History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

Fun for Friday: WonderbookNow

| January 17, 2025

I’ve just starting tackling Wonderbook as my next craft book read, and though I’ve only gotten through a bit of it, I’m loving it! One of the things included as a companion to the book is WonderbookNow, a website containing additional resources for folks as they go through the book. And within that site is The […]

Fun for Friday: Etymology of Words about … Words

| January 10, 2025

Have you ever wondered about the etymology of the words we use for … words about talking? Useless Etymology has, and they wrote a brief post about the etymology of jargon, jabber, and gibberish, which are related to one another. It’s fascinating to me to see the way these words are related and how they […]

Fun for Friday: Weird January History

| January 3, 2025

Time for more weird history to inspire your writing or maybe just pique your curiosity! Historic UK has a great list of historical events, including that one that changed the beginning of the year from my birthday to January 1st! Just think, we could have been celebrating my birthday right at the beginning of the […]

Fun for Friday: January 2025 Writing Prompts!

| December 27, 2024

It’s time for the first writing prompts for 2025! This month, I took the prompts from three different art challenges. The first column is the Kick in the Creatives January art prompt list, with some of the prompts shortened slightly and Americanized. The second column is from Blenduary 2025, which is normally an art challenge using […]

Fun for Friday: Winter Etymology

| December 20, 2024

If you’ve ever wondered about the etymology of the word “winter,” look no further! This article at Dictionary.com explains it all! As a bonus, you can also read about the origin of December, which may be better known among some. But there are also some additional names that the month went by before it reached […]

Fun for Friday: Writing Prompts on DefCon One’s Instagram

| December 13, 2024

It’s time for some more prompts from the DefCon One Instagram account! Write a piece about what happens when you imbibe a potion. Write a piece about how much inspiration a character can afford. Write a piece about the impacts of a cubic zirconia. Follow the DefCon One Instagram account for writing prompts every other Friday, or […]

Fun for Friday: Weird December History

| December 6, 2024

Time for more weird history to inspire your writing or maybe just pique your curiosity! HistoryExtra has a great list of eight weird December historical occurrences (well, one is in January, but I’ll allow it!), which are somewhat holiday themed. If you need more in the “weird winter holiday” category, check out The Debrief’s list […]

Fun for Friday: December 2024 Writing Prompts

| November 29, 2024

We’re coming to the end of the year, so it’s time for the December 2024 writing prompts! Column 1 this month is from Doodlewash‘s December 2024 prompts. For this one, I occasionally took out an adjective related to Christmas or winter. Column 2 is from Kick in the Creative‘s December 2024 prompts. For these, I […]

Fun for Friday: Writing Prompts for High Schoolers

| November 22, 2024

Although these writing prompts from the University of Iowa’s Iowa Reading Research Center are labeled as being for grades 9 through 12 (or American high schoolers), they’ve got some excellent advice and ideas that could be used by older writers as well! The document is set up to be used by a teacher, and includes […]

Fun for Friday: Etymology of Electric

| November 15, 2024

It’s always fun when you learn the etymology of a word that is a little bit surprising. Did you know the word electric is related to the Latin word for amber? This post at Useless Etymology explains the connection. It involves magnetism and cats, so of course I was intrigued! Will it work its way […]