These days, sex is everywhere. It's in our books, films, songs, TV shows, and now, even our history articles. Although some countries still impose strict rules upon sex, the fact is most western...
We have likely all seen the stereotypical image of a knight in shining armor , but there is more to the world of armory than the steel plate armor we are often exposed to. Armor came in innumerable...
A charcoal inscription has been identified at the alleged site of King David’s Tomb on Mount Zion in Jerusalem. Bearing the emblem of the Swiss family von Bubenberg, the Israel Antiquities Authority...
Before coinage became common, people in medieval England would pay their rent using an array of everyday items. Amongst these was the remarkably unattractive, and underappreciated, wormlike eel! Few...
There was no end to medieval creativity when it came to torture , punishment and humiliation! The ‘scold’s bridle’ or ‘mask of shame’ was a concept developed in medieval Europe to punish people,...
Anyone with a thing against cats may get some satisfaction from a weird history “fact” circulating on the internet. Used as widespread clickbait, a frequently repeated story claims that in the 13th...
A three-dimensional likeness of a young woman buried at Galloway, Scotland’s Whithorn Priory, laid to rest at one of Scotland’s earliest Christian sites centuries ago, is about to be revealed. The...
The history of the British Isles is marked by several phases of migration and multiple periods of monumental change, including invasions by the Romans, Vikings and the Normans, and mass migration by...
The question of how to create life does not just go back to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, when the eponymous character used forbidden science to create life. Medieval scientists tried for centuries to...
A dig to find the location of a 600-year-old medieval friary in Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire, has resulted in the macabre discovery of countless human remains. So far, nearly 100 skeletons have been...
Divorce is a subject that has provided endless material for drama and comedy writers through the ages, from Euripides to Shakespeare to today’s New York Times bestseller list. When Kenneth Hodges, a...
Many medieval manuscripts are works of art with devotional passages written in careful calligraphy, accompanied by vivid illustrations and ornate, decorative borders. But equally captivating is the...
Comfort in the afterlife was apparently a medieval concern. Gravesites can reveal aspects of past cultures and values, and are therefore a rich source for archaeologists and historians. An iron...
Ashkenazi Jews, who migrated into Holy Roman Empire territories around the 1st millennium AD, also settled in parts of England but how they were treated is less understood. Now, genome analysis of...
At a site in East Yorkshire, an archaeological dig has been in progress for three weeks to uncover the secrets of a medieval village. Now, archaeologists believe they have discovered a centuries-old...
The examination of urine (‘uroscopy’) as a method of medical diagnosis can be traced back to ancient Greece and Rome, but during the Middle Ages the examination of urine samples by physicians became...
The Cambridge University Library has just launched an ambitious new initiative that will result in the public release of an extensive collection of manuscripts from medieval times. The Curious Cures...
Archaeologists in England have found medieval holy men were “riddled with worms.” What did they expect to find in a group of people who consumed their own feces? Every once in a while, a group of...
Archaeologists in the Czech Republic recently made an unusual and exciting discovery that dates back many centuries. While digging up a medieval house in the historic center of Nový Jičín in the...
An amateur explorer has released a video of himself exploring a hitherto lost underground “souterrain” chamber. But the journey he filmed inside this strange place is not for the claustrophobic among...
A 1,000-year-old “Boleslaw sword” (i.e., from the glorious reign of Boleslaw the Brave; lived 967-1025 AD) dated to the beginning of the 11th century and believed to have belonged to a knight working...
A crowd of almost 88000 filled the stands to watch the finals of the Women’s Euro 22 soccer championship on Sunday, July 31 at Wembley stadium, most cheering madly for the English team. The...
Throughout history, two things have remained constant. First, the intermingling of cultures has produced countless local variations of original ideas, be it cuisine, or language, or fashion. Second,...
The next time you’re looking through an illuminated manuscript, keep an eye out for images of medieval knights fighting off snails. Of all the villains in the world, these may not have been the first...