It’s pretty hard to get together research for a decent blog post during a global pandemic. I’ve got to learn a language, discover a skill, homeschool a child, clean the house, journal, do P.E. with Joe and all that other stuff we can apparently do because we’re in lockdown. If y’all can get on all… Read More Trivia of Titanic Proportions
I’m a child of the nineties and so most of my early movie education consisted of credit sequences that told us what happened next to the characters. Maybe that’s why after reading about some period in history my immediate thought is…okay and then what did they do? I recently wrote about the Donner Party, a… Read More The Donner Party: What Happened Next…
“It’s not Christmas until I’ve talked about the Donner Party.” – Me, Christmas Day 2019. It turns out that trivia of how the ill-fated Donner Party saw in the Christmas of 1846 may not be entirely appropriate conversation for Christmas Dinner, especially when there are children present. Luckily for you, my musings have to go… Read More Creepy History: The Donner Party, Deaths and Diagrams
When Christianity was established back in the day (I’m talking about the church fathers who established the church rather than that Jesus bloke who started the religion) a question was asked on how people could emulate Christ the way He had called them to. How could they be holy? The most obvious way was through… Read More How to be a Medieval Virgin (It’s easier than you’d think).
Season 3 of ‘The Tudors‘ shows the death of Jane Seymour and the subsequent madness of Henry VIII. Beside himself with grief, Henry retreats to his private chambers with no one but his fool, Will Somers, to attend him. The very first thing he does in this aggrieved and almost unhinged state is design a… Read More Nonsuch Palace: “a fantasy work”
Well, I suppose it was only a matter of time before someone asked for this, given the “accuracy” of Shekhar Kapur’s Elizabeth. In fact, I was asked the very same day I published Everything wrong with Elizabeth, so if anything I’m just sorry it took so long to write. While Elizabeth took historical revisionism and… Read More Everything wrong with Elizabeth: The Golden Age
A long, long time ago, I wrote that it would take too long to detail the very many historical inaccuracies present in Elizabeth (1998) and as I recently found my copy of it and have a mighty need to throw it away, that particular article just begged to be written. Described by reviewers as an… Read More Everything wrong with Elizabeth (1998)
Part one of this little series looked at the mass outbreaks of demonic possession (see also: convent hysteria) in several convents in France between 1611 and 1613. Despite geographical distance between the convents, there were a number of incidents which saw groups of nuns of varying denominations demonstrating behaviour considered to be evidence of possession.… Read More Devil Worship and Demonic Possession in French Convents Pt II
Witch hunts were not new to the seventeenth-century population, having been around since before the time of Christ, but the 1600s saw an explosion of interest (or hysteria) regarding witches and their work. During this time convents across Europe would see spontaneous outbreaks of witchcraft, devil worship and demonic possession. For the devil to gain… Read More “Out of spite for the Saviour”: Devil Worship and Demonic possession in French convents pt I
Throughout history, the death of an heir has had a mixed impact on contemporaries. Inevitably a sad event the loss of the heir apparent is not just a blow to the royal family and the court, but to the nation who had, in them, seen their future monarch. Where the heirs were popular the public… Read More “Too good to live upon earth”: The Death of an Heir
