HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: The official website for BBC History Magazine
date: 2025-04-07T11:29:32.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: How Tibbles the cat single-handedly caused a Victorian-era extinction
items: Penal transportation to Australia: everything you wanted to know
items: William Douglas: infamous bushranger, prize-fighter and reader of skulls
items: What was the Emu War?
items: Aboriginal Australians: a modern history
items: Cakobau: the first (and last) king of Fiji
items: Australian bushrangers: folk heroes or common criminals?
items: Gallipoli: 5 reasons why the First World War campaign was a failure
items: Female activism: 10 remarkable protests from around the world
items: The Crown S4 E6 real history: Charles and Diana’s 1983 royal tour of Australia & the start of ‘Dianamania’

How Tibbles the cat single-handedly caused a Victorian-era extinction
type: item
date: 2025-03-20T16:41:20.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: Period
subject: Victorian
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: How did one cat take out an entire species of bird in the 19th century? Dr Ross Barnett explains more about how human behaviour through history has caused devastating impact on rates of extinction
encoded: Before the dodo, the notion of human-caused extinction was unimaginable. However, in the three and a half centuries since the dodo disappeared (the last widely accepted sighting was in 1662), the extinctions of species driven by human behaviour have occurred widely across the globe – driven by both habitat loss and hunting. Few stories of extinct animals are as poignant as that of the Stephens Island wren. This flightless bird was wiped out in rapid fashion – not by poaching or habitat destruction, but by a single cat Speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast, palaeogeneticist and extinction expert Dr Ross Barnett discussed the history of human-caused extinctions. The story of the wren's extinction begins in 1894, when a lighthouse keeper on Stephens Island, New Zealand, introduced a female cat named Tibbles to the remote outpost. Cats had never before been present on Stephens Island, a small island 55 miles from Wellington off New Zealand’s South Island. And Tibbles’ arrival, explains Barnett, “decimated – exterminated – the last population of this unique flightless songbird.” The Stephens Island wren was a flightless species of bird which lived in holes in the ground, an existence sometimes characterised as a ‘Hobbit-like’. Peter P Marra and Chris Santella described the bird in their book Cat Wars (2016, Princeton University Press) as: “Equipped with large feet and a short tail, it ran low to the ground among the shoreline rocks or jumped from branch to branch through thick tangles of knotty shrubs.” Most importantly to this tale, the Stephens Island wren did not need to fly. “There was no need to leave the island or the ground for long,” explain Marra and Santella. “Food was available throughout the year, and the species could breed on the island.” And, fatefully, there were no predators. Read more | How do you really kill a dragon? But in 1894, the wren’s existence changed. Tibbles quickly became more than a companion to the lighthouse keeper, turning into an unwitti…

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Penal transportation to Australia: everything you wanted to know
type: item
date: 2023-06-11T09:21:31.000Z
creator: Ellie Cawthorne
subject: General Modern
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Everything you wanted to know about history (podcast series)
description: From criminal sentencing to colonial settlement, Nancy Cushing answers questions on the transportation of British convicts to Australia
encoded: Why did the British state decide to send criminals across the globe to Australia? Was it really as grim as you might expect to be one of those transported? And what was the impact of the convict transportation system on Australia and its indigenous peoples? In our latest Everything you wanted to know episode, Nancy Cushing answers listener questions on convict transportation to Australia. Nancy Cushing is the author of A History of Crime in Australia: Australian Underworlds (Routledge, 2022) Buy now on Bookshop.org Buy now on Amazon Buy now on Waterstones

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William Douglas: infamous bushranger, prize-fighter and reader of skulls
type: item
date: 2023-05-12T08:30:40.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Victorian
subject: Historical people
description: Born in one of the first generations of black Americans legally free from slavery, William Douglas travelled the world but still wound up in chains and facing the lash. Meg Foster explores his life of crime across 19th-century Australia, which made him a target of lynch mobs and the press, and how the real man has to be unravelled from the myth of “Black Douglas”
encoded: In May 1855, hundreds of Victorian gold miners moved to lynch a gang of alleged murderers and thieves. The Alma goldfields in the Australian colony of Victoria saw between 100 and 400 diggers set out to punish a nefarious criminal, named Black Douglas, and his brothers in crime. They knew Douglas as a dastardly goldfields’ entity, a black colonial bogeyman accused of a slew of serious crimes including violent robbery and (though all evidence suggests he wasn’t guilty) the murder of a white woman on the diggings at Avoca. The lynching was averted after a police man convinced the miners it was in their best interests to bring in Douglas and his men to face British justice (Douglas was sentenced to two years’ hard labour). “It will give very general satisfaction to the public to be informed that the career of this notorious criminal and his mates in crime has sustained a check,” declared one report. On the podcast | ‘Black Douglas’: a not so dastardly bushranger? Douglas was renowned as a “bushranger” – a bandit who robbed to survive and hid in the Australian bush on the run from the law. While some white bushranging men gained assistance and local fame for their criminal deeds in this period, appearing as some kind of colonial Robin Hood to some of their working-class supporters, Douglas was cloaked in infamy. The miners did not concern themselves with the details of Douglas’s life, or verifying the heinous stories told about him. They knew Douglas by reputation as a black man and a criminal, and that was enough for them. But Douglas’s time on the goldfields was just one small part of his epic life story. And there is far more to his tale than immediately meets the eye. Who was 'Black Douglas' and where did he grow up? Black Douglas was American. Born William Douglas, in Philadelphia in 1817, he entered the world with some luck on his side. Douglas was one of the first generations of black Americans to have been born legally free from slavery and enforced labour, as P…

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What was the Emu War?
type: item
date: 2022-07-20T08:05:56.000Z
creator: Jonny Wilkes
subject: 20th Century
subject: Period
description: In one of the more extreme displays of animal control likely to be seen, a machine gun unit was sent to cull the flightless birds in the Australian Outback in the early 1930s. As Jonny Wilkes explores, however, the army severely underestimated its enemy…
encoded: In 1932, the Australian military went to war. Nearly 15 years before, its soldiers had fought in the First World War, and the Second World War was not far ahead, but this was a very different kind of conflict: the enemy were emus. The large, flightless birds – almost six feet in height on average, and capable of running 30 miles per hour – can be found all over Australia, and are able to travel huge distances during their breeding season. This posed a sizable problem for the wheat farmers of Western Australia in the early 1930s, as large populations of emus could (and did) suddenly appear, break their fences and ruin their crops. What’s more, each broken fence meant that other animals, such as rabbits or dingoes, could get in and wreak further havoc. Around 20,000 of the flightless birds had descended on the Campion and Walgoolan regions in the so-called ‘wheatbelt’. Why did the 'Emu War' happen? This was the time of the Great Depression, and it was already hitting farmers hard. wheat prices were falling, but the subsidies promised by the government had not been delivered. The farmers, many of them war veterans, could do next to nothing about those problems, so their anger and frustration went into seeking a drastic solution to the emu epidemic. They found an ally in Minister of Defence, Sir George Pearce, who agreed to their requests for machine guns to rid the Outback of the emu menace. It was not a large operation. The military force he dispatched was comprised of two soldiers, Sergeant S McMurray and Gunner J O’Halloran, under the command of Major Meredith of the Royal Australian Artillery. They were equipped with two Lewis light machine guns and 10,000 rounds of ammunition – half the bullets for the number of emus they were sent to cull. Pearce was so convinced that it would be a success that he sent a news cinematographer from Fox Movietone to film the ‘war’. He believed there could be some good PR for the government. Military operations got underway in early …

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Aboriginal Australians: a modern history
type: item
date: 2021-09-08T11:42:26.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Victorian
subject: Period
description: Richard Broome explores the experiences of Aboriginal Australians after the arrival of white settlers in the 1780s
encoded: Historian Richard Broome, author of Aboriginal Australians, discusses the experiences of Australia’s indigenous peoples after the arrival of white settlers, uncovering stories of exploitation and oppression, but also of agency and cultural independence. Richard Broome is the author of Aboriginal Australians: A History Since 1788 (Fifth Edition – Allen and Unwin, 2019) Buy now on Amazon Buy now on Waterstones

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Cakobau: the first (and last) king of Fiji
type: item
date: 2021-08-11T11:26:55.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Victorian
subject: Historical people
description: Cakobau was crowned the first king of Fiji 150 years ago, but within three years his kingdom had crumbled, replaced by British rule. Toby Wilkinson chronicles the imposing warlord’s remarkable reign
encoded: On 5 June 1871, an unlikely ceremony took place in the ramshackle colonial settlement of Levuka, on the tropical island of Ovalau, at the heart of the Fiji archipelago. Before a motley crowd of European settlers – sugar-cane planters, gun-runners and the assorted jetsam of empire – and a few native Fijians, a tall and imposing local chief was proclaimed the king of Fiji. The first and last person to bear that title, the man at the centre of proceedings was better known to his subjects as Cakobau (pronounced “Thakombau”). Born circa 1815, his personal journey, in the space of half a century, from cannibal to king to British subject, is one of the more incredible stories from the era of Pacific colonisation. As this year marks the 150th anniversary of his accession, it seems an appropriate moment to bring him back to life and tell his story anew. The Fiji islands were first sighted by a European called Abel Tasman in 1643, but it was not until 1800 that western “civilisation” began to encroach on the traditional Fijian way of life. In the wake of sandalwood-traders, who stripped Fiji of much of its native forests, came the “beach-combers”, outlaws who had fled justice in their home countries and come to live among the Fijians as gun-runners and interpreters. These ne’er-do-wells married local women and exercised a degree of influence over the native chiefs. In the early 19th century, Fiji comprised about a dozen major chiefdoms which, since long before European contact, had been engaged in endless internecine battles. The cannier rulers recognised the military advantage to be gained from western firearms and used them to pursue hegemony. The Victorians and the British Empire: a brief guide and timeline Foremost among these ambitious chiefs was the ruler of the tiny islet of Bau, located less than half a mile off the coast of Fiji’s main island, Viti Levu. Measuring barely a mile in length, and covering an area of just 20 acres, Bau came to exercise a degree of influen…

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Australian bushrangers: folk heroes or common criminals?
type: item
date: 2021-07-26T11:38:49.000Z
creator: Meg Foster
subject: 20th Century
subject: 21st Century
subject: General Modern
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: Meg Foster discusses the bandits that lived outside the law in Australia’s bush – from Ned Kelly to surprising lesser-known figures
encoded: Meg Foster discusses the bandits that lived outside the law in Australia’s bush, unpicking myth from reality in the stories of criminals who became folk heroes and national icons. She looks at the infamous bushranger Ned Kelly, and also shares surprising stories of lesser-known Aboriginal, black and women bushrangers.

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Gallipoli: 5 reasons why the First World War campaign was a failure
type: item
date: 2021-04-09T10:11:56.000Z
subject: First World War
subject: Period
description: But for the achievement of the Australian and New Zealander Army Corps (Anzac) in carving out a small bridgehead at Anzac Cove, the WW1 campaign to seize the Gallipoli peninsula was a disaster, says Peter Hart. Writing for BBC History Magazine, the author of a 2011 book on the disastrous First World War campaign offers his explanations for the Allies' failure in 1915
encoded: What happened at Gallipoli? The Gallipoli campaign was a terrible tragedy. The attempt by the Allies to seize the Gallipoli peninsula from the Ottoman empire and gain control over the strategically-important Dardanelles failed in a welter of hubris, blood and suffering. Located just across the Dardanelles straits from the fabled city of Troy, its classical undertones have helped create a rich mythology of ‘the terrible ifs’; of what might have been achieved with ‘a bit more luck’. The beach landings at Helles – the first made against modern weapons systems – saw incredible heroism and turned the sea at V Beach red with blood. Gallipoli is today synonymous with the achievement of the Australian and New Zealander Army Corps (ANZAC) in carving out a small bridgehead at Anzac Cove. That maze of tangled gullies and ridges is still sacred for Australians. But for all that the campaign was an utter failure. The question is why? Here are five possible reasons... The Gallipoli campaign was poorly conceived The First World War stalled when the huge armies of Germany and France fought themselves to a standstill on the Western Front in 1914. When the Ottoman Turks attacked Russians in the Caucasus mountains in December 1914, Russia went to her allies requesting help. The British were fully committed elsewhere but a group of politicians led by Winston Churchill, then at the Admiralty, sought to help Russia with an attack on the Gallipoli peninsula that aimed to gain control of the Dardanelles straits that separated Asia and Europe. This, it was boasted, would remove one of the allies ‘propping up’ Germany, influence wavering Balkan states and open the sea route to Russian Black Sea ports for the export of munitions to feed Russian guns on the Eastern Front. Read more | 10 WW1 generals you should know about Much of this was nonsense. There was no backdoor to Germany; no easy route to victory, no allies that propped her up. Germany operated on interior lines of communications and …

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Female activism: 10 remarkable protests from around the world
type: item
date: 2021-03-15T14:57:48.000Z
subject: General Modern
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: For centuries, women have taken to the streets to fight discrimination, instigate change, and make their voices heard. As Women's History Month continues, we look back at 10 remarkable examples...
encoded: The Suffrage movement – 19th Century to the present, worldwide The right of women, by law, to vote in national and local elections has been a topic of discussion since ancient times. But serious campaigning for female suffrage in the modern world can really be seen to have begun in the late-19th century, with New Zealand, in 1893, becoming the first self-governing country in the world to give all women the right to vote in parliamentary elections. The fight by suffrage campaigners in New Zealand, such as Kate Sheppard, inspired women across the world to take up the fight in their own countries. In Britain, late 19th-century parliamentary reforms, which had given more men the right to vote, yet rejected petitions to enfranchise women at the same time, led to the creation of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), which boasted more than 50,000 members. Years of non-violent campaigning ensued under the leadership of Millicent Garrett Fawcett, including lobbying MPs, petitions to parliament, marches and protests. But with their pleas falling on deaf ears, many women became frustrated at seemingly fruitless peaceful tactics and decided to take more direct action. And so the Suffragettes were born in the form of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), led by Manchester suffragist Emmeline Pankhurst with her daughters, Christabel, Sylvia and Adela, under the motto ‘Deeds Not Words’. From around 1905, a new strand of the women’s suffrage movement grew and demonstrations became increasingly angry, with window smashing, hunger strikes, arson attacks and even bombing deployed by militant suffragettes. Ultimately, it was the essential work of women in World War I that proved to be the catalyst for change, and in 1918, some 8.5 million women (over the age of 30 who met a property qualification) were granted the right to vote. It would not be until 1928, however, that all British women over the age of 21 became enfranchised. Can we call the suffragettes …

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The Crown S4 E6 real history: Charles and Diana’s 1983 royal tour of Australia & the start of ‘Dianamania’
type: item
date: 2020-11-15T08:11:17.000Z
creator: Elinor Evans
subject: 20th Century
subject: General Modern
subject: Period
subject: Royal children
subject: The Crown
subject: The royal family
subject: TV interest
description: Episode 6 of season 4 of The Crown sees Charles and Diana, deep in the midst of marital troubles, called upon to tour Australia and New Zealand in an effort to stem feelings of republicanism in one of the Commonwealth’s key countries
encoded: Diana’s priorities as a mother become clear and the couple are seen to momentarily reconcile. Meanwhile, the tour is hailed as a huge success. But how historically accurate is all this? Let’s unpick the historical truths of episode 6… (This article contains spoilers for season 4, episode 6 of The Crown) Episode six of the new season brings the marriage of Prince Charles and Diana, Princess of Wales, back to centre stage, covering the couple’s 1983 tour of Australia. It was the job of incumbent Australian Labour prime minister Bob Hawke to welcome the young royals to the Commonwealth country as part of a royal tour aimed at shoring up the royal family’s reputation. Hawke is clearly sceptical about Charles’s ability “as a different breed” to connect with the Australian public, and there is a lot riding on the tour. In reality, Hawke did want Australia to become a republic by 1988; in The Crown it’s made clear to Prince Charles (Josh O’Connor) and Princess Diana (Emma Corrin) ahead of their tour that if Australia were to strike out on its own away from the Commonwealth, other countries would “fall like dominoes”, in the words of one adviser. The Queen (Olivia Colman) expresses her hope that the couple will be alright. Yet amid a harrowing depiction of Diana’s struggle with the eating disorder bulimia, and Prince Charles’s visits to the Parker Bowles estate, it seems as though the tour will be anything but. In the opening scenes of episode 6, the strength of Charles and Camilla’s enduring chemistry is made plain as the pair perform a joke at a dinner party while Camilla’s husband, Andrew Parker Bowles, looks on. Charles and Camilla’s relationship was, according to most records, platonic during this stage of Charles’s marriage to Diana, and royal expert Penny Junor says that he and Camilla were not mixing socially: “If Camilla knew Charles would be at a party during this time, she didn’t go.” It is true that Andrew knew about Charles and Camilla’s close connection. And h…

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