Ever heard the Tale of the man who tried to kill time as we know it? The mysterious beast which stalked a remote French village in the 1760s? What about the time a prankster ‘Zipped’ two Chicago television stations?
Tales of History and Imagination tells the Tales from history less told. We discuss strange, enigmatic characters, the cameo roles in life’s play, and, sometimes, major events from a viewpoint rarely seen.
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Ever heard the Tale of the man who tried to kill time as we know it? The mysterious beast which stalked a remote French village in the 1760s? What about the time a prankster ‘Zipped’ two Chicago television stations?
Tales of History and Imagination tells the Tales from history less told. We discuss strange, enigmatic characters, the cameo roles in life’s play, and, sometimes, major events from a viewpoint rarely seen.
This week we travel to Tana Island, Vanuatu (then the New Hebrides) in the midst of World War Two. God has returned - and not a moment too soon. Having abandoned them decades earlier, just as bad men with awful intentions arrived to steal their land - and send their people off to far away locales to be worked to death - he was back, as an American soldier named John Frum.
Sources Include:
This week a lot of articles (which I had saved in tabs - when my iPad crashed and needed a restore…This is as best I remember it.)
In John They Trust by Paul RaffaeleThis explainer in the GuardianThis Guardian article by Christopher LordArchiving a Prophecy: An ethnographic history of the ‘John Frum files’ (Tanna, Vanuatu, 1941–1980) by Marc TabaniThis short piece on the NZ History site (that confirms my memory NZ too had blackbirded labour)How Blackbirding Forced Tens of Thousands of Pacific Islanders into Slavery After the Civil War by Shoshi ParksBlackbirding and Indentured Labour in 19th Century Queensland by Sue ThompsonFrom the Islands by Scott Hamilton (everyone should go and follow Scott on Twitter, if you’re still on there… I miss not seeing him in my feed, now I’ve X-ited)Hunting the Blackbirder: Ross-Lewin and the Royal Navy by Doug Hunt
There were a handful more, including pages of old newspaper clippings on the Daphne Slave-ship bust, and a couple of articles specific to Blackbirding in Peru - I apologise for not backing these sources up somewhere as I went…
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Tales of History and Imagination
Ever heard the Tale of the man who tried to kill time as we know it? The mysterious beast which stalked a remote French village in the 1760s? What about the time a prankster ‘Zipped’ two Chicago television stations?
Tales of History and Imagination tells the Tales from history less told. We discuss strange, enigmatic characters, the cameo roles in life’s play, and, sometimes, major events from a viewpoint rarely seen.
