Tag: European

Why we are still living with the legacy of Waterloo – that ‘most bloody battle’

Why we are still living with the legacy of Waterloo – that ‘most bloody battle’

by | May 5, 2025 | , , | 0

Reading time: 6 minutes
Our views of war are sanitised today. In an age of professional armies trained for increasingly technical tasks, few of us have witnessed combat, much less taken part in it. In that vein, commemorations of the 200th anniversary of Waterloo will focus on the battle’s strategic significance. There are, though, individual accounts that give us a glimpse into what sword fights and cavalry charges must have been like – and the deadly consequences of defeat.

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What exactly is the Holy Grail – and why has its meaning eluded us for centuries?

What exactly is the Holy Grail – and why has its meaning eluded us for centuries?

by | Apr 14, 2025 | | 0

Reading time: 6 minutes
Type “Holy Grail” into Google and … well, you probably don’t need me to finish that sentence. The sheer multiplicity of what any search engine throws up demonstrates that there is no clear consensus as to what the Grail is or was. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of people out there claiming to know its history, true meaning and even where to find it.

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The Strangest Battle of World War II? Uncovering the Battle of Castle Itter

The Strangest Battle of World War II? Uncovering the Battle of Castle Itter

by | Apr 3, 2025 | | 0

Reading time: 6 minutes
In the waning hours of the war, exactly five days after Hitler shot himself in his bunker, a bizarre battle would commence in a small Austrian town, just south of the German border.
Seven hundred years after its construction in the 1200s, Castle Itter would host a battle between the Waffen-SS (the Nazi party’s specialist paramilitary) and a combined force of defecting German Wehrmacht troops, American soldiers, Austrian resistance fighters, and various French political prisoners.

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Medieval Christians saw the lunar eclipse as a sign from God — but they also understood the science

Medieval Christians saw the lunar eclipse as a sign from God — but they also understood the science

by | Mar 10, 2025 | | 0

Reading time: 5 minutes
This has been cited as evidence that some people believed that lunar eclipses were caused by magicians or moon-hungry monsters. However, it is important to remember this comes from a source written by an educated churchman who may have exaggerated evidence of superstitious beliefs in order to then condemn them. Yet even if we allow for these beliefs, the range of ideas surrounding lunar eclipses in medieval Europe reveal it was not the dark age of superstition and ignorance it is often assumed to have been.

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Glastonbury: archaeology is revealing new truths about the origins of British Christianity

Glastonbury: archaeology is revealing new truths about the origins of British Christianity

by | Feb 10, 2025 | , , | 0

Reading time: 5 minutes
Many Christians believe that Glastonbury is the site of the earliest church in Britain, allegedly founded in the first or second century by Joseph of Arimathea. According to the Gospels, Joseph was the man who donated his own tomb for the body of Christ following the crucifixion. By the 14th century, it was popularly believed that Glastonbury Abbey had been founded by the biblical figure of Joseph. The legend emerged that Joseph had travelled to Britain with the Grail, the vessel used to collect Christ’s blood. For 800 years, Glastonbury has been associated with the romance of King Arthur, the Holy Grail and Joseph of Arimathea. Later stories connected Glastonbury directly to the life of Christ.

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Revisiting the “Knickerbocker” Origin Story of Santa Claus

Revisiting the “Knickerbocker” Origin Story of Santa Claus

by | Dec 16, 2024 | | 0

Reading time: 6 minutes
In December 1953, Dr. Charles W. Jones, a University of California professor hailed as one of the world’s foremost scholars on St. Nicholas of Myra, gave a speech to the New-York Historical Society that was published the following year in the society’s quarterly under the title “Knickerbocker Santa Claus.” The premise of Jones’ speech was that author Washington Irving invented Santa Claus in an 1809 satire, A History of New York, that was purportedly written by a completely fictional Dutch historian, Diedrich Knickerbocker. “Without Irving there would be no Santa Claus,” Jones wrote. “Santa Claus was a parasitic germ until the Knickerbocker History in 1809; after 1809 Santa Claus spread like a plague which has yet to reach its peak.”

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How Florence Nightingale David saved lives during the Blitz – with statistics

How Florence Nightingale David saved lives during the Blitz – with statistics

by | Dec 9, 2024 | , | 0

Reading time: 6 minutes
In 1939, Florence Nightingale David was living in the village of Bledlow in Buckinghamshire, alongside a number of her female academic colleagues at University College London (UCL). This included Eileen Evans, a phonetics lecturer, Elizabeth Bigg-Wither, a lecturer in Italian, and Joyce Townsend, research assistant, secretary, and illustrator to the zoologist DMS Watson. Born in Herefordshire in 1909, David’s parents had been friends with the Crimean War nurse Florence Nightingale, who she was named after. She would complete her degree in Mathematics at Bedford College for Women in 1931, and joined UCL as a research assistant in statistics, before completing her doctorate in 1938 and continued her work at the college until 1939.

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