Hello, and welcome back to This Week in History! As strange as it may sound, writing This Week in History has become somewhat of a diary for me. Looking back at all the weekly entries, I remember finding the space over each weekend to sit down and write something about some cool little tidbit of history. This week, I want to reminisce about the history of this column, and my time writing for it.
Like previous This Week in History writer Gino Giansanti and those before him, this column has proven to be an escape, a nice little detour into the realm of history, which — believe it or not — is quite a comforting journey. Let’s look at some old entries in this column.
This Week in History, on Sunday, April 22, 2019, Seamus McKeever’s “This Week in History: 4/22/19-4/26/19” was published in The Daily Campus. While not the first issue in This Week in History — which as far as I can tell has roots as early as 2018 — it was written with a similar intent. Listen to this opening line, “This week in history, we will see the anniversaries of several important events that helped shape the world we live in.”
That’s what lies at the heart of this column, and history itself. It takes time and some willpower to thrift through all the minutiae of history — the little details that really aren’t on most people’s minds but undoubtedly shape how they may think or act. McKeever’s choice of events to cover was varied and well-organized. McKeever depicts the Red Army’s final assault on Berlin from April 23, 1945. It’s a great description of perhaps history’s greatest race: Who could reach Berlin first?
McKeever went on to cover the first YouTube video and the Easter Rising in 1916. It’s strange to think that the article was published five years ago. Did McKeever spend his Sunday like me, devoting a chunk of time to finding some fascinating history? How different was the campus back then? Of course, it wasn’t that long ago, but consider that COVID-19 would come to the United States almost a year later. In five years, what may change that we can’t foresee?
A year later, This Week in History’s author Gino Giansanti wrote and published “This Week In History: April 20 – 24” — can you see why I sometimes add in unique titles? I still keep the dates unchanged, but of course, having two articles of the exact same name can be a bit confusing even if they’re years apart.
By April 2020, the looming threat of COVID-19 had become a reality, and Giansanti prefaced his article: “This week in history, we’ll travel around the world to celebrate some of the brightest moments, figures and places in human history … something I’m afraid we’re all in desperate need of.”
Doesn’t that feel eerie to read now? It was only four years ago, but Gino retreated to This Week in History while the pandemic developed around him, presumably he found the same comfort in writing it that I do now. At that time, I was a junior in high school learning from isolation; though not published anywhere, my COVID-19 pastime was the same: learning history.
In 2021, Giansanti — in two beautifully written articles — covered history from the American Revolution to World War II. He dove deep into both topics rather than running through a list of bullet points — a style I imitate today.
A year later, Giansanti wrote his final coverage of This Week in History for the second to last week of April, he covered history from the Tiananmen Square protests to the history of Earth Day. By this point, Giansanti truly mastered the art of a weekly history column.
Finally, we come to my first coverage of this week in This Week in History. Certainly, in line with all the writers before me, I took some time on my Sunday to write about tanks, wars, scientists discovering solar panels and mysteries in Beethoven’s “Für Elise.”
So, as I take a break over the summer — there won’t be another column entry until next fall — I want to share how grateful I am to have this little retreat, this series of diary-like entries that describe my journey at UConn alongside the history of our world. I’ll be returning next year, so don’t fret; This Week in History goes on. Yet, I can’t help but wonder how many more weekends I’ll have the joy of dreaming of some timely history for an hour or two…