Australian PM & sexism

Julia Gillard, the Australian Prime Minister, delivers a lesson in how to put down troublesome opposition leaders and deal with accusations of sexism and misogyny in a 15 minute speech which has attracted over 1 million Youtube hits.  She was reacting to a motion trying to force out the Speaker for the first time after he was discovered to have sent lewd messages to a staffer.  The Observer assessed the issue in yesterday's newspaper.

Tudors on YouTube

This excellent collection of videos can now be found on YouTube (apologies that they can't be viewed at school). It includes a mixture of extracts from films and TV dramas on Tudor subjects, and documentaries on particular events and individuals, such as David Starkey's comments on Mary Tudor, and Elizabeth's relationship with the Duke of Anjou. Also recommended is this brief discussion of Lady Jane Grey by John Guy, looking in particular at how she has been portrayed in paintings. The infamous "Bloody Mary" video is now also on YouTube, and can be seen above - watch out for David Loades' impressively louche performance.

Famous First Words

Today is the fifth anniversary of the first Twitter Tweet. Not the most momentous of anniversaries perhaps but it is still impressive to see how much progress Twitter has made in such a short space of time. If you were wondering what the first tweet was, it was "just setting up my twttr", whilst the first words mentioned on YouTube were, "Alright, so here we are in front of the elephants." (At the time the founder of YouTube was standing in front of an elephant at San Diego zoo.)

There are more of these in this BBC article, including "Come here Mr Watson, I want to see you" (First telephone message, 1876 - Mr Watson was Alexander Bell's assistant), and "Merry Christmas" (First text message, 1992). Can you remember your first text / email / phone call?

Horrible Histories: The Four Georges

Plenty of material from the Horrible Histories BBC programme has made its way to YouTube. This sketch for example imagines what Georges I II III and IV would be like if they auditioned for the X-Factor... There also plenty of links to other sketches - please recommend the best ones so we can put them on the blog.

PS: Here is an interview with Terry Deary, creator of the Horrible Histories books. He does not consider himself to be a historian, and thinks schools are a waste of time!