Between 1350 and 1791 there were 28 Dauphin de France, the title of the heir apparent to the French throne, similar to the title Prince of Wales in England. But why should he be the “dolphin” of France? Strictly, the correct title was Dauphin de Viennois, the dolphin of Vienne, a town in Département Isère. But [more...]
The next UK census is to be conducted on 27 March 2011. Already there are many people complaining of the intrusive nature of the questions and indicating they may refuse to provide the information. In the last census of 2001 there were 38 prosecutions for non-compliance, and there were at least 6,000 cases where some [more...]
A Mud-Lark (or Mudlark) was the name given in the 19th century to children and adults who scavenged the banks of the River Thames in London. There were river scavengers in other parts of the country, but it seems the term Mud-Lark was largely used in London. According to the OED, the first mention of [more...]
On October 8, 1871 the worst recorded fire in American history swept through Northeastern Wisconsin and Upper Michigan. It destroyed millions of dollars worth of property and took between 1,200 and 2,400 lives. It happened on the same day as the more famous Great Chicago, Illinois Fire but is much less widely known. On [more...]
The use of gas for light was first demonstrated by William Murdock who lit his home and workshop in Redruth, Cornwall, England, in 1792. Soon after he became the manager of Boulton and Watt’s steam engine works in Soho, Birmingham, where erected an apparatus which lit the building by gas. He later installed similar apparatus [more...]
This deadly bloom is one of the most common wildflowers in the late summer in U.S. Midwestern woods and is seldom noticed, since it is somewhat weedy. It is a notorious killer, and at one time ravaged whole communities with its poison. Small pioneer settlements were visited by a terrible affliction, which came to be [more...]
Is the Pyramid of Kufu (the Great Pyramid of today) really one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World? Actually, no. It was the Pyramid of Khafre, the second largest pyramid at Giza which was the Great Pyramid of the Seven Wonders, even though smaller in both height and volume than the Great Pyramid of Kufu. [more...]
When the modern Olympic Movement began, in 1894, the newly-formed International Olympic Committee (IOC) considered ice skating as a possible sport for the first modern Olympic Games, in 1896. Needless to say, that didn’t happen but figure skating was on the program for the 1908 Olympic Games in London. In 1911, it was suggested that [more...]
Hadrian’s Wall, the famous wall built by the Roman emperor Hadrian in the north of England as a border marker and customs post, is to be lit up by a line of flaming beacons along its entire 84 mile length from the coast of eastern England across to the western coast. The event is planned to [more...]
Scissors are small cutting implements which are familiar for a lifetime and too frequently overlooked in the march of human progress. We know the history of the garden hoe and plow, both simple cutting surfaces. But scissors are a little more complex, yet little is available of their history. Do they date back one century, [more...]
The Iron Bridge Gorge in Shropshire, England, during the 18th and 19th centuries was at the very heart of the Industrial Revelation. Nowadays, looking at the Severn River valley with its woods on either side and Georgian houses it difficult to believe that here was the birth of iron smelting technology, extensive coal and tar [more...]
Anyone can research their ancestors going back a generation or two. Just ask grandma! But how about going back, say, six or seven centuries. A new genealogical database will let you do just that, particularly if your family has roots in England, and even more particularly, if one of your ancestors was a medieval soldier. A recently-released database, [more...]
Anatolia is the Asiatic portion of modern Turkey, extending from the Bosporus and Aegean coast eastward to the borders Russia, Iran, and Iraq. The Greeks and later the Romans referred to western Anatolia as “Asia.” While Anatolia is the home of Catalhuyuk, which may be the oldest city in the world, and later to colonies of [more...]
Paleofutures are the futures that were predicted in the past. It’s fascinating to look back at what people of the past thought would happen in their future. Occasionally the predictions turn out to be correct—a hundred years ago, one writer predicted that we would all be carrying wireless telephones—but more often the predictions turn out [more...]
Near the fabled Pompeii is Herculaneum, another city buried and frozen in time by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Herculaneum was smaller, much wealthier, and more important to Roman high society, than the now more famous Pompeii. Herculaneum catered to the richest of the rich and the most powerful of the Empire. After the eruption of [more...]
Stretching across the Nazca plains like a giant map left by ancient astronauts, are the famous Nazca Lines of Peru. The drawings as well as their meaning are even more mysterious than their origin. It is not known how long it took to create them, nor how the creators were able to measure them with [more...]
One of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the Temple of Artemis, also known as the Temple of Diana, was a Greek temple dedicated to the goddess Artemis and completed in 550 BC at Ephesus. Only foundations, which are in a rather swampy hole, and some sculptural fragments remains from the temple. Artemis was [more...]
Ephesus was an ancient city on the west coast of Turkey. It was one of the twelve cities of the Ionian League and was famed for the Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The area of Ephesus was inhabited during the Early Stone Age about 6000 BC. The city [more...]
Persepolis was founded by Darius I in 518 B.C., as the capital of the Achaemenid Empire. It was constructed on an immense half-artificial, half-natural terrace, where the king of kings created an impressive palace complex inspired by Mesopotamian predesessors. The earliest remains date from around 515 BC. To the ancient Persians, the city was called [more...]
There are the ruins of many civilizations found at the Lebanese city of Byblos, one of the oldest Phoenician cities. It has been inhabited since Neolithic times and has been closely linked to the history of the Mediterranean region for thousands of years. Byblos is associated with the history of the Phoenician alphabet. The city [more...]