The Dispatch Edition #6: Train Wrecks, Monsters & The Titanic

Welcome to Edition #6 of The Dispatch.

Hello,

Jordan here, the Creative Director at Unseen Histories.

This is Edition #6 of The Dispatch, our free email roundup of long-form pieces, previews, interviews, pictures and more published on Unseen Histories; curated in one place for you to read at your leisure.

For compliancy, if you don’t wish to hear from us again, you can find an unsubscribe link at the bottom every email, but I hope you’ll find The Dispatch a welcome addition to your inbox.

You can read previous editions in our archive.

Many thanks for reading,

– Jordan Acosta, Creative Director, Unseen Histories

Headlines

The latest from Unseen Histories –

From werewolves to witches, 'monsters' have long been a subject of intrigue and speculation within human societies. They both attract and repel. But what exactly are they? How are they created? What does their presence tell us about ourselves?

Surekha Davies kept questions like these in mind as she cast her eyes back through history, from the Epic of Gilgamesh of the ancient past through to the AI algorithms of today.

In the resulting book, Humans: A Monstrous History, Davies frames her findings. In this interview she explains the origin of this project and tells us why it has a particular resonance today.

Our vision of the Titanic has been shaped and finessed over time. We are now instantly familiar with it: the slender beauty of the ship, the luxury of its fittings, the confidence of Captain Smith and the cold, glassy calm of the Atlantic Ocean.

All this, of course, combined in tragic fashion that night in April 1912 when the ship struck an iceberg and more than a thousand perished in a few anguished hours.

For her third novel, the writer Frances Quinn has been drawn back to this story. Researching it anew she confronted a traumatic event whose effects impacted lives long into the twentieth-century.

From York Minster to Neasden Temple, the Shah Jahan Mosque to Durham Cathedral, Britain is dotted with elegant religious buildings of all different ages and architectural styles.

But when it comes to Britain's many synagogues this elegance is often replaced by other characteristics. Often they are functional rather than profound, anoymous rather than ostentatious.

Keith Kahn-Harris, author of the book Everyday Jews, has long appreciated this quirk. Here he considers why Britain's synagogues have assumed their current form and what they tell us about the nation's Jewish communities.

Bookshelf

Previews, excerpts, and more from the very best published history books –

Jordan’s Pick: Proto by Laura Spinney (William Collins) –
I’m one of those people who are fascinated by languages whilst being terrible at them at the same time. The origins of words are of particular interest to me, and our understanding of how we are as a species comes from the communication of thought and ideas.

The destructive years of World War Two brought new opportunities for women. As millions of men were called up and dispatched on military postings across the globe, women were left to transcend the old constrained lives.

In her new book, Propaganda Girls, the New York Times bestselling author Lisa Rogak relates the extraordinary story of one such group who became known as 'Donovan's Dreamers'.

Each of the four women in this group were clever, creative and determined. Assigned to the US Office of Strategic Services, their days were given over to the creation of misleading, enticing and suggestive material.

Here Rogak introduces us to the secret women of World War Two intelligence.

Viewfinder

Our picks from the picture archives, remastered –

Lurking within the Library of Congress is a colossal collection of photographs documenting the United States in all its diversity, providing us with a glimpse into 20th century American life. These images all share one common element: they are all untitled, ultimately left to the archivists to try and attach these erroneous moments to a wider context.

Jordan’s Pick –
The America of the Great Depression and FDR’s New Deal was extensively documented by the Farm Security Administration; capturing both the heartbreak and the optimism of an inter-war country beginning to modernise. All of the photographs have been painstakingly cleaned up and made available, for free.

One of the most bizarre incidents in railway history occurred at Montparnasse Station in Paris on Tuesday 22 October 1895.

Train travel at the time was still a fast-developing technology and accidents frequently struck. The sight of a locomotive, though, having punched a jagged hole through a gallery window and decorative balustrade was one that had not been witnessed before.

'The approaches to the station', wrote one of the onlookers, 'were thronged with crowds, who went to the Place de Rennes, in order to feast their eyes on the effects of one of the most extraordinary accidents which has happened within the memory of man.'

Jordan’s Pick –
An image taken from my first book, The Paper Time Machine. I often find the real magic working with these images is delving into the compelling backstories of the photographs I’m working to colorize or restore, and our editor, Peter Moore, has turned up trumps with this weird and fascinating slice of locomotive history.

Op-ed

More from around the web –

Dozens of unique, centuries-old manuscripts have gone on display, showcasing medieval ideas of how to cure disease and live a healthy life. The cures include the use of crushed weasel testicles to help women conceive and mixing stewed apples with quicksilver (mercury) to rub on the body to destroy lice.
– Katy Prickett, BBC

Thanks for reading The Dispatch by Unseen Histories. Edition #7 will be published week beginning May 26, 2025. You can read previous editions in our archive.