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History

From the powerful civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Indus Valley, to the fearsome yet sophisticated society of the Vikings, the ancient world was a surprising and challenging place. Here we feature some of the most seminal and influential events and people throughout history, that have helped shape the world we know today.

Grave with skeletal remains of a pre-Hispanic woman found at Palenque Archaeological Zone. Source: INAH Chiapas
21 May, 2022 - 14:57 Nathan Falde

Archaeologists in Chiapas, Mexico Unearth Remains of Maya Noblewoman

The Chiapas branch of Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) has just reported a notable find in the heavily excavated Palenque Archaeological Zone in the southern part of the...
Il Disinganno, or The Release from Deception, by the Genoese artist Francesco Queirolo. Source: Dalia Nera / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
19 May, 2022 - 22:58 ashley cowie

The Impossible Statue: The Marvelous Marble Net of Il Disinganno

The impossible sculptural feats within the Sansevero Chapel Museum in Naples will take your breath away. Amongst them, the famed statue known as Il Disinganno , was carved out of one single block of...
Amphora dating to circa 540 BC made in Attica, Greece, depicting bees from ancient Greek mythology. Source: The British Museum / CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
19 May, 2022 - 18:53 Lex Leigh

Getting Buzzed: The History of Hallucinogenic Mad Honey

Everyone loves honey. A delicious, sweet treat, it can be used in recipes, cosmetics, or as a sugar substitute. However, not all honey is made the same. This is incredibly clear in Nepal and Turkey,...
Klaus Störtebeker was part of the Victual Brothers pirate band that terrorized the Baltic Sea until . . . Source: waewkid / Adobe Stock
17 May, 2022 - 22:37 Jake Leigh-Howarth

Klaus Störtebeker: The Bizarre Tale of a North German Pirate

Looking to the past, the annals of history have its fair share of extraordinary and unusual deaths, some more famous than others. It’s well known that Attila the Hun, the marauding Mongolian warlord...
Ancient Legacy And Future Applications Of Glass
13 May, 2022 - 19:21 ashley cowie

Ancient Legacy And Future Applications Of Glass

Today, glass is a mundane material mostly used in construction but in history it was among the treasures of kings and their royal dynasties. The history of glass-making dates back to at least 3,600...
Corpse medicine sounds revolting today but for thousands of years “doctors” believed the human spirit and its powers could be ingested in the form of human fat, blood, or brains. "Saturn eating his son,” painted by Francisco de Goya.
13 May, 2022 - 19:03 Sahir

Corpse Medicine: Brains, Mellified Man’s Honey-flesh, or Blood Drinks!

In the 16th and 17th centuries while, with astonishing hypocrisy, Europeans were reacting with disgust and outrage to reports of cannibalism brought back by travelers from the New World. And yet in...
Obverse and reverse of the golden Curmsun disc. Source: Tomasz Sielski / CC BY-SA 3.0
12 May, 2022 - 22:55 ashley cowie

Sweden’s Enigmatic Golden Curmsun Disc

In 2014, a young girl living in Malmö, presented her teacher with a small golden disc brought to Sweden by her Polish grandmother. Little did she know that this small golden artifact, now dubbed the...
Wife auctions were popular with the lower classes in England from about 1700 to 1850 because divorce was expensive and complicated. This work of art is by Thomas Rowlandson (1756–1827) and is called Selling a Wife. Source: Thomas Rowlandson / Public domain
11 May, 2022 - 18:56 Jake Leigh-Howarth

Why Did Victorian Women Willingly Sell Themselves at Wife Auctions?

The year was 1832 when Joseph Thompson, a local Cardiff man, led his wife by halter to the local marketplace hoping for a good price in what was, after all, just a wife auction. Before the bidding,...
Though the crusades are numbered it would appear that the Pisans zero crusade was truly the first as it preceded the First Crusade by nearly 80 years. And from that time forward the fortunes of Pisa rose to incredible heights! Source: Lunstream / Adobe Stock
10 May, 2022 - 23:01 Jake Leigh-Howarth

Was Pisa’s 1016 Sardinia Expedition the First Crusade of Them All?

During the First Crusade, the city state of Pisa, like many other European powers, was moved by the pleas of Pope Urban II, who in 1095 ordered the Christian kingdoms of Europe to launch a holy...
Excavating Azekah: Defensive Bastion Of The Kingdom Of Judeah
9 May, 2022 - 19:49 Rebecca Batley

Excavating Azekah: Defensive Bastion Of The Kingdom Of Judeah

Describing the fortress of Azekah 2,700 years ago the mighty Assyrian King Sennacherib wrote that “its walls were strong and rivalled the highest mountains…by means of beaten earth ramos, battering...
Left; Portrait of Francisco Pizarro. Right; The tomb of Francisco Pizarro in the Lima Cathedral held the wrong man’s remains for nearly a century, but modern science has corrected the error with Pizarro’s remains, found in two boxes beneath the cathedral in 1977. Source: Left; Public Domain, Right; RAF-YYC / CC BY-SA 2.0
9 May, 2022 - 18:58 Sahir

Finding Francisco Pizzaro: The Strange Story of Pizarro’s Remains

It’s fair to say that Francisco Pizarro was a highly divisive figure. Indeed, even a mention of him today in some parts of the world can incite blood fueled anguish and hatred of the man responsible...
Scenic view of typical narrow alleyway lined laundry lines in the Medieval Centro Storico of Naples ( lazyllama/ Adobe Stock) and Munaciello according to popular imagery ( Lady of a times /CC BY-SA 4.0)
6 May, 2022 - 22:45 Alessandra Filiaci

Mischievous Munaciello, A Folletto Character Of Neapolitan Folklore

Every country in the world has its own rich folklore , every city and village has its own legends about fantastic creatures and supernatural beings told by grandparents to parents to children,...
Sermon and Deeds of the Antichrist by Luca Signorelli (1499) (Public Domain)
5 May, 2022 - 16:39 jim willis

Prophets For Profit: Telling The Future - Fiction, Fact Or Funny

Technically speaking, a prophet is one who is believed to speak for God, but generally speaking, when people hear the word ‘prophet’, they tend to think of one who sees the future. In popular...
Left, a Sedducee, who some scholars claim the Teacher of Righteousness is based on. Right, A fragment of the Damascus Scroll in which the Teacher is most mentioned. Source: Left; Hartmann Schedel / Public Domain, Right; CC0
3 May, 2022 - 23:02 Bipin Dimri

Who was the Teacher of Righteousness in the Dead Sea Scrolls?

The Teacher of Righteousness is supposedly the person who replicated the God-like figure by his words, beliefs and actions. Who was he? Was he Jesus? The Teacher of Righteousness is a figure...
Representational image of Ermine de Reims. Source: inarik / Adobe Stock
2 May, 2022 - 22:58 Meagan Dickerson

The Visions of Ermine de Reims - Supernatural Forces in Everyday Medieval Life

Ermine de Reims was a relatively inconsequential peasant woman who moved to the town of Reims, in northeastern France, from rural Vermandois with her elderly husband in 1384. She was a pious woman,...
17th-century icon of the Translation of the Relics of Saint. Nicholas of Myra. Historic Museum in Sanok, Poland. (Public Domain)
2 May, 2022 - 20:35 Dr Marion Dolan

Furta Sacra: Medieval Trafficking In Saintly Relics

It is hard to imagine that the gruesome topic of bodysnatching and the ghastly, gory and gorgeous world of relics would be a main focus of religious veneration throughout the Middle Ages. Through...
Researcher Li Nan, from Peking University, pictured with her team, holding the foot amputation evidence that was subjected to biomedical analysis. Source: South China Morning Post
2 May, 2022 - 18:22 Sahir

Punishment: 3000-year-old Chinese Foot Amputation May Be Oldest Ever!

Researchers in China believe a skeleton found in a tomb in the northwest of the country is the earliest known example of foot amputation as punishment for a crime, reports the South China Morning...
Artists impression of Brahmin, representative of the of the Sena Dynasty elite, who were part of the Brahmin top-echelon caste in India who forged the Sena Empire. Source: Olena / Adobe Stock
2 May, 2022 - 14:59 Jake Leigh-Howarth

The Sena Empire: Rise and Fall of the Last Hindu Kings of Bengal

The kings of the Sena Empire, who were part of the Brahmin top-echelon caste in India, originally came from Karnata in southern India before they moved to the Bengali region. The history of the Sena...
The continuous use of lavender throughout history reveals its popularity. Source: asife / Adobe Stock
1 May, 2022 - 14:59 Lex Leigh

History’s Love of Lavender: From Mummies to Bathhouses and Beyond!

Lavender is one of the most well-known plants throughout the world. It is popular in gardening, baking, cleaning, and medicine. The soft purple flowers have been around for a few thousand years and...
Representational image of Achilles. Source: Warpedgalerie / Adobe Stock
30 April, 2022 - 18:53 Khadija Tauseef

Achilles: The Greatest Hero of Greek Mythology?

“Sing Goddess, the rage of Achilles” is the very first line of The Iliad , Homer’s epic poem, as he introduces its main hero. The Greek hero Achilles was believed to have been the strongest, bravest...
Whatever Happened to Blackbeard’s Silver-Plated Skull?
29 April, 2022 - 22:52 Lex Leigh

Whatever Happened to Blackbeard’s Silver-Plated Skull?

Blackbeard, an infamous pirate from the 1700s, was notoriously an excellent fighter and survivalist. He was so famous, in fact, that after his death his skull was rumored to have been plated in...
Urfa Castle, Şanlıurfa, Turkey (Bernard Gagnon/ CC BY-SA 3.0)
29 April, 2022 - 22:04 micki pistorius

From Urfa To Edessa To Şanlıurfa: Spanning 10,000 Years Of History

During the Hellenistic Period from 312 BC to 63 BC, the Seleucid Empire was a major superpower and at its apex encompassed Anatolia, Persia, the Levant, (now modern Turkey, Iraq, Kuwait, Afghanistan...
Baron Samedi and his Voodoo powers over death continues to be a powerful force in the Caribbean region, especially in Haiti.
29 April, 2022 - 19:07 Khadija Tauseef

Baron Samedi And the Voodoo Loa of Haiti

Death is an inevitability that every person must face. It is the fate of all humans. However, to make death easier, each religion provides a guide that assists the transition from the human world to...
Medieval battlefield. Source: Gorodenkoff / Adobe Stock
28 April, 2022 - 22:41 Jake Leigh-Howarth

Aeons of Battle: The 5 Longest Wars in History

In the annals of humanity there is one phenomenon that has consistently weaved and threaded itself through the fabric of time. It is, of course, war, which from the very earliest times until the...

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