Top Tweets for #KnowyourHistory

The “idea” of socialism has always mattered more to its defenders than the bodies it produces. In 1956, Soviet tanks crushed the Budapest uprising. British Communists who defended it earned the name “tankies” from their own comrades. In 1932, Sidney and Beatrice Webb toured the Soviet Union and praised it as a new civilization while Moscow starved millions of Ukrainians. In 2014, a UN commission documented North Korea’s prison camps, mass starvation and executions as crimes against humanity. Online apologists still call it a misunderstood socialist success. Every generation produces people who will call the tanks liberation, the famine propaganda and the camps lies, because the idea always outranks the dead.

The decisive moment in the Siege of Malta (1565) was when the Ottomans were assaulting Fort St. Michael and Birgu with 8,000 men and head nearly broken through, with hand-to-hand fighting amidst the rubble. All hope for the Knights was lost. But the Ottomans had not dealt with the small garrison in the city of Mdina, further south. 150 cavalry from Mdina raided the Ottoman camp and field hospital. They announced "victory" and their confidence made it seem like a huge relief force had arrived. The Turks panicked and broke off their assault, pulling back to defend their rear areas. Such a cinematic moment in history - a tiny cavalry charge turning the tide of a huge battle with civilisational importance. No wonder Mel Gibson is making a movie about this.