The Spread of English
Ivy Panda has created a World Map Timelapse of the spread of the English language from the 5th century to …
Category Archives: Fun Historical Facts
Bizarre Weapons: the Lantern Shield
Robert Arthurs reports on Quora first seeing this wonder of medieval over-specialization on display in Vienna, Austria: Doesn’t it look …
The Dispilio Tablet- Revising the Origins and Development of Writing
How old is writing? If we believe the common narrative, writing emerged in Sumeria in the third millennium BC. Others …
Five Paintings That Disappeared Without a Trace
Art and art heists seem to go hand-in-hand. No wonder then that some of the rarest masterpieces of art have …
Bathing in the Middle Ages
Continuing with my last post’s theme on bathing through history, this one deals specifically with bathing in the Middle Ages. …
A Brief History of Bathing
A reader of my fantasy sci-fi series, Pearseus, once joked that I have a strange fascination with showers. And it’s …
Ancient Travels
I came across an interesting question on Quora the other day: What was the approximate travel time between London and …
Unknown Medieval Weapons
Everyone’s heard of swords and spears. But how about the Goedendag, the Ahlspiess, or the Hussite flail? If you write …
Dormice and Other Ancient Delicacies
I have a confession: besides writing, I love cooking and I love food. Perhaps that explains why the parts I …
What Does Fantasy Get Wrong about Medieval Warfare?
Largely thanks to Tolkien, the fantasy genre consists basically of how we imagine the Medieval times. Readers of this blog …
