The historian
Grace Harman
Grace Harman is Timeslip's resident historian. She holds a BA (Hons) in History from the University of Canterbury, helps shape the daily challenges, and writes the stories you'll find in our archive.
Corrections and questions about any of the stories below reach her directly at grace@timeslip.me.
Stories by Grace Harman
The summer that never came, and the night Frankenstein beganIn 1816 a volcanic haze cancelled the European summer. The rain shut five people into a house above Lake Geneva, and two of them invented modern horror.
The harbour where the Black Death got into EuropeGenoese galleys tied up at Messina in 1347 and brought the plague ashore. Almost every detail of that landing is disputed — except the year.
The letter that made one village's cheese the world's first protected foodA charter of 1411 gave one French village the sole right to ripen its cheese in the caves beneath it — the oldest food-origin law we have.
Hiram Bingham did not discover Machu Picchu, and his own diary says soHiram Bingham reached Machu Picchu on 24 July 1911. Two families were already farming its terraces, and another man had signed the temple wall in 1902.
Miles Franklin spent a year as a housemaid under a false nameTwo years after My Brilliant Career made her famous, Miles Franklin worked as a maid under the name Sarah Frankling. Her book about it never appeared.
The Eiffel Tower went up with an expiry dateFinished on 31 March 1889, the Eiffel Tower was licensed to stand for twenty years and Paris meant to sell it for scrap. Radio saved it.
The 1812 Overture was first played without a single cannonTchaikovsky's 1812 Overture was not premiered in a tent by a cathedral. It was played in a trade-fair concert hall outside Moscow in 1882, with no cannon.
George Washington's Spy RingIn July 1780 someone on a Long Island shore counted eight thousand British troops into their boats. What Washington's spy ring really did, and did not do.
How Paris came to tip two million of its dead down a mine shaftIn 1780 a mass grave broke through a Paris cellar wall. Six years later the city blessed a worked-out quarry and began tipping its dead down a well.
The four ships that forced Japan openFour American warships anchored off Uraga on 8 July 1853 with their guns on the town. Japan had been sealed for two centuries. It was open within a year.
The twelve clerks who ate poison so America could trust its foodIn 1902 a US government chemist fed twelve young clerks borax and formaldehyde at a basement table in Washington — and got a food law out of it.
The night Tycho Brahe found a star that was not supposed to existOn 11 November 1572 Tycho Brahe crossed a frozen yard in Danish Scania, looked up, and found a star in Cassiopeia that had no business being there.
The five men who reached the South Pole firstRoald Amundsen and four Norwegians stood at 90°S on 14 December 1911, thirty-four days ahead of Scott. Fur, skis and dogs are why they came home.
The blacked-out room where Caravaggio painted The Calling of Saint MatthewIn 1600 Caravaggio worked in a room blacked out but for one high window, posing models off the street and painting straight onto the canvas.
The all-female gang that raided London's department stores by the carloadTwo days before Christmas 1927, at least fourteen cars carried Britain's largest all-female shoplifting gang from South London into the West End.
The German pilot who escorted a crippled American bomber homeOn 20 December 1943 a German fighter pilot drew alongside a shot-to-pieces B-17 over Germany — and escorted it out to sea instead of finishing it.
The ninety-five theses are real. Nobody can prove Martin Luther nailed them to a door.In 1517 Martin Luther attacked the sale of indulgences in ninety-five Latin theses. Whether he also nailed them to a church door is still argued over.
The summer the potato blight reached IrelandThe blight was first recorded in Ireland in a Dublin garden in August 1845. Within seven years a million people were dead and a million more had gone.
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Every story here began as a Timeslip challenge: one scene, and no idea where — or when — you are.
