Category: History

St. Catherine’s Monastery (left), also known as the Monastery of the Transfiguration,  is the world’s oldest monastery.

Built in the 6th century at the foot of Mt. Sinai in Egypt (or at least the traditional location of Mt. Sinai, since we’re not sure of its exact location), the monastery houses the largest collection of ancient Christian manuscripts besides the collection belonging to the Vatican.

Now the monks there are using hi-tech means to try to read some of the more faded manuscripts in its collection.

The monastery’s librarian, Fr. Jusin (a fellow Texan! Yee-haw!) has been digitizing manuscripts with a camera capable of 72 megapixel resolution. Many will be online later this year.

The process holds out the prospects of helping us better understand the history of the text of the Bible (including potential new evidence regarding the original reading of uncertain passages) and may even turn up previously unknown texts, as at Oxyrhynchus.

GET THE STORY.

MORE ON ST. CATHERINE’S MONASTERY.

Today, June 18, in 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte went to his Waterloo.

Literally!

And I don’t mean a waterslide theme park!

The Battle of Waterloo took place today in Waterloo, Belgium, where the ornery French dictator (is there any other kind?) was defeated by a valiant alliance of non-French persons, bringing his reign of obnoxiousness and tyranny to an end forever.

No word on whether the victors celebrated their victory by victoriously eating Freedom Fries afterward.

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE BATTLE.

HEREZA PICTURE OF THE WATERLOO MEMORIAL.

Today, June 18, in 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte went to his Waterloo.

Literally!

And I don’t mean a waterslide theme park!

The Battle of Waterloo took place today in Waterloo, Belgium, where the ornery French dictator (is there any other kind?) was defeated by a valiant alliance of non-French persons, bringing his reign of obnoxiousness and tyranny to an end forever.

No word on whether the victors celebrated their victory by victoriously eating Freedom Fries afterward.

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE BATTLE.

HEREZA PICTURE OF THE WATERLOO MEMORIAL.

33 years ago today–June 17, 1972–five men were caught breaking into yonder building, leading to congressional hearings that would so dominate television that they would shove off the air all the cartoon programs I, as a young feller, wanted to watch in the afternoons after school.

The building is the Watergate building, and the congressional hearings were over the Watergate scandal.

In case you’re a young feller yourself (or young enough not ot remember Watergate), this is the scandal that (a) led Richard Nixon (he was a president) to resign and (b) led to every subsequent government scandal having the suffix "-gate" applied to it. Watergate was the first.

GET THE STORY.

GET A LIST OF "-GATE" SCANDALS.

33 years ago today–June 17, 1972–five men were caught breaking into yonder building, leading to congressional hearings that would so dominate television that they would shove off the air all the cartoon programs I, as a young feller, wanted to watch in the afternoons after school.

The building is the Watergate building, and the congressional hearings were over the Watergate scandal.

In case you’re a young feller yourself (or young enough not ot remember Watergate), this is the scandal that (a) led Richard Nixon (he was a president) to resign and (b) led to every subsequent government scandal having the suffix "-gate" applied to it. Watergate was the first.

GET THE STORY.

GET A LIST OF "-GATE" SCANDALS.

Know what yonder document is?

It’s the Magna Carta (Latin, "Great Charter").

The document is considered a landmark in the development of constitutional government.

Basically, a buncha barons twisted King John of England’s arm into ceding a buncha his authority.

It was signed today, June 15, in A.D. 1215 at Runnymede, which is not a kind of soft cheese, despite its name.

The document was immediately repudiated by him, plunging England into a civil war.

He died during the civil war (of dysentery–ouch!).

Pope Innocent III–who had bad relations with John–also didn’t cotton to the document.

LEARN MORE.

AND MORE.

Y’know that whole key/kite/lightning experiment thingie that Ben Franklin did to prove that lightning is electrical (something that seems obvious to us today)?

Well, that happened today, June 15, in 1752.

Fortunately, Franklin was insulated at the time.

Others trying Franklin’s proposed experiment weren’t.

Wikipedia notes: "Others, such as Prof. Georg Wilhelm Richmann of St. Petersburg, Russia, were spectacularly electrocuted during the months following Franklin’s experiment."

Ouch!

LEARN MORE.

See Londo?

See Londo preen?

Preen, Londo, preen.

Now: See the brooch thingie that Lond’s wearing on his jacket?

I wanna know what it is.

Thing is: I’ve see other high men of state in historical pictures and illustrations wearing them, but I’d assumed that they were just pieces of jewelry of some kind.

A piece back I got evidence that they were more than that: I have reason to believe that thingies like this (in Earth history, anyway) are some kind of insignia used by political parties.

I have specific reason to think that such insignia were used by the liberal and conservative parties in England in the 19th century and that ministers of parliament would wear them to signify their party affiliation.

I’ve done some Googling, but I haven’t turned up anything on them–like what they were called.

So: Does anybody know there name or can anybody provide a link to some web info about them?

Much obliged, folks!

106 years ago today, on June 11, 1899, Leo XIII consecrated the whole of humanity to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

He explained:

[S]ince there is in the Sacred Heart a symbol and a sensible image of the infinite love of Jesus Christ which moves us to love one another, therefore is it fit and proper that we should consecrate ourselves to His most Sacred Heart-an act which is nothing else than an offering and a binding of oneself to Jesus Christ, seeing that whatever honor, veneration and love is given to this divine Heart is really and truly given to Christ Himself.

READ THE ENCYCLICAL.

LEARN MORE.

Stomach cancer may be what carried off H. P. Lovecraft. And it may be what Napoleon’s doctor put on his death certificate, but new findings strengthen the case that it wasn’t what carried off French emperor Napoleon.

Poison was.

Specifically, arsenic.

Some time ago, hair samples from Napoleon were found to contain abnormally high traces of arsenic, leading to speculation that he was poisoned.

SOME DISAGREED.

Some of the speculation centered on the idea that the abnormally high levels of arsenic might be due to environmental factors, such as the use of arsenic in certain kinds of wall paper at the time.

But new findings suggest that the arsenic in his hair was absorbed from his bloodstream, indicating frighteningly high serum concentrations of arsenic and thus a deliberate poisoning.

EXCERPTS:

The toxic form of arsenic, used for centuries as rat poison, was found in Napoleon’s hair samples at 37 to 42 times above the normal level in the new study.

"I can’t imagine Napoleon fed himself rat poison, even if he wasn’t a gourmet," joked Damamme of Montreal-based INS.

"The arsenic was in the ‘spinal cord’ of the hair, which implies that it came from the blood and food ingested," he said.

"Somebody in his circle gave him arsenic in small doses to poison him little by little to avoid another violent uprising by those who still supported the emperor in France," Damamme said.

GET THE STORY.

Now if they just had biological samples from the emperors Augustus and Claudius to verify the poisonings that reportedly did them in.