History House History

A rambling monologue by site founder Sebastian Good

Our story actually begins in a London hotel room in the summer of 1996, just four blocks from the Gloucester Road tube stop, not too far from the Victoria and Albert Museum. Feeling a bit historically minded after a romp through that fantastic institution, I had picked up a copy of The Oxford Illustrated History of Britain and started reading it. That's when I found out about our dear exploding William the Conqueror. Wow, I thought. This is history as I had remembered it in high school, where British teachers brought out the dirt and told history like a story.

After my stay in London, I returned to Rice University for my fourth year and ended up in a Russian History class with the incomparable Dr. Gale Stokes. He had a knack for finding fun and useful stuff, leading the class to priceless material on Peter the Great. At that point, I figured I was in possession of two stories that needed to be told to the world. So I threw up a little page on my university website, called it "Bizarre Historical Trivia" and submitted it to Yahoo.

Not three days later, I got an e-mail telling me I had been selected for Pick of the Week for October 10. Over ten thousand people visited that week. What an introduction! E-mail started rolling in demanding more dirt. I put together another few essays over the rest of the school year and redesigned the site

Well, there's no motivation like notoriety. I sent the word out to Ian Quigley, a longtime partner in crime at Rice who had just graduated, that Bizarre Historical Trivia had serious promise. We redesigned the site and dubbed it 'History House' and we started putting out a story a week. During the school year Ian wrote three out of four of our stories.

It's been years since we've all graduated (with a degree in history even!), and full-time jobs take their toll on History House from time to time. We've always managed to find more to do, and the one thing that has remained constant throughout is that people dig History House. We always feel compelled to update and improve it. This is the site's sixth reincarnation. We've got a guest contributor from Australia and are putting together a TV show. We hope you enjoy reading our site as much as we enjoy publishing it!