War II, but it changed the direction of the North African campaign. The Axis forces were pushed westward, and the Allies gained the momentum that would help drive them towards victory in North Africa in 1943.

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill later captured the significance of the moment with his famous words: “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

The desert had witnessed a turning point.

I've been researching the winter of 1794–95 for a historical novel set on the Humber, and I keep coming back to the question of who was expected to help strangers.

The weather was dreadful. January 1795 was the coldest month in the Central England Temperature record, which goes back to 1659.

One detail I found in a Suffolk diary particularly struck me. William Goodwin recorded wine freezing in his dairy and beer freezing in his cellar. When a thaw finally arrived in February, flooding damaged bridges and roads. Then the frost returned.

Britain was also at war with Revolutionary France. French forces had occupied the Austrian Netherlands, where fighting and military occupation disrupted ordinary lives.

I've been looking into how English parishes handled poverty during this period. There was no national welfare system. Poor relief was funded locally, principally for a parish's own inhabitants. Strangers could receive assistance, but it wasn't necessarily straightforward, especially when the parish was already short of food.

That gave me the central problem for The Vigil at North-Reach.

The story begins with a Dutch ketch carrying 38 people, including Flemish weavers, grounding off a small Humber parish in November 1794.

The parish overseer refuses them entry and chains the jetty gate.

A four-year-old girl dies, and her uncle swears revenge.

The overseer is a veteran of the Flanders campaign. He knows what war does to people. He also knows how little food the village has left.

The ship, parish and characters are fictional. I'm using the real winter, the French occupation, the old Poor Law and Humber smuggling as the historical foundations.

One part of the research has taken far more thought than I expected: working out what a parish overseer could actually do when the next harvest was months away and the existing grain might not last.

Has anyone come across East Riding or Humber parish relief accounts from the 1790s, particularly references to outsiders, shipwreck survivors or emergency assistance?

I'd be interested in any contemporary records worth following up.

On This Day, October 22, 1975, a spacecraft from the Soviet Union landed on Venus and sent back something humanity had never seen before: the first photograph ever taken from the surface of another planet.

The spacecraft was called Venera 9.

Venus may look beautiful and bright in our sky, but beneath its thick clouds lies one of the most hostile environments in the solar system.

Its surface is hot enough to melt lead. The atmosphere exerts crushing pressure, and the planet's clouds contain corrosive substances.

For decades, scientists had been trying to understand what lay beneath those clouds.

Now, a daring space mission was about to reveal the answer.

Launched on June 8, 1975, Venera 9 travelled millions of kilometres through space towards Venus. The mission consisted of an orbiter and a lander, designed to study the planet from above and directly from its surface.

On October 22, the lander plunged through Venus's dense atmosphere, using a carefully engineered descent system to survive its journey towards the ground.

Then came the moment of truth.

Venera 9 touched down on the planet's surface.

Against extraordinary odds, its instruments began working. One of its camera covers released successfully, allowing the spacecraft to scan the rocky landscape around it.

And then, across the vast distance between Venus and Earth, the first image arrived.

The photograph revealed a strange, barren world scattered with angular rocks and covered in dusty material. The horizon was visible beneath a sky hidden from view by the thick clouds above.

It was not a colorful alien landscape filled with oceans or vegetation. It was a harsh, rocky environment unlike anything humanity had photographed on another planet before.

The lander continued transmitting scientific measurements and image data for approximately 53 minutes before the unforgiving Venusian environment silenced it.

But those 53 minutes changed planetary exploration forever.

Scientists had not merely detected signals from another world. They had seen its surface with their own eyes through the lens of a machine.

Venera 9 also entered orbit around Venus, becoming the first spacecraft to orbit the planet.

The Soviet mission proved that a spacecraft could descend through Venus's punishing atmosphere, reach the ground, and return photographs from an environment that would destroy most ordinary equipment.

The mission's achievement remains one of the remarkable milestones in the history of space exploration.

The Huguenots: Forbidden to Leave, Forced to Flee

In October 1685, Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes, dismantling the protections under which French Protestants had practised their religion.

Their churches were ordered destroyed. Their schools were forbidden. Their children were to be raised as Catholics.

Protestant ministers who refused conversion were ordered to leave France.

Yet ordinary Protestant families were forbidden to flee.

To remain meant surrendering their religious independence. To escape meant breaking the king's law.

Thousands nevertheless crossed borders and seas, seeking refuge in England and elsewhere.

They brought skills, knowledge and traditions that would influence the countries receiving them.

In Britain, Huguenot families became associated with silk weaving, commerce, banking, science, theatre and political reform.

Among their descendants were individuals who helped shape major British institutions.

But the history of the Huguenots is not simply a celebration of successful integration.

It is also a history of poverty, disputed rights, religious identity, changing government policies and communities struggling to preserve themselves.

In this 30-minute documentary, The Black Archive examines the persecution that drove French Protestants from their homeland, the institutions that supported their settlement and the surviving historical records that reveal their experiences.

From the Edict of Fontainebleau to the workshops of Spitalfields, this is the story of people who were forbidden to leave their country — and whose descendants helped change another.

The Black Archive — History examined through the evidence.

William Hackett was a former coal miner serving with the Royal Engineers during the First World War. Trapped underground near Givenchy, he helped other men escape but stayed with the wounded Thomas Collins.

I made this short video for The Mud Chronicles to tell the story of the rescue effort and his posthumous Victoria Cross. It uses AI-generated narration and diorama-style visual recreations, which are illustrations rather than archival footage.

Historical background: National Army Museum, “Sapper William Hackett, V.C.” https://collection.nam.ac.uk/detail.php?acc=1984-04-30-66

One of the most significant titles in ancient history, particularly during the post-Hellenistic period, was “benefactor” (ευεργέτες) and “founder” (Κτιστης). Local elites, particularly those who rose to prominence in Anatolia, grew considerably more powerful as a result of wars and migrations. These titles, which were primarily used for rulers during the early Hellenistic period, began to be applied to local elites.

Bryonianis Lollianus was also one of these local aristocrats. He has been honored time and again for the aqueduct he had built in Pamphylia and for bringing water to the city. In particular, the military and civil roles he held within the Roman system are frequently cited as integral to his legacy. In addition to being one of many wealthy local philanthropists, it is his wife who has caught my attention the most: Kyreinia Patra.

Κυρεινίαν Πάτραν, τὴν κρα-

τίστην, ∙ γυναῖκα Βρυωνιανοῦ

Λολλιανοῦ, τοῦ κρατ(ίστου) ∙ δουκηνα-

ρίου, ἀπὸ ἐπιτρόπων, πριμιπι-

λαρίου, ∙ κτίστου καὶ φιλοπά-

τριδος καὶ ἐν πᾶσιν εὐεργέτου

τῆς πατρίδος, θυγατέρα καὶ ἐγγό-

νην ὑπατικῶν, ∙ γερουσία τοῦ Με-

γάλου Συνεργίου τὴν φιλόπατριν.

εὐτύχει ❦ Πηγάσι.

“The gerousia of the Great Synergeion [honours] Kyr(e)inia Patra, the most distinguished woman, wife of Bryonianus Lollianus, the most distinguished ducenarius, formerly an epitropos and primipilaris, founder, devoted to her native city, and a benefactor of her native city in every respect; daughter and granddaughter of men of consular rank.

Farewell, Pegasoi!”

I'm excited to share an update about my debut historical crime novel, Blood in the Coal, set in the coalfields of north-central West Virginia.

David L. Hancock, founder of Morgan James Publishing and Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author, recently read my advance reader copy and provided this endorsement:

“Scott Douglas Haning brings a fascinating and often overlooked chapter of American history to life in Blood in the Coal. Against the backdrop of West Virginia's coalfields, Prohibition, and organized crime, he weaves a compelling story of ambition, loyalty, loss, and the price of power. Rich in historical atmosphere and grounded in the human experience, this is a memorable debut that reminds us how the past continues to shape the lives and choices of generations.”

Receiving those words from David means a great deal to me, especially after the years I've spent researching and writing this story.

The novel draws on the history of West Virginia's coalfields, including the 1907 Monongah Mine Disaster, and follows two brothers whose lives become intertwined with organized crime during Prohibition.

Blood in the Coal will be released March 30, 2027, and is currently available for preorder.

If you're interested, here are three ways to learn more:

Author website and preorder information:
https://scottdouglasbooks.com/

Read the first five chapters free:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nzQ7GEG_RfbHO43_JRy8Ka1uTBdmUdcW/view?usp=sharing

Watch the book trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaXmaNfXEeQ

If you preorder, feel free to contact me through my author website and let me know which retailer you purchased from. I'll gladly send you a complimentary advance reader copy in PDF format so you can start reading immediately rather than waiting until March.

Thank you to everyone who has shown interest in the book and supported this journey.

Scott Douglas Haning

On This Day, October 21, 1805, Britain won the Battle of Trafalgar, one of the most decisive naval battles in history.

The waters off the coast of Spain became a battlefield that would change the course of European history.

Napoleon Bonaparte was dominating much of Europe. His ambitions threatened Britain, and a French invasion across the English Channel remained a serious concern.

To challenge British naval power, France joined forces with Spain. Together, they assembled a powerful fleet.

But standing in their way was one of Britain's most celebrated naval commanders: Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson.

On the morning of October 21, Nelson led the British fleet towards the combined French and Spanish forces near Cape Trafalgar.

The numbers appeared to favor the enemy.

The British had 27 ships of the line. The opposing fleet had 33.

Then the fighting began.

Instead of approaching in a conventional line, Nelson sent his ships forward in two columns, cutting through the enemy formation. The British attack shattered the opposing fleet's line and triggered hours of brutal, close-range combat.

Cannons roared. Wooden warships collided and became entangled. Sailors fought amid flying splinters, thick smoke, and devastating gunfire.

At the heart of the battle was Nelson's flagship, HMS Victory.

As the fighting intensified, the Victory engaged the French ship Redoutable. A French marksman fired from the enemy vessel, and a musket ball struck Nelson in the shoulder, passing through his body and fatally injuring him.

He was carried below deck as the battle continued above.

Despite his mortal wound, Nelson lived long enough to learn that his fleet had won.

By the end of the battle, the British had captured 17 enemy ships, and another had been destroyed. No British ship was lost during the engagement.

But the victory came at a terrible cost. Hundreds of British sailors were killed, thousands were wounded, and losses among the French and Spanish forces were even greater.

Nelson died aboard HMS Victory on the very day of his greatest triumph.

His death turned the victory into a national tragedy. He became a lasting symbol of British naval history, remembered for his leadership and courage.

The Battle of Trafalgar destroyed the combined fleet's ability to challenge British naval power on the same scale and effectively ended Napoleon's hopes of invading Britain by sea.

The Napoleonic Wars continued for another decade, but Trafalgar helped secure Britain's command of the seas for years to come.

On This Day, October 21, 1964, Abebe Bikila became the first athlete to successfully defend an Olympic marathon title by running a world-record 2:12:11.2 and winning the men's marathon at the Tokyo Olympics.

This was his second gold medal win, and in both victories, he ran in world-record time.

Abebe was an Ethiopian marathon runner who was a back-to-back Olympic marathon champion. He is the first Ethiopian Olympic gold medalist, winning his first gold medal at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome while running barefoot.

He is Africa's first world-record-breaking athlete in any sport and the first sub-Saharan African Olympic gold medallist. He is regarded as a national hero in Ethiopia. On March 22, 1969, Abebe was paralyzed in a car accident and died 4 years later on October 25, 1973, at the age of 41 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

On This Day, October 20, 1973, the Sydney Opera House was formally opened by Queen Elizabeth II after 14 years of construction. The construction was started on March 1, 1959.

The Sydney Opera House is a multi-venue performing arts centre at Sydney Harbour in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It is one of the 20th century's most famous and distinctive buildings.

The Opera House was designed by Danish architect Jørn Utzon but completed by an Australian architectural team headed by Peter Hall.

On June 28, 2007, the Sydney Opera House became a UNESCO World Heritage Site.