History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

Fun for Friday: Instagram Prompts from DefCon One

| April 11, 2025

It’s time for some more prompts from the DefCon One Instagram account! Write a piece about what happens when a fox encounters fuzzy socks. Write a piece about early flowers and late icicles. Write a piece about repairing a lamp with the wrong tool for the job. Follow the DefCon One Instagram account for writing prompts every […]

Fun for Friday: Weird April History

| April 4, 2025

Time for more weird history to inspire your writing or maybe just pique your curiosity! This month, I’ve got the daily historical events from The History Place, which include the normal mix of several events and birthdays for each day of the month. In addition, Rest Less has a list of 28 events that took place […]

Fun for Friday: April 2025 Writing Prompts

| March 28, 2025

April is just around the corner, so it’s time for the April 2025 writing prompts! This month, I ran across a lot of weirdly similar lists from different sources, so I had to approach things a little differently. The first column is The Petite Planner’s April Doodle Challenge from 2024. The second column is primarily […]

Fun for Friday: Return to Three Images!

| March 21, 2025

It’s been a while since I’ve done a three image writing prompt, but I’ve got some that I am fairly confident did not use AI tools, so let’s go! The first image is a black and white photo depicting a futuristic structure with a semi-transparent cone at the top of the structure, and a wider […]

Fun for Friday: Legend Etymology for Stories and Maps?

| March 14, 2025

Why do maps include something called a legend, and how does that connect to the idea of legends as stories? The etymology of “legend” is tied to the Latin word “legere,” which means “to read.” Unsurprisingly, this connects to things like legibility. It’s also connected to “lex” and “lectus,” which connects to things like lexicon […]

Fun for Friday: Weird March History

| March 7, 2025

Time for more weird history to inspire your writing or maybe just pique your curiosity! This month, I’ve got the daily historical events from The History Place, which include the normal mix of several events and birthdays for each day of the month. I’ve also got History UK’s March historical events, with one event on […]

Fun for Friday: March 2025 Writing Prompts!

| February 28, 2025

It’s almost March, which means it’s time for the March 2025 writing prompts! This month, I went with three themed art challenges for the prompts. Column 1 is the Mutation March prompts from Teresa Galusaurus, in which you’re encouraged to draw animals, but make them weird. Column 2 is the 2020 Magical March prompts from […]

Fun for Friday: The Connection Between Cult and Culture

| February 21, 2025

I work alongside archaeologists in the cultural resources management field, which means I see the word “culture” a lot. And I couldn’t help but notice, as I was typing it, that “cult” is the first four letters of that word. So I figured there must be a connection! There is, and it makes a lot […]

Fun for Friday: Weird February History

| February 14, 2025

Time for more weird history to inspire your writing or maybe just pique your curiosity! February is called “The Strangest Month of the Year” in this article on Medium from 2018. While it doesn’t delve too deeply into historical events, one might argue that the events it covers from seven years ago are recent history, […]

Fun for Friday: More DefCon One Writing Prompts!

| February 7, 2025

It’s time for some more prompts from the DefCon One Instagram account! A couple of these might sound a bit like winter holiday-oriented prompts, but you can also adjust them slightly to set them outside of the winter holidays! Write a piece about someone with a discerning eye about ornaments. Write a piece about the […]