Posts tagged "history"

May 24, 2026 from Daily Medieval

Thorkell the Tall

The Danish raid on Canterbury in 1011 included a leader named Thorkell the Tall. He was an important enough man that his name was recorded on a few runestones, such as the one pictured here in Swed...

May 23, 2026 from Palladium

The Burden of Discernment

Scientific institutions are struggling to survive under a mountain of publications and poor standards of peer review. Artificial Intelligence could usher in a new era of knowledge, or be its downfa...

May 23, 2026 from Daily Medieval

A Noble End

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Alfheah (also Alphege, was captured during an invasion of Vikings in 1011. Eadric Streona was supposedly sent to negotiate. Unfortunately, Eadric might not have been t...

May 23, 2026 from LBV Magazine English Edition

The Romans Recycled Emperor Statues: A Study Reveals How and Why the Faces of Power Were Recarved

In ancient Rome, statues of emperors were not immutable. They could change faces. A ruler who had fallen from favor would see his features chiseled away to make room for the image of his successor,...

May 22, 2026 from A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry

Collections: Raising Carthaginian Armies, Part V: How a Carthaginian Army Fights

This is the fifth and last part of our series (I, II, III, IV, V) looking at how Carthaginian armies were raised and constituted. Over the last four parts, we’ve looked at the larger components of ...

May 22, 2026 from The Emu Café Social

Pook-Emu Bee: Links For 05-22-26

I was too busy yesterday to put together my daily Pook-Emu Bee links. I am busy today as well, but not too busy to take a link break. Article Links 1. Six search engines worth trying now that Googl...

May 22, 2026 from Daily Medieval

Ælfheah of Canterbury

Yesterday mentioned that Eadric Streona failed to negotiate the release of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Ælfheah, from the Vikings. Ælfheah (we are told) did not want a ransom paid for his release....

May 22, 2026 from LBV Magazine English Edition

Thousands of Ancient Greek letters have survived, yet none are love letters: what they reveal about life in the ancient world

When we imagine ancient Greece, we tend to think of marble, tragedies, philosophers, and wars. But the Greeks were also a people of letters. The book Life and Letters in the Ancient Greek World, by...

May 22, 2026 from LBV Magazine English Edition

The fascinating history of Hațeg, an ancient island in the middle of Europe where all the dinosaurs were dwarfs

In the center of present-day Romania, near the town of Hațeg, lies an extraordinary story—the story of a lost world, a prehistoric island that defied all known rules about what dinosaurs were suppo...

May 21, 2026 from The Public Domain Review

The Prophecies of the Brahan Seer (1877)

Historical predictions from the Scottish Nostradamus.

May 21, 2026 from Daily Medieval

Eadric Streona

Eadric, the son of Ethelric, started as a relative unknown. His father was at the court of Æthelred the Unready, but was not distinguished. Something in Eadric caused him to get the attention of Æt...

May 21, 2026 from LBV Magazine English Edition

The Sasanian Empire Used Advanced Brass Technology in Their Helmets and Military Equipment, Just Like the Romans

A team of scientists from the British Museum and the University of Cambridge analyzed archaeological pieces from two cities of the Sasanian Empire —Merv, in present-day Turkmenistan, and Nineveh, i...

May 21, 2026 from LBV Magazine English Edition

Castoreum, the secretion from beavers’ anal glands that is used to make perfumes and in foods like vanilla ice cream

“…That he had imitated the beaver, which, finding itself harassed by hunters, cuts and tears with its teeth that for which it knows by natural instinct it is pursued…”. Thus Cervantes narrates in D...

May 21, 2026 from The Emu Café Social

Emu Café Social and ATmosphere

I use the ActivityPub for WordPress plugin here on ECS (follow me from Masotdon or similar at @naferrell@social.emucafe.org). Because ActivityPub for WordPress is a key part of this project, I subs...

May 21, 2026 from The Emu Café Social

Italy-Azerbaijan Trade Partnership

According to Vasif Huseynov writing for The Jamestown Foundation, “Italy is Azerbaijan’s largest trading partner.” Had you asked, I would have probably guessed Turkey. But I suppose Italy makes sen...

May 20, 2026 from LBV Magazine English Edition

A Possible Iron Age Celtic Harbor Found on the Bank of the Main River in Germany

In March 2026, the German municipality of Aschaffenburg notified the Bavarian authorities of the discovery of these wooden elements during trenching and earthmoving operations. Since then, the exca...

May 20, 2026 from The Emu Café Social

Pook-Emu Bee: Links For 05-20-26

We are having a second consecutive 90+ degree day here in Brooklyn today’s Pook-Emu Bee links are warmer than the outside temperatures. Links 1. Google Search as you know it is over (Sarah Perez fo...

May 20, 2026 from LBV Magazine English Edition

The Law that “Regularized” Thousands of Freed Slaves by Granting Them the Vote in the Roman Republic was not for what we thought

For decades, the official history of ancient Rome has repeated the same idea: in the last decades of the Republic, freed slaves – the libertini – were so numerous and so impoverished that any popul...

May 20, 2026 from LBV Magazine English Edition

The Mykonos Vase, Created in the 7th Century BC, Contains the Oldest Known Depiction of the Trojan Horse

In the summer of 1961, some workers conducting excavations in the center of the city of Mykonos, on the Greek island of the same name, stumbled upon an unexpected find: a large terracotta pithos, a...

May 19, 2026 from The Emu Café Social

Pook-Emu Bee: Links For 05-19-26

I had been sitting down to churn out today’s edition of Pook-Emu Bee links when work fell into my lap. But it is now lunch, and lunch means it is time for links. 1. Humpback Whales Sometimes Hold T...