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VIDEO AT LINK................ Um, WHAT?? Welp, you have to be 30 to enter the Senate, which would mean he's at least 750, which puts him on the biblical par with Noah's father Lamech (777 years)... This would mean Joe entered the Senate in the Year of Our Lord 1302, when Edward I, also known as Edward Longshanks, was King of England. You know, the evil king from Braveheart? I mean, c'mon, we make a lot of references to Braveheart around here, but I didn't think we were being LITERAL. You may think this was a gaffe (one he never corrected),...

On this date in 1305, Scottish knight Mel Gibson — er, William Wallace — was hanged, drawn and quartered at Smithfield for treason to a British crown he refused to recognize. Well, close enough. Some wags have alleged one or two historical liberties in Braveheart. Among the lesser (but more pertinent here): that they weren’t — you knew this already — offering the former Guardian of Scotland the opportunity to reduce his suffering with a public submission, or use the stage for theatrical defiance. Hanging, drawing and quartering was a brand new execution Edward I was experimenting with for emasculating,...

Did the Battle of Lewes, which saw King Henry III defeated 750 years ago, lead to England's first tentative steps towards representative democracy? As bloodied bodies littered the South Downs, the King hid in a priory. His father, King John, had been forced to sign Magna Carta by England's rebellious barons, now Henry had suffered even greater humiliation at their hands. His victor was Simon de Montfort, the French-born Earl of Leicester, who was fighting for the rights of England to be governed by the English. After the battle, where de Montfort's forces were outnumbered by two to one, he...

In June the world will celebrate 800 years since the issuing of Magna Carta. But 2015 is also the anniversary of another important, and far more radical, British milestone in democratic history, writes Luke Foddy. Almost exactly 750 years ago, an extraordinary parliament opened in Westminster. For the very first time, elected representatives from every county and major town in England were invited to parliament on behalf of their local communities. It was, in the words of one historian, "the House of Commons in embryo". The January Parliament, which first met on 20 January 1265, is one of the...

An archaeological dig has unearthed new evidence of a three-day attack on Edinburgh Castle - on a site earmarked for a luxury hotel by Sir Richard Branson. Experts believe they have found a carved stone which would have been fired from a giant catapult during the pivotal siege in 1296. It led to Edward I seizing control of the medieval fortress, plundering its treasures and shipping them to London, and the castle being held under English rule for 18 years. Archaeologists made the discovery at the site of the proposed new Virgin Hotel, which is earmarked for a large swathe...

Let's get this out of the way: England's King Edward I was an ass. You may remember Longshanks from his villainous turn in Braveheart. Tall, forbidding, and bad-tempered, the 14th century monarch stomped his Welsh neighbors in submission, taxed the Irish into poverty, and stole money from his Jewish subjects, killing many of them and expelling the rest. When he was done with that he engineered a takeover of Scotland using tactics that would make Machiavelli blanch, including inflicting an unbelievably cruel death upon the leader of the Scots, William Wallace, that's familiar to movie fans.

Lady Godiva was married to Leofric, the 'grim' Earl of Mercer and Lord of Coventry, a man of great power and importance. The chronicler Florence of Worcester mentions Leofric and Godiva, but does not mention her famous ride, and there is no firm evidence connecting the rider with the historical Godiva. In 1043 the Earl and Countess founded a Benedictine house for an abbot and 24 monks on the site of St Osburg's Nunnery, which had been destroyed by the Danes in 1016... Earl Leofric laid his founding charter upon the newly consecrated altar, which not only granted the foundation,...

William Wallace of Scotland's name (center) written in Latin: Edinburgh, Scotland, Jan 13, 2012 / 03:52 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A 14th-century letter asking Pope Boniface VIII to look favorably upon the Scottish patriot Sir William Wallace during his visit to Rome has been returned to Scotland. “This document is an enigma,” said George MacKenzie, head of National Records of Scotland at the unveiling ceremony in Edinburgh on Jan. 12. “It’s a letter from the French king to his officials at the Vatican mentioning Wallace, but we don't know what his business was with the Pope. What we do know is...

Israel's president has accused the English of being anti-semitic and claimed that MPs pander to Muslim voters. Shimon Peres said England was "deeply pro-Arab ... and anti-Israeli", adding: "They always worked against us." He added: "There is in England a saying that an anti-Semite is someone who hates the Jews more than is necessary." His remarks, made in an interview on a Jewish website, provoked anger from senior MPs and Jewish leaders who said the 87-year-old president had "got it wrong". But other groups backed the former Israeli prime minister and said the number of anti-semitic incidents had risen dramatically...