Today would be my friend Bethany’s 34th day, but she didn’t get to celebrate it. She died yesterday of cancer. God-forsaken, motherfucking cancer. Bethany – kind, generous, funny, loving, Bethany – is gone. As with Juliet, “death lies on her like an untimely frost upon the sweetest flower of all the field.” It is so… Read more Bethany, May Light Perpetual Shine Upon Her
Horatio Nelson, hero of the Battle of Trafalgar, was born on 29 September 1758, the sixth child of Reverend Edmund Nelson and his wife Catherine Suckling in a rectory in Burnham Thorpe, Norfolk. Horatio, called Horace by his family, was the fifth son born to Edmund and Catherine, but two of his elder brothers tragically… Read more Horatio Nelson, Hornblower Prototype and Hero of Trafalgar
Renate Schroeder (now Renate Dolphin) clearly considered SCOTUS nominee Brett Kavanaugh a friend. She knew him when he was in high school, and she signed a letter vouching for his moral turpitude in an attempt to counteract the accusations that Kavanaugh attempted to rape Dr Christine Blasey Ford (now a professor at Palo Alto University)… Read more Slut Shaming and Gaslighting
Some lives change history. Some deaths change history. If Margaret, Maid of Norway, had lived, the entire history of Great Britain would have been altered and thousands of lives would have been spared from subsequent warfare. Margaret, Maid of Norway, was born on 9 April 1283, the daughter of the 15 year old King Eric… Read more Margaret, Maid of Norway, Queen of Scots
For millennia, Western medicine was in thrall to the humoral theory of ancient Greece. It wasn’t until the scientific revolution of the Victorian era that germs were understood to cause illness, but even then medical ideas about a woman’s body had more in common with those espoused by Helenic doctors than modern ones. Germs there… Read more Green Sickness and the Cultural Construction of Women’s Health
John Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancellor of England, supporter of King Henry VI, eventual ambassador for Edward IV, ardent foe of King Richard III, and crucial ally of King Henry VII, passed away on 15 September 1500. Although Bishop Morton was a devout Lancastrian, when all hope was gone – after the deaths… Read more Archbishop John Morton
Of all the pointless, useless, ruinous wars ever fought in Europe (and they were legion), some of the most expensive and the most ineffectual were the Italian Wars, which leagued Francis I of France and Ottoman sultan Suleiman I against the combined team of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and Henry VIII of England. The… Read more The Completely Worthless Treaty of Crépy
Henry Stafford was born on 4 September 1454, the only son of Humphrey Stafford, Earl of Stafford and Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Stafford, (a cousin of Margaret Beaufort, Henry Tudor’s mother). When his father died of the injuries he sustained fighting for the House of Lancaster at the First Battle of St Albans in 1458, the… Read more Why Did Buckingham Turn on Richard III?
King William IV of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, as well as the King of Hanover, was born the third son of King George III and Queen Charlotte just before dawn on 21 August 1765 at Buckingham House. He only came to the throne due to the deaths of his second oldest brother,… Read more The Last Georgian King
On 19 August 1953 the democratically elected leader of Iran, Mohammad Mosaddegh, who was a modernizing and secular leader committed to Iranian nationalism and preventing Iran from become a theocracy, was overthrown by a British and CIA backed military coup that replaced him with the Shah Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, a totalitarian king. The pertinent… Read more The Iranian Coup of 1953