When German businessman Heinrich Schliemann discovered a cache of ancient artifacts in the place now known as Hisarlik, Turkey, in 1873, he was quick to identify the gold jewelry, silver vases and other precious objects as the treasure of Priam, the legen...
Europe
Queen Elizabeth II is a direct descendent of William the Conqueror, and she has been related in one way or another to every other king or queen of England (and later of Great Britain, and later still the United Kingdom) since. In honor of her Platinum Jub...
If you like your night sky to look like the cover of a 1960s sci-fi novel, you’re in luck. The next total blood moon eclipse is coming this weekend.According to NASA, a lunar eclipse—when the sun, Earth, and moon align and the moon passes into Earth’s sha...
This article is republished from Narratively, a storytelling platform that celebrates the diversity of humanity. Read the original article.The ragged procession made its way west from Kyoto and Osaka. At its center were 26 men and boys, harangued and humi...
Medieval Europe was theoretically pretty conservative on sex. One 13th-century bishop even put out a list ranking the five known sexual positions from least to most sinful. (If youre curious: missionary, side-by-side, sitting, standing, and dorsal.) But j...
Born in Paris in 1908, Simone de Beauvoir was a feminist philosopher, writer, and teacher. She won the Prix Goncourt, France’s prestigious literary award, for her 1954 novel The Mandarins. But her best-known work, The Second Sex, set off a feminist bombsh...
At a Former Concentration Camp, Holocaust Survivors Draw Parallels Between Nazi and Russian Rhetoric
At a Former Concentration Camp, Holocaust Survivors Draw Parallels Between Nazi and Russian Rhetoric
“From prejudice to hatred to violence to murder, the paths are very short,” said Karl Freller, director of the Bavarian Memorial Foundation, to an audience of more than 500 at the Holocaust memorial site where the Nazi concentration camp Flossenbürg once ...
SMART NEWSCultural TravelThe Windmill That Gave Paris’ Moulin Rouge Its Name Is Now an Airbnb—And Is Booking for Just $1A lavish room atop the iconic performance venue will welcome travelers for three nights in JuneOriginally founded in 1889, the Mo...
SMART NEWSCool FindsAncient Roman Sculpture Likely Looted During WWII Turns Up at Texas GoodwillExperts are debating who the bust portrays, but they agree on one thing—a thrift store is an unusual spot to find a millennia-old statue Antiques dealer Laura ...
The Cold War was an ideological showdown between the East and the West. Communism vs. capitalism. Pepsi vs. Coke. (That last one is a bit more literal than you might think.) It lasted for decades and kept generations of people on edge as the fear of all-o...
SMART NEWSCool FindsAmateur Archaeologist Stumbles Onto Trove of Coins Dated to Constantine the Great’s ReignFound in Switzerland, some of the buried Roman coins were minted during a time of relative political stability, between 332 and 335 C.E. The...
The late medieval period was a chaotic time in history. England and France were engaged in the Hundred Years War, and Italian city-states were fighting one another for supremacy in the peninsula. In the absence of permanent standing armies, combatants rel...
In Hieronymus Bosch’s visions of hell, Satan and his followers subject sinners to an endless parade of punishments. A hare captures a former hunter, trussing him up to a pole as a pair of hunting dogs maul a man nearby. A gambler has his hand impaled on a...
European highwaymen were often idolized as dashing villains who captured the hearts of the people. Although some acted with charm, many more were so brutal or devious that they made their way into the history books.10 CartouchePhoto via WikimediaBorn in 1...
Not very long ago, the common consensus was that civilization developed slowly in Europe. Outside of the Mediterranean civilizations of Greece and Italy, ancient Europe was a backwater full of barbaric tribesmen who mostly lived in hut-like dwellings. Mos...
Europe has weathered many wars and catastrophes, but few have been as devastating as the Thirty Years War. Between 1618 and 1648, Europes great powers engaged in a vicious, unending conflict that killed millions of people. Germany lost 20 percent of its t...
Medieval Europe was a violent place where ruthless kings ruled with iron fists. Assassinations were an easy way of removing a tyrant or political enemy, and they were often carried out with shocking brutality. Some of them were also fiendishly clever.10Du...
The Habsburgs were one of Europes greatest royal dynasties. Over the centuries, branches of the family ruled countries as diverse as modern Germany, Spain, Slovakia, Peru, Mexico, and Croatia. They were Holy Roman emperors and heads of the Austro-Hungaria...
We tend to think of the Middle Ages as a lawless time when desperate outlaws roamed the land. While thats not totally fair, it is true that law and order often broke down. This allowed daring rogues to run wild, leaving a trail of destruction in their wak...
Between the 16th and 18th centuries, tens of thousands of people were executed for witchcraft in Europe. Then as now, witches were typically thought of as female, and most of the victims in the witch trials were women.However, men were occasionally accuse...
