I am trying to work my way thought my summer reading list starting with the top of the pile. This means reading some articles from the latest issue of Hesperia. I was particularly intrigued by Nikos Magouliotis article “The Printed Page and the Painted Column: An Architectural Microhistory of a Church in Ottoman Thessaly.” The article considers a 19th-century crossed-domed basilica in the village of Palamas on the Thessalian plain. The church itself, while attractive, is hardly remarkable…
William of Malmesbury tells us that William the Conqueror fell from his horse in summer of 1087 while fighting on the continent and suffered painful internal damage. Physicians examined his urine and predicted imminent death. William died in September of that year. The diagnosis prompted him to receive last rights and arrange for his demise.Abbot John of St. Albans was practiced at medical diagnosis through examination of urine. In 1214, John was ill and, suspecting the illness to be fatal,…
Lincoln Highway bridgeNikon Df, 28-200 mm f/3.5-5.6G AF Nikkor2026 On the day before Independence Day I finished driving the 1928 alignment of the Lincoln Highway across Indiana. I found three bridges painted in Lincoln Highway colors; this was one of them. On the way home, a software engineer who used to work for me called just to see how I was doing. We talked for an hour. It was great. Get more of my photography in your inbox or reader! Click here to subscribe.
A yearbook page from the 1970s rarely looks like a fashion statement at first glance, yet look closer and the hemlines tell their own story. Row after row of young women pose in skirts several inches above the knee, a length that had been considered scandalous barely a decade earlier. These photographs, tucked away in […]
A journey into the labyrinth of the City of London. Once this idea popped into my head one night in the pub I had to do it. To navigate the City of London just using the ancient alleyways, passageways, lanes and courts. What city would emerge from such a journey. Created a document listing the route in a rough order that would wind through the grand facade of the Square Mile. Whalebone Court, Great Swan Alley, Honey Lane, Fye Foot Lane, Change Alley and on and on. It really was a remarkable…
Click here to book for my tours through August, September & October . George Cruikshank’s Comic Almanack published by Henry Tilt of Fleet St annually between 1835 & 1853, illustrated the continuum of festivals and seasons of the year for Londoners. (Click on any of these images to enlarge) JUNE 1835 – At the Royal Academy JUNE 1836 – Holidays at the Public Offices JUNE 1837 – Haymaking JULY 1835 – At Vauxhall Gardens JULY 1836 – Dog Days in Houndsditch JULY 1837 – Fancy Fair AUGUST 1836 –…
The Great Plague of 1665 was the last major outbreak of bubonic plague in Britain. London suffered the worst of it in terms of sheer numbers, where an estimated 100,000 people, around 15–20% of the city’s population, lost their lives. However one of the most remarkable stories of the epidemic took place, not in the […] The post A Visit To The ‘Plague Village’ Of Eyam appeared first on Living London History.
I originally sat down to write about the nearby church, but felt like these ruins deserved a post all of their own and it sets the history for my next post. What is the oldest castle in the UK? Well I guess it depends how you define a castle, the ancient hill forts like British Camp at Malvern and others probably qualify, but if you want a real castle the way most of us think of one, with a stone walls and keep it gets even more complicated. GoogleAI (spit, hiss) tells me its Chepstow Castle,…
I made a couple of the 42mm Jesmonite 20-sided dice for the w/ charity auction supporting the Immigration Law & Justice Network.I made a spiky black stand for the orange-and-yellow fire-themed Ireball chonk. The specific fantasy property vibes it is almost certainly giving you were unintentional, but they do fit the theme.The Arc of History chonk is inspired by copper with a deep patina. I paired it with one of my maple reliquary stands.This is the first time I am making any of my dice…
Yorkshire CoastYou may recall the eight-metre Type Specimen of the ichthyosaur, Temnodontosaurus crassimanus, found in an alum quarry in Yorkshire, northern England. The Yorkshire Museum was given this important ichthyosaur fossil back in 1857 when alum production was still a necessary staple of the textile industry. Without that industry, many wonderful specimens would likely never have been
The Battle of Minisink took place during the American Revolutionary War at Minisink Ford, New York, on July 22, 1779. It was the only major skirmish of the Revolutionary War fought in the upper Delaware River valley. The battle was a decisive Iroquois and Loyalist victory, as the Patriot militia was hastily assembled, ill-equipped and inexperienced.
In the summer of 1971, three men sat in London's Old Bailey facing years behind bars over a magazine that teenagers had put together. The Oz obscenity trial ran for six weeks, the longest obscenity case in British legal history, and it turned a scruffy underground publication into the centre of a genuine culture war. By the time it was over, the case had pulled in John Lennon, a Rumpole of the Bailey creator, forced prison haircuts, and a Lord Chief Justice personally sending a clerk out to...
"Bangkok, officially known in Thai as Krung Thep Maha Nakhon and colloquially as Krung Thep, is the capital and most populous city of Thailand. The city occupies 1,568.7 square kilometres (605.7 sq mi) in the Chao Phraya River delta in central Thailand and has an estimated population of 10.539 million, 15.3 percent of the country's population."
Remedios Varo. Remedios Varo Uranga was one of the few acknowledged female surrealist painters of the first half of the 20th century. She defied the male dominated artistic world of that era through her unique and peculiar approach to Surrealism. The stepping stones for her original form of Surrealism were set early in her childhood and adolescence, fuelled by a multicultural background and upbringing. https://www.wikiart.org/en/remedios-varo https://www.wikiart.org/en/remedios-varo morning…
Image by Junior Peres Junior from Pixabay I'm going to do a few articles on dark fantasy, grimdark and otherwise. My Cambion Chronicles series is heading in that direction, and what better way to explore dark fantasy that doing some dives into it? Let's kick this off with one of my favourite writers, Clark Ashton Smith. (CAS) He was one of Lovecraft's contemporaries, and dare I say it, a better prose writer. If you haven't read his stuff before, you're in for a treat, especially if you dig his…
Orginal post: 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks In an effort to catch up, I am including this short post on a longstanding brick wall. My 3x great-grandparents Hermann Henrich Stücker and Gertrud Niehoff were married in Epe, Province of Westphalia, Prussia 22 August 1856. Gertrud was 23 years old, and her father is recorded as Anton Niehoff of "Lönniker."1 In Gertrud's death certificate from 1908, she is said to be 80 years old and born in Lonneker, Netherlands. Her parents are recorded as the farmer…
Click here to book tickets for The Gentle Author’s Tours Last summer, I joined the maiden voyage of the newly-restored Thames Sailing Barge Raybel. This summer you can enjoy a trip on the Raybel too. Click here to book tickets for Raybel For the past few years, Contributing Photographer Rachel Ferriman & I have been making regular trips down to the creek at Sittingbourne to follow the restoration of the hundred-year-old Thames sailing barge Raybel from rotting hulk to seaworthy vessel. So it…
David Fuller spent more than three decades as a free man after murdering two young women in Tunbridge Wells in 1987. By the time police finally caught up with him in 2020, he'd used his job as a hospital maintenance electrician to gain repeated, unsupervised access to two mortuaries in Kent, where he sexually abused the bodies of more than 100 women and girls over a twelve year stretch. It's one of the most disturbing cases British policing has dealt with in decades, not just because of what...
Tuesday, July 21, 2026 - 09:00 The Lesbian Historic Motif Project Everything I've read by Stephen Turton on the history of queer language has been fascinating. This is no exception. Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP LHMP #568 Turton 2023 My Use of the Word Love About LHMP Full citation: Turton, Stephen. 2023. “‘My Use of the Word Love’: Lister, Language and the Dictionary” in Decoding Anne Lister: From the Archives to ‘Gentleman Jack’, Chris Roulston & Caroline Gonda, eds. Cambridge University…
The Dogfish Kootéeyaa Pole in Saxman Totem ParkRural Tennessee has electricity for the same reason Southeast Alaska has Totem Parks—to help the nation recover from The Great Depression. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, created several federal agencies to put people to work and work they did. From 1938-1942 more than 200 Tlingit and Haida First Nation carved totem poles and cleared land
Construction, am I right?
The Temiscaming subdivision is operated by the Ottawa Valley Railway, between Mattawa and Temiscaming.
How about this great series of photos of T/5 Walter Barnett of Oklahoma City, captured in July 1943 at Fort Pepperrell, Newfoundland, showing the correct form for riflery in sitting, prone, and standing positions with an M1 Garand. Note the M1941 “Daisy Mae” Army boonie hat, HBT dungarees, and M1938 leggings. Photographer: Cpl. Howard Warner, 21st Sig. Serv. Co., Photo Source: U.S. National Archives. Digitized by Signal Corps Archive. SC 364548 Photographer: Cpl. Howard Warner, 21st Sig. Serv.…
On July 11th I did another Sprague - Redditt - Elma for gluten free goodies trip. I had some company this time!
The George Flint House in North Reading, Mass.This is the 12th post I have written about a Revolutionary War veteran ancestor. George Flint, my 5th great grandfather, was the son of George Flint (b. 1686) and Jerusha Pope, born on 16 November 1728 in what is now the town of North Reading, Massachusetts. His mother, Jerusha, was the daughter of Joseph Pope and Bethshua Folger (the sister to Abiah Folger, Benjamin Franklin's mother). Joseph and Bethshua Pope were notorious witnesses in the 1692…
By: Jackie Kierulf Of all the beloved saints my maternal grandmother introduced us to, she didn’t have much to say about Mary Magdalene. Historically, this particular Mary is believed to be from Magdala, an ancient fishing village located on the Sea of Galilee in Northeastern Israel.1 Perhaps Mary Magdalene seemed too much of an outcast … Continue reading Mary of Magdala: A Reflection on the Apostle to the Apostles The post Mary of Magdala: A Reflection on the Apostle to the Apostles first…
Tags: #sketchesThe Bernal school, which is not on Bernal, is another that is right up against the edge of the Santa Teresa hills. They put these Oakridge schools as far out as they could, it seems. Across the street are those hills, and the Bernal ranch house, and a historical plaque too. The hills, they rise up. Towering might be too strong a word for them; their rise is just a bit too gentle for that, but they have a nugget of drama and are beautiful in their own way for the slopes and the…
Bill lies. Bill lies without pause. Bill lies with gusto. Bill lies a lot. The list of things Bill has lied about, if type-written in a 12 point, single spaced font, would probably stretch to the moon and back. I've documented many of his lies on numerous occasions, but there's one lie I really haven't dug into... until now. If someone who lies about having Indigenous ancestry is a Pretendian, what do you call someone who lies about having ancestors who fought for the Confederacy in the Civil…
Catherine Tylney and William Wellesley-Pole At 15 Catherine Tylney (1789-1825) was the eldest daughter of Sir James Tylney-Long, 7th Baronet Draycot. Enormous estates went to Catherine including Draycot Wiltshire, bringing in vast annual rents. In London society she was The Wiltshire Heiress, richest woman in the country. Talented & beautiful, she was courted by noblemen eager to grab her fortune. One of her estates, Wanstead House Essex, was a magnificent Palladian mansion.At 16,…
