Professors
Art critic
Pandora's Inbox
Make a wish
Get a job
The Fall of the Onomatopoeian Empire
Robert De Nero
Rome 1582
Barbarians
Night of the long knives
The Pedants' Revolt
King Tut
History repeats
Boston 1876
Alternative gladiator
Aethelred the Oven Ready
Siren

Fact of the Day

The eighteenth-century evangelical preacher George Whitefield considered it a badge of honour that, along with rotten fruit, he might be pelted by 'pieces of dead cats'.

Quote of the Day

"The enemy should have to carve his way over heaps of corpses. "
~ General von Below's orders to the German army on the Somme, 1916

On This Day

1545 The Mary Rose, warship of the Tudor navy, mysteriously sank in the Solent while leading an attack on the French.
1553 Lady Jane Grey's nine-day rule came to an end and her cousin, 'Bloody' Mary I, became queen.
1870 France attacked Prussia, fearing the consequences of German unification, starting the ten-month Franco-Prussian War.
1942 German Admiral Dönitz ordered U-boats to withdraw from Atlantic positions, giving the Allies victory in the Battle of the Atlantic.