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Just after sunset on the evening of December 21, 2020, Jupiter and Saturn will appear closer together in Earth’s night sky than they have been since the Middle Ages, offering people the world over a celestial treat to ring in the winter solstice. Jupiter and Saturn have been approaching one another in Earth’s sky since the summer. From December 16-25, the two will be separated by less than the diameter of a full moon. Though the best viewing conditions will be near the equator, the event will be observable anywhere on Earth, weather-permitting. Hartigan said the planetary duo will appear...

Click in the header. (One illustration here, the "thesis defense" of a fool.)

It may be surprising for many to hear that a Reformation occurred in Italy. We normally use the term “Reformation” to describe the defection of Protestants from Roman obedience in places like Wittenberg, Strasbourg, Zurich, and Geneva. But surely the Italian peninsula was always loyal to the papacy? Yet Italy was also poised for gospel renewal in the opening decades of the 16th century. Waves of invasions by French and Habsburg armies, epidemic diseases such as syphilis, harvest failures, and a growing resentment toward clerical authority produced a generation of troubled hearts. And, as they did else elsewhere, reformers in...

Remains of the Ancrum Old Bridge, which stood during the 14th Century, has been found in the River Teviot after being hidden underwater for hundreds of years. Dating of the oak bridge timbers has confirmed a date of the mid-1300s, making the remains the oldest scientifically dated bridge ever found in its original position across one of Scotland’s rivers.

I reprint today a post on how Shakespeare can enhance your Halloween. It’s worth noting that Shakespeare’s most important audience for his late plays was James I, who was fascinated by the supernatural. There are those ghosts that Puck mentions... My fairy lord, this must be done with haste, For night’s swift dragons cut the clouds full fast, And yonder shines Aurora’s harbinger; At whose approach, ghosts, wandering here and there, Troop home to churchyards: damned spirits all, That in crossways and floods have burial, Already to their wormy beds are gone; For fear lest day should look their shames...

Carmelite friars established Whitefriars in 1270, but the religious site was destroyed during the Protestant ReformationArchaeologists digging under the remains of a demolished parking garage in Gloucester, England, have found the ruins of a 13th-century monastery, BBC News reports. Established around 1270, the Carmelite friary—known as Whitefriars—was all but demolished during the 16th century. Historians had long been aware of the house of worship’s existence, but they didn’t know exactly where it was located. Researchers from the Gloucester City Council and Cotswold Archaeology took advantage of a redevelopment project in the city’s King’s Quarter neighborhood to investigate. “For around 300...

In what has been called a once-in-a-generation event, a complete and original copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio sold for a record-setting price just under $10 million at auction earlier this week. The First Folio, published in 1623, was the first complete printed collection of Shakespeare’s plays. Published seven years after the author’s death, the book marked not only the first complete collection of Shakespeare’s works, but also the first time those works were organized as comedies, tragedies and histories. There are around 235 copies known to exist, and only six complete ones owned privately.

Hong Kong's last authentic junk boat is struggling to stay afloat due to a lack of overseas tourists. The Dukling normally takes foreign visitors on scenic trips around its bays but these have dried up due to travel restrictions. Its owner says it is fighting to survive and having to focus on local citizens during the downturn. Junk boats have a long history in the former British colony dating back to the Han Dynasty. "The Dukling is the icon of Hong Kong, I am not only running a business on it, I am trying to maintain this treasurable piece of...

The burial, on a hilltop site near with commanding views over the surrounding Thames valley, must be of a high-status warlord from the 6th century AD, archaeologists from the University of Reading believe. The 'Marlow Warlord' was a commanding, six-foot-tall man, buried alongside an array of expensive luxuries and weapons, including a sword in a decorated scabbard, spears, bronze and glass vessels, and other personal accoutrements. The pagan burial had remained undiscovered and undisturbed for more than 1,400 years until two metal detectorists, Sue and Mick Washington came across the site in 2018... The PAS Finds Liaison Officer for Buckinghamshire...

Today in history, on October 7, 1571, one of the most cataclysmic clashes between Islam and the West — one where the latter for once crushed and humiliated the former — took place. In 1570, Muslim Turks — in the guise of the Ottoman Empire — invaded the island of Cyprus, prompting Pope Pius V to call for and form a "Holy League" of maritime Catholic nation-states, spearheaded by the Spanish Empire, in 1571. Before they could reach and relieve Cyprus, its last stronghold at Famagusta was taken through treachery. After promising the defenders safe passage if they surrendered, Ottoman...

The Jerusalem latrine was found in the Christian Quarter of the Old City, close to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in 1996 during excavations of a cesspool in the courtyard of a Spanish school. A microscopic fish tapeworm egg found in the medieval latrine at Riga. (photo credit: IVY YEH) From the bowels of history comes a study published this week in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B at Cambridge University in England, which details a first attempt at using the methods of ancient bacterial detection, pioneered in studies of past epidemics, to characterize the microbial...

As any grade-schooler can tell you, the alphabet weÂ’re using right now is made up of 26 letters. However, until not too long ago, this cast of letters had a few more characters that have since been killed off, quashed, or exiled into oblivion. The writing system used for modern English, along with many other European languages, is widely known as the Latin alphabet as itÂ’s the great-grandchild of the classical Latin alphabet spread across much of Europe by the Romans. However, like all writing systems, itÂ’s history is complex and muddled with a whole load of interconnected influences from...

When archaeologists discovered thousands of medieval skeletons in a mass burial pit in east London in the 1990s, they assumed they were 14th-century victims of the Black Death or the Great Famine of 1315-17. Now they have been astonished by a more explosive explanation – a cataclysmic volcano that had erupted a century earlier, thousands of miles away in the tropics, and wrought havoc on medieval Britons. Scientific evidence – including radiocarbon dating of the bones and geological data from across the globe – shows for the first time that mass fatalities in the 13th century were caused by one...

I'm on my phone so I can't really paste the article. In Warren's so called DNA profile released they used admixture results to determine Native American ancestry. The problem is, almost everyone in Eastern Europe can do that with similar results to Warren. https://dna-explained.com/2014/05/21/finding-native-american-ethnic-results-in-germanic-people/

Hundreds of millions of Asian men alive today could be descendents of just 11 dynastic leaders who lived up to 4,000 years ago, according to researchers at the University of Leicester in the UK. The study, published in the European Journal of Human Genetics, looked at the Y-chromosome - the chromosome passed from father to son - in around 5,300 Asian men from more than a hundred different ethnic groups and nationalities. Most Y-chromosome types are extremely rare and so the prevalence of common Y-chromosome types amongst those they found in the Asian men they tested suggests hundreds of millions...

Genghis Khan, law giver, free trader and diplomat, is back with a new image By Richard Spencer in Ulan Bator (Filed: 11/07/2006) The Mongolian capital has been swamped with images of its former potentate, Genghis Khan, in honour of the anniversary of his unification of the nation in 1206. At the climax of celebrations in Ulan Bator yesterday, soldiers in traditional uniform and bearing yaks' tail standards heralded the unveiling of an enormous statue of the Great Khan in the main Sukhbaatar Square. The monument in which it is set contains earth and stones from the holy and historic places...

TOKYO (AP) - Archaeologists have unearthed the site of Genghis Khan's palace and believe the long-sought grave of the 13th century Mongolian warrior is somewhere nearby, the head of the excavation team said Wednesday. A Japanese and Mongolian research team found the complex on a grassy steppe 150 miles east of the Mongolian capital of Ulan Bator, said Shinpei Kato, professor emeritus at Tokyo's Kokugakuin University. Genghis Khan (c. 1162-1227) united warring tribes to become leader of the Mongols in 1206. After his death, his descendants expanded his empire until it stretched from China to Hungary. Genghis Khan built the...

A London restaurant chain is offering customers free DNA testing to see if they're descended from Genghis Khan. Restaurant Shish has promised free meals for any found to be related to the notorious Mongol leader. The unusual promotion is to mark the Mongolian government's decision to allow citizens to have surnames for the first time since they were banned by the communists in the 1920s. Some 50,000 Mongolians now proudly claim direct descent from and bear the name of Genghis Khan. Shish has teamed up with DNA-based research company Oxford Ancestors to offer descendants food from their ancestral homelands. From...

Genghis Khan: Father to Millions? By Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery Newshttp://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20040621/gallery/genghis_goto.jpg> Statue of the Mongol Emperor June 22, 2004 —Genghis Khan left a legacy shared by 16 million people alive today, according to a book by a Oxford geneticist who identified the Mongol emperor as the most successful alpha male in human history. Regarded by the Mongolians as the father of their nation, Genghis Khan was born around 1162. A military and political genius, he united the tribes of Mongolia and conquered half of the known world with a cavalry riding on grass-fed ponies. By the time Genghis died in 1227,...

Ghengis Khan a Prolific Lover, DNA Data Implies  Hillary Mayell for National Geographic News February 14, 2003   Genghis Khan, the fearsome Mongolian warrior of the 13th century, may have done more than rule the largest empire in the world; according to a recently published genetic study, he may have helped populate it too. An international group of geneticists studying Y-chromosome data have found that nearly 8 percent of the men living in the region of the former Mongol empire carry y-chromosomes that are nearly identical. That translates to 0.5 percent of the male population in the world, or...