Medieval warhorses are often depicted as huge and powerful beasts, but many were actually no more than the size of a pony by modern standards, a new study shows. Horses of the time were often less than 5 feet tall, but size clearly wasnt everything, as historical records indicate that huge sums wer
Surely the reader will remember that some time ago we dedicated an article to Robert the Bruce, King of Scotland who was the true Braveheart , despite what the Mel Gibson movie showed. Well, Robert had several brothers and one of them not only helped him get the throne but he also reigned, although
On the afternoon of June 18, 1178, five monks from Canterbury, in the south of England, reported that they had witnessed an unusual phenomenon in the sky. According to the monk Gervasio, an abbey chronicler, the men were looking at a new crescent moon when they saw that the upper part split in two .
Between the last quarter of the twelfth century and the first quarter of the thirteenth, the Mongols constituted what was probably the most powerful army in the world, with which they created the most extensive territorial empire that has ever existed. As we know, it was the work of Genghis Khan, wh
It is not easy to read her name, especially if the original spelling is respected:Guðríðr Þorbjarnardóttir. But she is an interesting character for several reasons. First, the fact that she is a woman that the Viking sagas speak of without mythological implications. Second, having been the mother
Limassol is the second largest city in Cyprus after the capital Nicosia, and is located on the southern coast of the island. It was founded around the 5th century AD. with the name of Neapolis on an older settlement dating, according to some, to the 8th century B.C. and according to others from IV B
Like almost everything related to the history of the Vikings, the colonization of Iceland is dark and confusing, given the lack of sources and its legendary character. From them it is found that British Christian missionaries would have been the first to arrive on the island in the 8th century AD, G
The Roman Emperor Constantine II could very well have gone down in history because of, among other things, the mess of names he had:his name was Heraclius Constantinus Augustus, although he also appears as Flavius Constantinus Augustus and in his time he was known as Kōnstantinos Pogonatos, i.e. C
Invaders, pirates, warriors… history books taught us that the Vikings were predators who traveled by sea from Scandinavia to plunder and raid populations throughout Europe and beyond. Now DNA sequencing of more than 400 Viking skeletons from archaeological sites scattered across Europe and Greenlan
Probably one of the strangest and most attractive places in medieval Spain is a mountainous massif located in the extreme north-west of the province of Burgos, almost bordering the north of Palencia and the south of Cantabria. A flat place from which a rare orographic mass of 1,377 meters of altitud
Building a bridge over water is a daunting task, and despite many technological advances, the fundamentals have not changed since ancient times. A cofferdam (wooden formwork) is first built in the river bed and the water inside this enclosed structure is pumped out, exposing the muddy bottom. On th
In the year 886 an emperor rose to the Byzantine throne who would go down in history with the name of Leōn VI ho Sophos , i.e. Leo the Wise (or the Philosopher ), because of his vast culture. Second of the Macedonian dynasty, it was not entirely clear whether his father was Basil I, as the official
Surely the reader remembers that article that we dedicated to the Challenge of Bordeaux, framed in the context of the wars that the French Carlos de Anjou and the Aragonese Pedro III maintained for the throne of the Kingdom of Sicily, which finally remained in Aragonese hands. But the rivalry contin
The ruins of the castle of Engelbourg are located on a rocky peak at an altitude of 445 meters near the town of Thann, in the Alsace region. Travelers who approach the place are surprised by the presence of an imposing circular mass with a hole in the center, which is visible from several kilometers
To the north of Lake Trasimeno between the towns of Perugia and Cortona, and very close to the place where Hannibal defeated the army of the Roman consul Gaius Flaminius on June 21, 217 BC, there is a small town called Vernazzano, which barely has 300 inhabitants. . It is located on the hills that
The Christian world undertook against the Muslim nine crusades or religious wars in dispute for control of the Holy Land. The ninth and last, which some consider only an extension of the previous one, took place between 1271 and 1272. It was led by Prince Edward I of England, who took over from King
It is impossible that there is someone who does not recognize this fragment, corresponding to one of the most famous tales of the Grimm brothers:Snow White . Walt Disney chose him in 1937 for what was his first feature film ( Snow White and the seven dwarfs , which was also the first sound and colo
The Caspian Sea is a large saltwater lake -the largest in the world- of 371,000 square kilometers and an average depth of 170 meters, which is fed by several rivers, the most important of which is the Volga. All this gives it a strategic situation, acting as a common natural border between Russia, A
One of the main headaches for anyone who tries to calculate anniversaries of events that happened, for example, in ancient Egypt or ancient Greece, is the non-existence in our calculation of a year zero. The numbering goes directly from the year 1 B.C. to the year 1 A.D., which makes it necessary to
The clashes between Saladin and Baldwin IV during the twelfth century, in the years that followed the Second Crusade, were a fierce exchange of blows in which each victory was followed by defeat and vice versa. The so-called Leper King scored a resounding triumph in Montgisard that allowed him to sa
After the Muslim prayer, the Grand Ulema read a speech. A Te Deum was then sung by the Christian clergy and the ceremony was closed with a long speech by Bishop Bauer.In the evening, the celebration continued with a fireworks display given by the khedive, and by the illumination of Port-Saïd all str
The situation of the French troops seems desperate. The Marshal of Saxe, greatly concerned, asked the king to withdraw with the Dauphin, fearing the imminence of a total overflow. Louis XV, confident - he was also a very good man of war - replies:I am sure that he (Saxony) will do what is necessary.
On the eve of the Allied landings in Normandy, German agent Paul Fitrmutz – code name “Ostro” – knew what was about to happen. A few days before the landing, Ostro, who was in Lisbon, had in his hands the smallest detail of Operation Overlord, as the planned Normandy landing was codenamed. The A
Recently, as a result of the article we published on the origin of the books in the Library of Alexandria, a somewhat fussy reader (and by the way, quite wrong) rebuked us on a social network, assuring us that those were not books, but manuscript scrolls. What he evidently did not know is that the