Queen Elizabeth I was born on 7 September 1533 in Greenwich Palace, the first and only living child of Henry VIII of England and his second wife, Anne Boleyn. Her mother would be murdered and Elizabeth herself declared illegitimate just 2.5 years later, in May 1536, but she would survive the reigns of her father,… Read more The Birth of Gloriana
The word chuffed is, in my opinion, one of the most British verbs in existence. It comes from a Tudor term meaning “swollen with fat”, but in today’s parlance it means absolutely swollen with delight. Filled with squee. Full of happiness that something really pleasing happened, often in a very flattering context. Frequently one is… Read more Well, I’m Chuffed
The public funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales took place 20 years ago today, on 6 September 1997. I, along with an estimated two billion other people, watched it on television. I cried. I cried because such a caring mother had been taken away from her little boys who loved her so much. I cried… Read more Thinking of Lady Diana
In October of 2004, National Geographic published an article by Joel K. Bourne, Jr. entitled Gone With The Water that warned what would happen should a hurricane hit New Orleans. The storm hit Breton Sound with the fury of a nuclear warhead, pushing a deadly storm surge into Lake Pontchartrain. The water crept to the… Read more A Perfect Storm: The Submerged Cities at the Nexus of Climate Change, Political Ideology, and Coastal Development
William Wilberforce, the spearhead and focal point of the English abolitionists, as well as one of my favorite historical personages, was born in Hull, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, on 24 August 1759. He was the only son of Robert Wilberforce, whose family had become wealthy thanks to maritime trade with Baltic countries,… Read more William Wilberforce, a Truly Great Man
Again, I exaggerate. The Tinkinswood burial chamber (Welsh: Siambr Gladdu Tinkinswood), which also known as Castell Carreg, Llech-y-Filiast and Maes-y-Filiast, is a few miles away from me here in the Vale of Glamorgan. It is, however, quite near the St Lythan’s burial chamber and the cave at Goldsland Wood, Wenvoe, where Neolithic human remains have been… Read more The OTHER Megalithic Dolmen in My Neighborhood
NB: I was wrong about there having not be an excavation at St Lythan’s burial chamber. You can read about it here: https://tinkinswoodarchaeology.wordpress.com/2011/12/04/final-dig-diary-for-st-lythans/ I am exaggerating slightly when I say there is a megalithic dolmen in my neighborhood. In reality, the St Lythans burial chamber (in Welsh: Siambr Gladdu Llwyneliddon) is few miles away from my… Read more The Megalithic Dolmen in My Neighborhood
On 18 August 1783 sometime between 21:15 and 21:30 an unusually bright bolide was seen over Britain. This became know as the 1783 Great Meteor and was an intense topic of discussion in the early scientific publication, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. Analysis indicates that the meteor entered the Earth’s atmosphere somewhere over the… Read more The Great Meteor of 1783
One of the most enduring effects of the French and American Revolution in England was the governmental crackdown on ‘radicalism’, which was typically considered anything remotely resembling a call for sociopolitical reform. The government didn’t want a bunch of poor workers meeting and talking about inequality. The next thing you knew the poors would be… Read more The Peterloo Massacre
One of my personal historical favorites is Queen Philippa of Hainault, the wife and consort of King Edward III. Philippa was the second daughter born to William I, Count of Hainaut, and his wife, Joan of Valois, Countess of Hainaut. A lot of historians, and websites, list her birthday as 24 June 1314, but this… Read more Philippa of Hainault, a Most Excellent Queen