Howard Phillips Lovecraft, more widely known as author H. P. Lovecraft, was born on 20 August 1890 in Providence, Rhode Island. Like Edgar Allan Poe, Lovecraft was a master of horror who would die in poverty, obscure and unloved except by a few die-hard fans, but after his death his works became famous. Now, like… Read more Cthulhu Called
One of the most published crimes of the Regency era was the Red Barn Murder, which had the perfect trifecta to arouse public interest – a pretty girl, a conman, and the ghost of the victim returning from the grave to rat out her killer. The victim was Maria Marten, the pretty daughter of Thomas… Read more Murder Most Regency: The Red Barn
One of the most interesting things about the Regency Era, to me, if how universally loathed the Prince Regent was, and how much he set the fashion for the Glittering Throng nonetheless. One of the things the future George IV brought into style was going to Brighton for a bit of time by (and in)… Read more Brighton, By George!
One of the best things about the Georgian Era was the 1807 Act suppressing the slave trade. King George III, die-hard conservative Tory and intermittently insane though he may have been, agreed with the majority of the Tories and Whigs that the slave trade was a disgusting affront to God and Humanity and Decency and… Read more Huzzah for the HMS Pickle!
Hey, remember the time in the middle of WWI when England and France agreed to divvy up the Middle East between them and screw over every Arab alive just as soon as they defeated the Ottoman Empire? No? Well, don’t worry about it; we don’t talk about it much in Western history classes so you… Read more The Sykes–Picot Agreement
The 23rd of April is St. George’s Day, the feast day of one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers in Christian hagiography, a celebration of the saint who famously slew a dragon and rescued a princess in his youth. St George the Dragon-slayer has been one of the most venerated and renowned saints of Europe, especially adored in… Read more Saint George, the Oak, the Green Man, and Monotheism
Easter is (as most people reading this know) the Christian holiday celebrating the resurrection of Jesus on the third day after his crucifixion. It is the holiest day of the Christian liturgical calendar, and a day when most Christians, even those who normally eschew church-going, attend service. A lot of Americans are what we jokingly… Read more Have A Blessed Easter
Some people have argued that Henry VIII was clearly a psychopath, since psychopaths evince a “glib and superficial charm, grandiose (exaggeratedly high) estimation of self, need for stimulation, pathological lying, cunning and manipulativeness, lack of remorse or guilt, shallow affect (superficial emotional responsiveness), callousness and lack of empathy, parasitic lifestyle, poor behavioral controls, sexual promiscuity,… Read more Gee, WHY was Henry VIII so egotistical?
On 10 April 1815 the Indonesian volcano Tambora (literally) blew its top in the only confirmed VEI-7 eruption since the Lake Taupo’s eruption circa AD 180. The volcano’s initial blast could be heard as far away as Sumatra, which was more than 1200 miles distant from ground zero. Approximately 11,000 people were killed by the… Read more Mt. Tambora Makes an Earth-Shattering Kaboom
King Edward IV died on 9 April 1483, a man still in his prime, which came as a surprise to everyone except his astrologers. Lewis of Caerleon, the renown Welsh mathematician and astrologer who predicted the solar eclipses of 7 April and 3 September 1483, also served as a physician in King Edward IV’s… Read more Eclipse of the Sun in Splendor