"Better late than never" has become my current attitude on getting more acquainted with history. Recently I discovered a show called "Horrible Histories" that goes over aspects of history that I didn't even know about. I think of my history teacher from Junior High School,who was even more droll than Ben Stein's character in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. His history class was the first time I ever fell asleep in a classroom while class was in session. He was a strict teacher who was very by the book. For all those reasons I really didn't like the class and didn't get the best introduction to history.
As I became an adult I realized there was A LOT of history that my teachers never went over. Mainly all I learned about growing up was American history, so needless to say the gaps were quite big. One of the first things I learned about was the inventor by the name of Nikola Tesla. I grew up only hearing about Edison and "his" accomplishments. I never heard a peep about Telsa in my history classes. I also had never heard of Leif Erikson, who was actually the first person to reach North America (not Columbus, who did it 400 years AFTER Leif). Little did I realize this was not even the tip of the iceberg in terms of information I didn't get growing up.
Now living in an age of easily accessible digital information I'm doing a lot more reading then I ever did as a kid in class. It's been a fascinating topic to readdress, but then I discovered HH. Horrible Histories uses humor and re-written rock songs (such as "Charles Darwin" singing a new rendition of Bowie's "Changes") to deliver historical facts in an entertaining and grotesque way. The rock songs they reworked are really spot on. They do a great job of referencing and embodying bands like the Sex Pistols, The Smiths and The Monkees. The songs also make it even easier to learn and retain information. There is a lot of clever stuff on this show, like "Historical Wife Swap", "Stupid Deaths" and historical characters using the internet. I wish I had this when I was a kid!
You can find Horrible Histories on Hulu and clips on youtube.
Some of my favorites!
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