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History Rewritten: Myths Busted & New Truths Uncovered

A thought for Easter... ;)

Pilgrims tracing the last steps of Jesus have been going the WRONG way for 2,000 years, says historian
By Dalya Alberge
Last updated at 7:58 AM on 10th April 2009

For the best part of 2,000 years, pilgrims have flocked to Jerusalem to retrace Jesus's final steps.

The Via Dolorosa, or 'Way of Suffering', took them from the Praetorium, where He was condemned to death by Pontius Pilate, to the site of the Crucifixion - or so they thought.

Now, it seems they may have been walking in the wrong direction.

A respected archaeologist claims that pilgrims have been starting from the wrong end of Jerusalem and that the locations of two of the holiest sites on the route are 'completely wrong'.

Shimon Gibson, a Holy Land specialist, said the traditional start of the Via Dolorosa, north of the Old City, should be at the other end of the city.

Since medieval times, Christians have assumed that the Praetorium, the starting point of the route and the Roman headquarters mentioned in the Gospels as the scene of Jesus's trial, was the Antonia Fortress which stood in the north of Jerusalem.

But Professor Gibson said there was 'no historical basis whatsoever' for this being the site where Jesus was tried and condemned to death by the Roman governor Pontius Pilate.

Little of the fortress's structure has survived but, having surveyed the remains of its rock-cut base in intricate detail, he concludes that it could not have been more than a military observation tower.
He said archaeological excavations pointed to the site of the trial being 900 metres away at the remains of a large paved courtyard south-west of Jerusalem, south of the Jaffa Gate.

It was situated between two fortification walls with an outer gate and an inner one leading to barracks where it is most likely that Jesus was held.

The open courtyard contained a platform of around two square metres - details that 'correspond perfectly' with the Gospel of John's account of Pontius Pilate sitting on a judgment-seat at an elevated place.
Professor Gibson, who is based at universities in Israel and America, said: 'The astonishing thing is that thousands of Christian travellers and pilgrims pass by this site without realising its significance.'

Those who visit the Rock of Calvary ( or Golgotha) within the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to pray at the traditional rock of the crucifixion are also at the wrong location, he believes.
The professor's research, which will be published shortly in The Final Days of Jesus, shows that the site is too narrow to have accommodated one cross, let alone those of the two thieves crucified with Jesus.

Professor Gibson believes the Crucifixion was some 20 metres from the traditionally accepted site, under an apse of the remains of the Church of the Martyrium.

'Pilgrims walk across this area... without realising its significance,' he said.

Dr Mark Merrony, a specialist in archaeology of the Holy Land and editor of Minerva, the archaeological journal, said Professor Gibson's research matched details in the Gospel of John and other ancient writings.

He added: 'This discovery provides a crucial insight into the final movements of Jesus and implies that the traditional Way of the Cross should be redefined. It seems likely that millions of pilgrims have been following an incorrect path of veneration.'

But the Reverend Canon Bill Broughton of St George's, the Anglican cathedral in Jerusalem, said Professor Gibson's 'great work will embellish the [Christian] story and make it even more meaningful' but would not lead to the route being redrawn.

He said: 'It's the Way of the Cross that we walk in terms of our faith and theology, not the archaeological evidence.

'Pilgrims of faith want the general pattern. It may not be exactly the same footsteps but, in reality, the place is sanctified by the presence of those who've been there and said their prayers.'

The Right Rev Tom Wright, the Bishop of Durham, said: ' Archaeology is always open to questions from further research. The Church has nothing to worry about on that score. I always welcome fresh investigations.'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... orian.html
 
Revisionists challenge D-Day story
By Hugh Schofield, Paris

A revisionist theme seems to have settled on this year's 65th anniversary commemoration of the Normandy landings.

The tone was set in Antony's Beevor's new book, D-Day, which tries to debunk certain received ideas about the Allied campaign.

Far from being an unmitigated success, Mr Beevor found, the landings came very close to going horribly wrong.

And far from being universally welcomed as liberators, many troops had a distinctly surly reception from the people of Normandy.

The reason for this was simple. Many Normandy towns and villages had been literally obliterated by Allied bombing.

The bombardment of Caen, Mr Beevor said, could almost be considered a war-crime (though he later retracted the comment).

Many historians will retort that there is nothing new in Mr Beevor's account.

After all, the scale of destruction is already well-established.

Some 20,000 French civilians were killed in the two-and-a-half months from D-Day, 3,000 of them during the actual landings.

In some areas - like the Falaise pocket where the Germans were pounded into oblivion at the end of the campaign - barely a building was left standing and soldiers had to walk over banks of human corpses.

As for the destruction of Caen, it has long been admitted that it was militarily useless.

The Germans were stationed to the north of the city and were more or less untouched.

Twenty-five years ago, in his book Overlord, Max Hastings had already described it as "one of the most futile air attacks of the war."

Though these revisionist accounts were written elsewhere, it is in France that these ideas strike more of a chord today.

It is not as if the devastation wrought by the Allies is not known - it is just that it tends not to get talked about.

And yet for many families who lived through the war, it was the arrival and passage of British and American forces that was by far the most harrowing experience.

"It was profoundly traumatic for the people of Normandy," said Christophe Prime, a historian at the Peace Memorial in Caen.

"Think of the hundreds of tons of bombs destroying entire cities and wiping out families. But the suffering of civilians was for many years masked by the over-riding image - that of the French welcoming the liberators with open arms."

According to Prime, it was during the 60th anniversary commemoration five years ago that the taboo first began to lift.

At town meetings across Normandy, witnesses - now on their 70s - spoke of the terrible things they had seen as children.

At the same time an exhibition at the Caen memorial displayed letters from Allied servicemen speaking frankly about their poor reception by locals.

That too was an eye-opener for many Normandy people.

For example, Cpl LF Roker of the Highland Light Infantry is quoted in another new book about the civilian impact of the campaign, Liberation, The Bitter Road to Freedom, by William Hitchcock.

"It was rather a shock to find we were not welcomed ecstatically as liberators by the local people, as we were told we should be... They saw us as bringers of destruction and pain," Mr Roker wrote in his diary.

Another soldier, Ivor Astley of the 43rd Wessex Infantry, described the locals as "sullen and silent... If we expected a welcome, we certainly failed to find it."

In his book, Mr Hitchcock raises another issue that rarely features in euphoric folk-memories of liberation: Allied looting, and worse. :(

"The theft and looting of Normandy households and farmsteads by liberating soldiers began on June 6 and never stopped during the entire summer," he writes.

One woman - from the town of Colombieres - is quoted as saying that "the enthusiasm for the liberators is diminishing. They are looting... everything, and going into houses everywhere on the pretext of looking for Germans."

Even more feared, of course, was the crime of rape - and here too the true picture has arguably been expunged from popular memory.

According to American historian J Robert Lilly, there were around 3,500 rapes by American servicemen in France between June 1944 and the end of the war. :shock:

"The evidence shows that sexual violence against women in liberated France was common," writes Mr Hitchcock.

"It also shows that black soldiers convicted of such awful acts received very severe punishments, while white soldiers received lighter sentences." :roll:

Of 29 soldiers executed for rape by the US military authorities, 25 were black - though African-Americans did not represent nearly so high a proportion of convictions.

So why did the "bad" side of the Allied liberation tend to disappear from French popular consciousness?

The answer of course is that the overwhelming result of the Allied campaign was a positive one for the whole of France.

It was hard for the people of Normandy to spoil the national party by complaining of their lot.

The message from on-high was sympathetic but clear: we know you have suffered, but the price was worth it. Most people agreed and were silent.

In addition, open criticism of British and American bombings raids had long been a hallmark of French collaboration.

In Paris - which, it is often forgotten, was itself bombed by the British - pro-German groups staged ceremonies to commemorate the victims, and the "crimes" of the Allies were excoriated in the press.

After the war, abusing the Allies would have seemed like siding with the defeated and the dishonoured.

Of course, in some communities the devastation was never forgotten.

There are villages in Normandy where until recently the 6 June celebrations were deliberately shunned, because the associations were too painful.

And on the ideological front, there have been intellectuals of both left and right who justified their anti-Americanism by recalling the grimmer aspects of the French campaign - like the "cowardly" way the Americans bombed from high altitude, or their reliance on heavy armour causing indiscriminate civilian casualties.

But in general, France has gone along with the accepted version of the landings and their aftermath - that of a joyful liberation for which the country is eternally grateful.

That version is the correct one. France was indeed freed from tyranny, and the French were both happy and thankful.

But it is still worth remembering that it all came at a cost.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8084210.stm
 
rynner2 said:
[So why did the "bad" side of the Allied liberation tend to disappear from French popular consciousness?
Click to expand...

Because history is written by the victors, and the French are highly selective in their memories about their fight against Nazi Germany.

I don't think there's any "revisionism" in action about the D-Day landings, as it says, the pre-assault bombings and high civilian causalty toll has been well documented. It is surely a natural assumption, not revisionism, that French civilians weren't overjoyed to be tipped from their homes by tonnes of Allied ordnance in the build up and assault and would rather the Allies had pitched up somewhere else with their fighting.

But, let's face it, most of the French weren't living in fear for their lives under the Germans like those in the occupied territories in the East, despite the myth that every Frenchman was a budding Resistance fighter eagerly awaiting liberation from the Nazi yoke of oppression.
In fact the differing Resistance/Maquis groups wouldn't and couldn't work together, often endangering each other with their self-serving actions. Allied agents tried and failed to co-ordinate resistance efforts, hampering the plans for invasion. Maybe if they had worked together for a common goal of liberating France, the Germans would have had a harder time all round in the war. In reality, France was a nice safe posting for the Germans, somewhere to re-fit and recuperate from the horrors of the Eastern Front, a relatively "safe" place to be.
Lucky for the Allies though, in a way, because that meant that the Western Front was watched over by under-strength second-rate infantry divisions, not battle-hardened veterans from the proper fighting divisions.

Not that that mattered to those throwing themselves up the beach on 6/6/44, an MG44 bullet kills you just as dead when fired by a boy as that fired by a Waffen SS veteran. So, for that, I thank them for their sacrifice and bravery on D-Day.
 
rynner2 said:
Neglected Edwardian inventor 'made 1920s death ray'
The achievements of eccentric inventor Harry Grindell Matthews' who came up with a prototype mobile telephone and a 'death ray' are being revived by a science teacher.
Click to expand...

There's an article about Grindell Matthews on this very site - Grindell 'Death Ray' Matthews
 
From some of the accounts of Matthews' work, i'm inclined to wonder if he hadn't unknowingly constructed some sort of crude x-ray or microwave device, which at least would, as he claimed, have been able to kill mice at close range., and may have been able to damage electrical circuitry with suffucuent exposure. That would at least make a solid starting point before he jumped off into more hyperbolic claims.
 
Were Grandma Wagner and Hitler lovers? Composer's great-granddaughter probes family link to Nazis
By Allan Hall
Last updated at 9:14 AM on 22nd June 2009

For decades, the shadow of Nazism has hung over the descendants of Richard Wagner.
His monumental music was embraced by Hitler while, 50 years after his death, the composer's family were favourites of the dictator and his cronies.

Now Wagner's 31-year-old great granddaughter Katharina says she wants to establish the truth about her ancestors' links to the Nazis - most particularly whether her grandmother was the Fuhrer's secret lover.

Her decision has horrified other members of the Wagner dynasty, who fear it will bring only more trouble on the family.
'When I was growing up, I was repeatedly confronted with this topic, the Nazis,' said Miss Wagner.
'Was my grandmother Hitler's lover? To what extent was my father embroiled with Hitler? No one in the family ever spoke about it. If I don't ask these questions, who then will?'

Miss Wagner, an opera stage director, is the daughter of Wolfgang Wagner and granddaughter of British-born Winifred Wagner, who married Richard's son, Siegfried.

Along with her half-sister Eva Wagner-Pasquier, she has taken charge of the opera world's most lavish extravaganza - the annual month-long Bayreuth Festival in Bavaria - after a bitter clash with cousin Nike Wagner.
Wagner fanatics pay hundreds, sometimes thousands of pounds, to experience Wagner's works such as The Ring Cycle and Parsifal in the opera house he built to stage them in the 1870s. It can take up to a decade to get a ticket.
Miss Wagner says there is 'a shadow hanging over Bayreuth, and I feel a responsibility to try to get some clarity'. It is 'time for a reckoning with the past', she declares.

She plans to invite researchers to probe the family's Nazi links much in the same way that many German businesses investigated how their firms were run during the Third Reich's 12-year lifespan.

Wagner's music was largely written between 1850 and 1880. Dealing as it did with Nordic legends, it fed into Hitler's notions of Aryan superiority and a mythical German past.
By the 1930s, Hitler was a regular visitor to Bayreuth. He became a close friend of Winifred Wagner, who shared Hitler's anti-Semitism, and referred to him by the nickname 'Wolf'.
There were even rumours that she would divorce Siegfried and marry Hitler.

Wagner's daughter Eva was also linked to fascism. She married Houston Stewart Chamberlain whose book The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century proclaimed the superiority of Aryan races and became required reading for Nazi Party members.
Wagner himself, who died in 1883, was outspoken in his hatred of the Jews.

Katharina Wagner insists that that the historians she hires to investigate her ancestors' connections to the Nazis will be fully independent.
Controversial decisions have hallmarked her career. She has upset purists by announcing plans to popularise what to many are the impenetrable scores of Wagner pieces.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... Nazis.html
 
OK. Forgive me my ignorance, but doesn't 'Adolf' mean 'wolf'? So, she referred to him by his nickname Adolf? :D
 
Support for bid to clear pirate

The Scottish Parliament has been asked to support a campaign to clear the name of a captain who was hanged for piracy more than three centuries ago.

Captain William Kidd had been appointed by the Crown to tackle piracy and capture enemy French ships.

In 1698, he looted the Armenian ship the Quedagh Merchant, which was apparently sailing under a French pass.

However, the captain of the ship was an Englishman and Capt Kidd was executed in London in 1701.

The Quedagh Merchant had been carrying satins, muslins, gold and silver when she was attacked by Kidd.

It is thought that a large amount of the booty belonged to the British East India Company.

As well as the piracy charges, Capt Kidd was accused of murdering one of his crewmen during a row in 1697.

During his execution, the first rope put around this neck broke, so he was strung up a second time. That rope also snapped but the third one held.

Capt Kidd's body was dipped in tar and hung by chains along the River Thames to serve as a warning to would-be pirates.

Legend had it that Kidd hid much of his loot, which has prompted numerous treasure hunts around the world and inspired Robert Louis Stevenson when writing Treasure Island.

American researchers have been investigating the history of Capt Kidd, who it is thought was born in Greenock or the Dundee area in about 1645.

Dan Hamilton and Chris Macort claim that Kidd was set up by King William III, who wanted to appear tough on piracy but who also stood to profit from the goods which Kidd seized.

A parliamentary motion has been lodged by SNP MSP Bill Kidd, who is not related to the pirate, urging that the parliament welcomes a fresh bid to clear his name following the new research.

Mr Kidd said: "There's no time scale over which justice isn't important.

"I think these types of incidents, whenever they happen, have a lesson and a morality for all time because otherwise we allow people to get away with breaking the law and breaking rules and we allow governments to get away with punishing people wrongly.

"I don't expect that there's going to be a mass campaign in the streets for something that happened 300 years ago but I do expect that people are going to be worried about the fact that someone can be used and abused in that way by the state, whatever time in history.

"If someone is accused and hung for something that he didn't actually do, when he was operating for the government and he was doing the job properly, that comes down to a criminal act on the part of the government not on him."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/tay ... 112769.stm
 
Galileo was beaten to the Moon by a shy Englishman

With quill in one hand and telescope in the other, Thomas Harriot trained his lens on the Moon and with care and precision began to draw.

Several hours later he had produced an intricate map of the Moon’s surface, showing craters, mountains and the planet’s empty “seas”. The date recorded on the edge of the map is July 26, 1609, four months before Galileo’s astronomical recordings were made.

But unlike Galileo, who thrived on publicity and needed the money, Harriot was a shy nobleman who never saw the need to publish his work.

If he had done so, the Englishman would be a household name, synonymous with astronomical discovery.

“He had a nice annual pension from the Earl of Northumberland and he was just interested in the pursuit of knowledge,” said Alison McCann, assistant county archivist for the Sussex Record Office, which holds all of Harriot’s Moon drawings, made on behalf of Lord Egremont.

However, 400 years on, Harriot is being recognised finally as the first astronomer to record observations made through a telescope. Two of his Moon drawings, along with recordings of Jupiter and sunspots, were unveiled yesterday at the Science Museum in London, in an exhibition timed to bridge the Apollo 11 40th anniversary and the 400th anniversary of Harriot’s recordings.

Speaking at the opening of the exhibition yesterday, Lord Rees, president of the Royal Society and Astronomer Royal, described Harriot as astronomy’s unsung hero. “It is good that his reputation is being restored,” he said.

Harriot’s very first recording was made using an elegant hand-held device, known as the “Dutch trunke” telescope, which was only six times more powerful than the naked eye. It would have shown a small pinpoint of sky, much like looking through a kaleidoscope, and Harriot would have had to inch the telescope across the sky, recording as he went.

The first drawing shows the lines separating light and dark areas, which correspond to contours on the Moon’s surface.

As time went on and Harriot acquired more sophisticated telecopes, his maps became more detailed.

By 1613 he had a telescope with a magnification of 36 times, and was able to record some of the most striking features of the solar system including Jupiter’s spot, Saturn’s rings and the dark sunspots that we now know correspond to magnetic activity on the Sun’s surface.

Parallel exhibitions of his work are taking place in Sussex and in Florence.

Harriot made his recordings on the estate of Henry Percy, the 9th Earl of Northumberland, famed for his involvement in the Gunpowder Plot.

Harriot himself was briefly imprisoned and interrogated, but is said to have told the authorities: “Everyone knows I prefer a life of quiet and devoted study.”

He is credited with the discovery of Snell’s Law, which describes the refraction of light through a lens, 20 years before Willebrord Snellius published his own theory.

Harriot also made important contributions to the development of algebra and wrote a treatise on navigation.

Other exhibits at the Science Museum’s Culture & Cosmos exhibition include replica telescopes of Galileo and Newton, Galileo’s Sidereus Nuncius, in which he reported the device’s astronomical capabilities, and the telescope used by Jocelyn Bell to discover pulsars in the 1960s.

Other objects, such as an Astronomy Monopoly set, a French fan showing the Great Comet of 1811 and hoax print of the Moon dating from 1835 and complete with man-bats and a sapphire temple, indicate how astronomy has influenced popular culture.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/u ... 725572.ece
 
ramonmercado said:
Hariott / Herriot.

How about a bio titled All Craters Great & Small?
Click to expand...

Such a book would undoubtedly have a meteoric rise up the best sellers list. Even Comet will want to stock it.
 
Ginando said:
ramonmercado said:
Hariott / Herriot.

How about a bio titled All Craters Great & Small?
Click to expand...

Such a book would undoubtedly have a meteoric rise up the best sellers list. Even Comet will want to stock it.
Click to expand...

It might just be a shooting star, good sales at the start but quickly burn out.
 
LaurenChurchill said:
OK. Forgive me my ignorance, but doesn't 'Adolf' mean 'wolf'? So, she referred to him by his nickname Adolf? :D
Click to expand...

Well, yes and no...

According to Wikipedia (and as a German speaker, that sounds right to me)

The name is derived from the Old High German Athalwolf, a composition of athal, or adal, meaning noble, and wolf; in sequence, making Adolf another compound.

In modern German, that would be "Edelwolf".
 
Hollywood hokum: Fake history in films wipes out the facts learnt in class
By Daniel Bates
Last updated at 10:49 AM on 07th August 2009

Most of us know that Hollywood's version of history leans more towards fiction that fact.
But someone needs to remind the children - as they're believing everything they see on screen.
A study has found that pupils retain the dodgy history in films shown in class as the truth, even if they have been taught the real version of events.
This means a generation is growing up mistakenly believing Mozart was a spoiled brat and U.S. troops instead of British soldiers captured the Nazi Enigma code machine.

The researchers from Washington University in St Louis described historical films as a 'double-edged sword' in helping teachers bring the subject to life.
When information in a film tallies with reality it improves recall by up to 50 per cent, they found.

However when the film contradicts the facts, up to half of children will carry these mistakes forward into their exams.
This occurs even when teachers explain beforehand about which 'facts' are not true.

The study included nine Hollywood historical dramas with obvious blunders, from the slave rebellion saga Amistad to the Mozart biopic Amadeus, and the World War II submarine epic U-571.

Lead researcher Andrew Butler said: 'When information in the film was consistent with information in the text, watching the film clips increased correct recall by about 50 per cent relative to reading the text alone.

'In contrast, when information in the film directly contradicted the text, people often falsely recalled the misinformation portrayed in the film, sometimes as much as 50 per cent of the time.’
He recommended that teachers carry on showing films in class but issue warnings to pupils before they press play.

The study will be published in the journal Psychological Science.

Dr Martin Farr, a senior lecturer in historical studies at the University of Newcastle, said directors and historians were often at cross purposes.
He said: 'What a historian and what a film-maker are trying to do are usually different things.
'We can go on as long as we like for 90,000 words but when you have 90 minutes you have to condense things.

'Normally artistic licence is fine but sometimes it goes too far and you have to be aware of the boundary.'
He pointed to Mel Gibson's films Braveheart and The Patriot as examples where too many liberties had been taken.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z0NUm0O5O1
 
What brought down the USSR? The increasing cost of the arms race? Or...

How the Beatles rocked the Eastern Bloc
By Leslie Woodhead
Director, Storyville

While the Beatles were at the height of their success in the West, back in the USSR they were a forbidden influence. But that did not stop them from being heard.

Presiding over his "John Lennon Temple of Peace and Love" in St Petersburg, Kolya Vasin is Russia's ultimate Beatles fan.

An affable bear of a man with a wild beard, Mr Vasin sits amid his fantastic collection of Beatles memorabilia - ceramic statues of the "Fab Four", an All You Need is Love teapot, an Abbey Road street sign - and says: "I fell in love with the Beatles 40 years ago. They became my friends, my spiritual brothers."

Generations of Soviet children have shared his passion for the Beatles.

As Russian cultural commentator Artemy Troitsky says: "The Beatles turned tens of millions of Soviet youngsters to another religion."

Mr Troitsky also insists the Fab Four and their music had a more profound impact.

"They alienated a whole generation from their Communist motherland," he says.

From Russia to Ukraine and Belarus the Beatles played an important part in the lives of millions behind the Iron Curtain.

Although the band were never permitted to play in the Soviet Union, where they were officially denounced as "capitalist pollution", the "four lads who shook the world" unwittingly helped shake the Soviet system to its knees, according to many of those who spent their 1960s east of the Iron Curtain.

"They destroyed Communism - more than Gorbachev," says Vova Katzman, in Kiev.

A music producer in St Petersburg says The Beatles "produced a cultural revolution, the cultural revolution destroyed the Soviet Union".

To Yuri Pelyushonok, a doctor in Minsk, they "made a quiet revolution in our brains. We had it in our hearts."

In Moscow, leading journalist Vladimir Pozner is emphatic about the significance of the Fab Four.

"The Beatles did more to undermine the system than the most anti-Soviet literature for which people went to jail," he says.

etc....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8232235.stm

(Long article, but worth a read. Or catch
Storyville: How The Beatles Rocked the Kremlin in on BBC Four at 2000 BST on Sunday 6 September
Or hear it later on the iPlayer.)
 
Good point about film and inaccuracy.

In my opinion, one of the worst offenders is "Kingdom of Heaven". Accurate weapons, clothing, methods of combat...everything about it so right. Apart from the story. And as an amateur historian, that worries me. The danger seems to be that people will assume that because the background is accurate, then the story will be as well.
 
Bad press for the locals - from the Vikings!

Vikings 'were warned to avoid Scotland'
Scotland is full of dangerous natives who speak an incomprehensible language and the is weather awful. That was the verdict of a series of 13th century Viking travel guides that warned voyagers to visit at their peril.
Published: 9:41AM BST 20 Sep 2009

The medieval chronicles, set down on yellowed calf vellum eight centuries ago, describe Scotland – or Skotland, as it was known – as an unwelcome and inhospitable country offering rewards only to the bold.

"Icelanders who want to practise robbery are advised to go there," says one saga. "But it may cost them their life."

Another saga tells the story of Icelandic merchants who sailed into a west coast sea loch where they met 13 ships bristling with what they called "Vikings" – more an occupation than a nationality – but were actually natives.

A Scot identified in the saga as Grjotgard, a kinsman of Melkolf, king of Scotland (Malcolm II), told them: "You have two choices. You can go ashore and we will take all your property, or we'll attack you and kill every man we lay our hands on." The merchants were terrified, the saga says, but presumably lived to tell their tale.

The chronicles have been interpreted by Gisli Sigurdsson, a historian at Reykjavik University, who believes the sagas – part fiction, part fact – reveal how the ancient Norse were far from the fearless pirates of legend.

As the Norsemen became as keen on trade as marauding, they were particularly nervous about sailing up the west coast sea lochs they referred to as the "Scottish fjords". "The only places the Norse could have expected a safe reception was Orkney and Shetland, where the people were basically the same as them and where they would be greeted as kin," Mr Sigurdsson said.

The Norse Viking age peaked between the 9th and 12th centuries, when Scandinavian seafarers conquered new lands, settling Orkney, Shetland, Iceland and Greenland, and establishing colonies in Scotland, England, Ireland, France, North America and Russia.

The Icelandic sagas, written in the 13th century but based on earlier oral stories, were often used as route guides for raiders, traders, crusaders and explorers, effectively a road map of medieval Europe and the Middle East. They have proved remarkably accurate, even helping archaeologists to pinpoint the remains of a Norse village in Newfoundland.

Orkney is described as a handy base camp for pillaging Scotland. But the Norse had other bases too, some of which would feature high up in a modern guide for tourists. If you are planning to raid Scotland, one saga reads, you could do worse than base yourself in Fort Skardaborg. That's today's Scarborough.

Mr Sigurdsson believes the Norse Vikings were particularly nervous about the Gaels of Ireland and west Scotland.

Orkney historian Tom Muir said: "They picked weak targets, like monasteries. Some of the monasteries were basically unguarded banks of cash with a sign above them saying 'free money'. The truth is that there were raids both ways and that the Norse had every reason to fear their Celtic neighbours. There are well-documented accounts of Gaelic-speaking Lewismen raiding Orkney."

The Norse eventually lost their hold in Scotland. But Celts and the Vikings must ultimately have started to get along. DNA evidence suggests many Scots and Icelanders interbred and settled in both countries.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstop ... tland.html
 
ramonmercado said:
Hmmm. Did it warn about the dangersof attack from feral haggis as well?
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The dangers of feral haggis are exagerrated. Even in the era of the Vikings, I can't imagine haggis making their way down to lower levels near the shores of sea lochs. Their skeletal structure with two short legs on one side of the body and two long legs at the other side, while ideal for running along steeply sided hills or mountains is a positive hindrance on flatter terrain causing them essentially to run around in circles if they do find themselves on level ground.

Where they are likely to be vicious is during the mating season as they can be very frustrated due to failed attempts at mating. The female of the species has their short legs on the left side, while the males short legs are at the right side. As can be imagined, this makes copulation problematic as one or other them is likely to overbalance. Repeated failures can make the male haggis very aggressive.
 
Haggis hunting is notoriously difficult... I believe traditionally it is conducted using pogo-sticks (the smell and sound of horses is easily picked up by the keen haggis) and a large net on a pole.
 
They are patriotic wee beasties, not timorous at all though. They assisted Bonnie Prince Charlie in his escape. Weren't much good at rowing the boat but they devoured a company of Redcoats with the assistance of the Bean family.
 
Stilton celebrates as it is confirmed as home of the famous cheese
Home staff

Celebrations were in full swing yesterday after the village of Stilton was named as the official birthplace of the blue-veined cheese [pictured at a May Day celebration].

Experts have been divided over its origins after the Stilton Cheese Makers Association (SCMA) ruled that it did not come from the Cambridgeshire village of the same name. The SCMA claimed that, despite being sold in Stilton for hundreds of years, the cheese was first made in Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire, in about 1740.

But the village has claimed its rightful title after Richard Landy, a local historian, found a letter dated 1722 to Richard Bradley, the first professor of botany at the University of Cambridge, which had a recipe for the cheese attached to it. The author of the letter, Francis Pawlett, wrote of a delicious cheese produced by Cooper Thornhill, the well-known landlord of the Bull Inn, in Stilton.

Nigel White, of the SCMA, said: “There are still many missing links within Stilton’s history and we appreciate all the work the villagers have put into this research.”

Stilton cheese is protected by EU legislation and Blue Stilton is made only in six licensed dairies across Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire, and Derbyshire. Now Mr Landy hopes to challenge the EU licensing laws.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_a ... 843635.ece

The clue is in the name! ;)
 
ramonmercado said:
Weren't much good at rowing the boat but they devoured a company of Redcoats with the assistance of the Bean family.
Click to expand...

Yes, I've heard Mr Bean was a ruthless cannibal.
 
ramonmercado said:
They are patriotic wee beasties, not timorous at all though. They assisted Bonnie Prince Charlie in his escape. Weren't much good at rowing the boat but they devoured a company of Redcoats with the assistance of the Bean family.
Click to expand...
It was a tragic loss for the Butlins Holiday Camp, at The Heads of Ayr and no laughing matter.

:no-no:
 
Pietro_Mercurios said:
ramonmercado said:
They are patriotic wee beasties, not timorous at all though. They assisted Bonnie Prince Charlie in his escape. Weren't much good at rowing the boat but they devoured a company of Redcoats with the assistance of the Bean family.
Click to expand...
It was a tragic loss for the Butlins Holiday Camp, at The Heads of Ayr and no laughing matter.

:no-no:
Click to expand...

But there was a nice Ecumenical funeral service. The Mullah Kintyre officiated.
 
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0 ... _Britains/

A Tale of Two Britains

The conventional view of 1930s Britain is of slag heaps, unemployed men hanging round street corners with nothing to do, hunger marches and economic depression.

This is only part of the truth, as the 1930s was a period of transformation. While most of the world suffered from the depression, the UK was able to shrug off the worst effects thanks to prudent management of the economy by the National Government and a degree of protectionism. Areas of high unemployment remained, but they were isolated from the general trend.

For many, it was a time of rising prosperity. Consumption increased as new gadgets - vacuum cleaners, cookers, fridges - came on the market. Car ownership increased massively and, as leisure time grew, so did travel as people took holidays, often for the first time. Millions went to the cinema, and eating out became commonplace. To back up the increase in consumption new forms of credit emerged, with HP the most popular.

Using interviews with people who remember the decade, this documentary offers an alternative vision of Britain in the 30s and shows that, after the recovery from the slump that followed the crash of 1929, life was good for a large proportion of the country.

It celebrates the growing market for entertainment and consumer goods, explains how a boom in housing transformed the lives of millions of slum dwellers, shows how new towns grew up near centres of economic growth, and challenges the view that the period was one of national gloom and austerity.

A considerable amount of research has shed new light on the period, and historians like Peter Scott, Richard Overy, Juliet Gardiner and Martin Pugh underpin the film's thesis, which may surprise and cheer viewers who lived under the shadow of the bleak 1930s.

Broadcast on:BBC Four, 12:30am Thursday 22nd October 2009
Duration: 60 minutes
Available until: 8:59pm Wednesday 28th October 2009


I realise this may seem like ancient history to many people here (and it's before my lifetime), but this is the decade when my parents were growing up and entering their twenties, so it gives me another angle on their lives.
 
If you fancy a good read on the 1930's, try "We Danced All Night" by Martin Pugh.
 
New battle over Bosworth's site
By Bob Walker
BBC Radio 5 live

It is more than 500 years since the Battle of Bosworth saw the death of Richard III and ushered in the Tudor dynasty.

Since then scholars have argued over the precise location of the battle with several different locations given serious consideration.

Now a team of historians and archaeologists says it has found the site - and it is not where everyone thought it was.

It is one of Shakespeare's most memorable scenes.

The hunchback Richard III, thrown from his horse and maddened with blood lust, offers up his kingdom in exchange for a replacement steed.

Today the spot where he is supposed to have met his end - a victim of treachery rather than military genius - is marked by a roughly-cut stone memorial in a quiet grove.

The plaque upon it reads simply: "Richard, the last Plantagenet King of England, was slain here 22nd August, 1485."

Except that he was not.

According to a team of battlefield experts and historians the location of the battlefield was two miles to the south and west. At the moment they are being no more precise than that because they fear the activities of illegal treasure seekers.

The investigators have been checking soil samples, analysing peat deposits and carrying out searches with metal detectors. They have also been studying ancient documents and maps for clues.

Using references to places like Redmore (or Reed Moor) and Sandyford (a sandy crossing in the marsh) they have built up a picture of the landscape at the time of the battle.

There have been other clues such as Crown Hill, long thought to have had some connection with the crowning of Henry VII after the battle.

And the study has thrown new light on the use of medieval artillery. They have found 22 lead shots fired by the smallest hand-held gun of the time and from the largest cannon of the time.

All of which presents a problem for the Bosworth Battlefield Heritage Centre which has become popular with tourists, schoolchildren and students. Thousands have attended lectures on the subject and walked for two hours over the battlefield trail.

When the location has been debated before, visitors have expressed mixed feelings.

Many said the precise location of the centre was less important than the quality of educational displays and exhibitions. Others said they would be disappointed not to be able to walk the actual field of battle.

Dr Glen Foard, from the Battlefields Trust, who has lead the search, said: "For me the most important thing about the discoveries at Bosworth is that it opens the door for archaeology to explore the origins of firepower.

"In collaboration with the University of Leeds we want to trace this story across Europe."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8329251.stm
 
Just read the guardian article on the bombing of Coventry. I think the "mainstream" historians are perhaps following some official line here.

Plymouth was literally razed to the ground (helped after the war by the council - modernisation!), hence the unlovely city centre. I always supposed that they were after the dockyards, which seems perfectly logical. However, after talking to local people, particularly those that remember the destruction, I have been repeatedly informed that the Luftwaffe were after the historical (and apparently very beautiful) city centre - cultural targets to demoralise the populace.

After consideration, If they were after the dockyard, Goering's mighty Luftwaffe had very poor aim.

It`s difficult now to believe a place looked so very different, photographs show some of the truth, & now gone is the world changing town of the Armada, Drake (and his game of bowls), the port that saw the landing of Catherine of Aragon & Pocahontas, the departure of Cooke's voyages & those of Darwin & the Mayflower, Birthplace of Capt. scott, prison for Napoleon (before his exile to St. Helena).........

It' s easier to stomach attacks on "legitimate" targets, not so the wilful destruction of culture and history - a people's place in the world.

Of course we did similar and it pales against other crimes against humanity, but the effects are still here - a loss of pride in the town, the concrete greyness of the day to day, the lack of knowledge about the place (and its place in our history): ".....you live in Portsmouth?"

If the destruction sickens you ever so slightly or angers you just a touch, it is, perhaps, wiser to think that they missed the warships (or the aircraft factories in Coventry) which threatened their people, not that they wanted to expunge the memory of Lady Godiva or HMS beagle. However, it's sad when an old lady cries still, when she remembers the place of her youth, now gone forever.... I sound like Monty in Withnail: " .. as a youth I'd weep in butchers' shops...."
 
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