Western Europe
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Princess Caraboo of Javasu
If you are worried that your knowledge of geography is lacking because you don’t know where Javasu is, don’t be concerned. It’s completely made up. It is the product of an elaborate fiction of a young woman in 19th century England. This is the amazing story of a girl who faked her way to royalty and how she almost got away with it. On the evening of April 3, 1817, a strange young woman appeared at the cottage of the local cobbler in the small village of Almondsbury near Bristol. She indicated to the cobbler’s wife she wanted to sleep there and wandered in uninvited and laid down on the…
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Eclipses- Historical Harbingers
If you’ve been anywhere near the news, you would have seen that a solar eclipse happened in the continental United States yesterday. I have to admit it was a pretty amazing experience as I was lucky enough to be in the path of totality. As the sky went dark and the crickets started chirping, I thought about what it must have been like for those in the past. They didn’t have the benefit of NASA and other scientists telling us that this was normal, the Sun would come back and to wear protective glasses. How did people through the ages deal with eclipses? One of the first references we have…
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Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte- From Pauper to King
This is a story of rags to riches and of an unlikely king. Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte was born in France to a lawyer, but through an extraordinary turn of events became king of a country far from his own. Born in Pau, France on February 5, 1818, Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte was the son of a prosecutor and his wife. His family wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps to become a lawyer as well, but Jean-Baptiste enlisted in the French Marines in 1780 instead. When the French Revolution and its aftermath of the Terror happened (for more on the Terror, please see this post http://www.historynaked.com/the-terror/ ), he rose rapidly through the ranks.…
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The Peasants Revolt
The Black Death had swept through England taking out great swaths of the population with terrifying efficiency. The only silver lining to be found in this great expanse of death is that it left the survivors in the possession of more wealth and power than their forebearers. Men who had been scratching a living, suddenly became village elites with a bit of money and property as all the other heirs were carried off with plague. Labor for the harvests was scarce and food was scarcer, so those willing to toil were able to charge a wage and not be tied to land as defined by feudal law. However, the lords…
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Insula Tiberina- The Island in the Middle of the Tiber
In the center of the Tiber River, the Tiber Island, or Insula Tiberina in Latin, has always been a place connected to the founding of Rome. Legend says that it was created when Roman citizens expelled Tarquinius Superbus , or Tarquin the Proud in Latin. Citizens through the wheat sheaves they had stolen from the the king into the river. Supposedly, the dirt and the silt accumulated around the wheat in the river and formed the island. Another legend says it was built on the ruins of an ancient ship. However, these are just legends as the island was present as a crossing place for the Tiber since prehistoric times.…
