Who was the Lady of the Mercians?
You will have heard of the Warrior Queen Boadicea but have you ever heard of Aethelflaed? She led her troops in the Battle of Tettenhall. You probably haven’t heard of that Battle, have you? Well, she was described as the Lady of the Mercians, who was the oldest daughter of Alfred the Great, and […]
On December 5th 1456 a bigger earthquake hit Naples
We’ve all heard about the explosion of Vesuvius on 24th August AD79 that wiped out Pompeii, which is just by Naples. Did you know that an even bigger earthquake hit Naples, just next to Pompeii, on 5th December 1456 killing 35,000 people? It does make you wonder when the next big one will hit southern […]
Have the Danes ever successfully invaded England?
Yes, throughout the 9th and 10th centuries BC. Despite the dangers, between 20,000 and 35,000 Danish Vikings chose to uproot and migrate to England between the 9th and 10th century. They started as raiding parties seeing what they could take, but as their raids continued, more and more of them decided to stay, they liked […]
The Battle of Copenhagen
The Battle of Copenhagen went down in history because Horatio Nelson pulled off one of the boldest and most iconic acts of disobedience in naval history. In the battle with the chaos of war raging around him, Nelson, ever the maverick, put his telescope to his blind eye and quipped, “I see no signal.” This […]
Who were the Anglo Saxons?
They were in England for 600 years from 410AD to 1066AD, a long time! There were three aggressive tribes: Saxons, Jutes and Angles, farmer warriors from North-West Europe. When the Romans left after giving England nearly three hundred years of relative peace and prosperity, there was a period of uncertainty and disorder. The way of […]
The Mise of Lewis
This was another time of war between the King and his Barons. Again, it was because the King, this time Henry III, was in a power struggle with his Barons, this time led by Simon de Montford. The Barons didn’t like the foreign influence in court, but, to be really honest it was, as always, […]
Tulip Mania discussed
In the 17th century Holland had the highest per capita income in the world. This was because the Dutch Republic’s economic and financial system was at the time the most advanced and sophisticated ever seen in history. It is called the Dutch Golden Age. However, their sophistication in financial matters had its downside, it led […]
Mechanical Turk – a chess machine that could beat anyone!
Have you heard of the Mechanical Turk? I do not mean the Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) Amazon’s crowdsourcing marketplace, this is not the same. The Mechanical Turk was a creation of Wolfgang von Kempelen. It all happened in 1769 when the French illusionist François Pelletier was invited to perform in Vienna at the court of […]
The British Tommy’s cup of tea!
This is a silly question, but where do you get a cup of tea when you are fighting a war? The Importance of tea to the British Basically, tea was so important to the British way of life that it was ordained that every British soldier deserves his cup of tea, this is a […]
The Combat of the Thirty!!
The Combat of the Thirty took place in France on 26th March 1351, during the Breton War of Succession. It even took place in front of a crowd, who were supplied refreshments and the combatants even took a half time break! What was the cause? To explain, there was a struggle between the House of […]