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Prester John
In the time of the crusades, Europeans were looking for any allies in their battles against the Muslims for the Holy Land. Medieval writings often feature a fabulously wealthy Christian king in the East. This was Prester John. He was believed to be a member of the Nestorian Church, which was an independent Eastern Christian church that did not fall under the purview of the patriarch in Constantinople. He was supposed to be an ally against the Muslims for the crusaders to take advantage of. The story of Prester John was first recorded by Bishop Otto of Freisling Germany in his Chronicon published in 1145. It was based on…
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The Great Balloon Hoax
No, I am not talking about that family who pretended their little boy was caught in a homemade balloon to get a reality show. This was perpetrated by none other than the great author, Edgar Allan Poe. (For more on him, please see this post: http://www.historynaked.com/edgar-allan-poe-mystery-even-death/ ) Poe brought the New York Sun and exciting account of balloonist, Monck Mason. He claimed Mason was famous in Europe and had successfully crossed the Atlantic Ocean in a mere seventy-five hours. This was done by using the first steam powered airship, invented by William Samuel Henson. Originally the journey was supposed to be between London and Paris, but was blown far off…
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Fight against “Yellow Jack”
In the early 19th century, the scourge of Yellow Fever was prevalent in the southern United States. It had originally come over from Africa with the slave trade. They called it “Yellow Jack” and it was relentless. The death toll was huge as outbreaks happened in the south and people fled north. Trains full of people trying to escape sickness were met at stations by armed men and forced to move on. These were called “shotgun quarantines”. No one knew how it spread. They burned bonfires to disrupt “miasmas” that they thought caused sickness. Patients were quarantined and doctors believed contact with sick people and anything contaminated with their…
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Ancient Who Dunnit- The Death of Philip II of Macedon
Philip had been the ruler of Macedon for twenty-three years and was currently on wife number seven. He had turned Macedonia into a force to reckoned with by revolutionizing the army into a efficient fighting force. He subdued Greece and conquered the surrounding territories. Now he had a raft of children from his various wives. His son, Alexander, was from wife number four, Olympias, whom he divorced and was Greek to boot. Even though Alexander was older, the oldest son did not always get the throne and Philip and wife seven had a young son named Caranus. In fact, there had been an incident where members of the court expressed…
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The Dreadnought Hoax
The Bloomsbury Group were a band of influential intellectuals who bummed around Bloomsbury, London during the first half of the 20th century. Some of the members include Virginia Woolf, John Maynard Keynes, E.M. Forster and Lytton Strachey. According to historian Ian Ousby, “although its members denied being a group in any formal sense, they were united by an abiding belief in the importance of the arts”. They also perpetrated one of the biggest pranks in British Military History. I guess they were sitting around bored one afternoon in 1910 when Horace de Vere Cole got the bright idea to see if they could prank the British Navy. He sent a…
