Last week I was facing a variety of headlines addressing new finds concerning the Black Death. In USA News, for example, the headline is London Skeletons Reveal Secrets of the Black Death, which nicely introduces the associated story. (As a note, the article is incorrect saying the Black Death killedContinue Reading
The house arrest of Galileo Galilei in 1633 is commonly put forth as an example of how religion, and particularly the Catholic Church, is against scientific progression. The issue of science and religion in general deserves its own post (or many), but this specific example has gained its own uniqueContinue Reading
A couple of months ago, I did a post about St. Valentine and how he has nothing to do with modern, secular celebrations of Valentine’s Day. I mentioned how hard it was to find good info online because so many sources mix-up folklore and urban legend with actual history. AndContinue Reading
Another winner from Grumpy Eleanor of Aquitaine: I love the disclaimer on the source page: Yes, I know her costume is not historically accurate – she was a commission and was specifically requested *not* to be! To be clear, I in no way blame the maker for this. He orContinue Reading
February 24 marked the death of the oldest living Holocaust survivor. Certainly there are still survivors out there, but they are growing scarcer by the year. Someone who was 15 in 1945 would be 83 today, and most people under the age of 15 didn’t survive the Holocaust at allContinue Reading
Yesterday I introduced the billion mark stamp from 1923 Germany with a bit of background behind this truly absurd item. Today, I visited a stamp store (which the owner says now officially makes me a philatelist, rather than a person who just happens to have stamps) and had a lovelyContinue Reading
The poor state of history education in our primary and secondary schools has left many of my college students seeing history as nothing but distinct facts to be memorized, often in list form. I know I had to repeatedly memorize the major battles of the Revolutionary War and their dates.Continue Reading
DangerousMinds.net has provided this little gem: a college student has transcribed the musical notes painted on the butt of one of the characters in Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights, which is arguably the most bat-shit crazy painting of the Renaissance. So…is this best played on an ass trumpet?Continue Reading
As previously mentioned, my grandfather’s concept of organization is…creative. Going through his jumbled collection of stamps invoked many facepalming exclamations of “Grandpa!” This was one of them, exclaimed even before I opened the envelope to which he had scotch-taped a green stamp of Benjamin Franklin. Scotch-taped. By its appearance itContinue Reading
Medieval marginalia is most known for being bizarre and offensive. It frequently is, but not always, particularly in earlier manuscripts. In the mid 12th century, Peter Lombard wrote a gloss of the psalms. That is, he created pages that displayed both the text of the Book of Psalms and hisContinue Reading