Bologna’s Extremely Tall Medieval Towers

 From The Mind Circle:

It’s surprising to learn but Bologna had skyscraper-like extremely tall towers in the medieval period. It is thought that there were about 180 towers in Bologna between the 12th and the 13th century. One of the tallest ones was 320 feet (97 meters) high, which is still standing today. The main aim, while constructing those towers, was to construct strong defensive buildings. Besides the towers, there are still some fortified gateways that correspond to the gates of the 12th-century city wall.

The first historian to study the skyscrapers of Bologna in a systematic way was Count Giovanni Gozzadini. He was a senator of the Italian kingdom who lived in the 19th century and wanted to raise the prestige of his hometown. Analyzing the civic archives of real estate deeds, Gozzadini attempted to arrive at a reliable number of towers on the basis of documented ownership changes. He eventually came up with an extraordinary number of 180 towers, an enormous amount considering the size and resources of medieval Bologna. (Read more.)

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When Europeans Were Slaves

An old article, but worth reading. Lately, I have been researching about the Viking slave trade, which involved kidnapping blond Saxon girls and selling them in Southern Europe and sometimes as far as Asia. But that was centuries before the time referred to in the article. From OSU:

A new study suggests that a million or more European Christians were enslaved by Muslims in North Africa between 1530 and 1780 – a far greater number than had ever been estimated before.

In a new book, Robert Davis, professor of history at Ohio State University, developed a unique methodology to calculate the number of white Christians who were enslaved along Africa’s Barbary Coast, arriving at much higher slave population estimates than any previous studies had found.

Most other accounts of slavery along the Barbary coast didn’t try to estimate the number of slaves, or only looked at the number of slaves in particular cities, Davis said. Most previously estimated slave counts have thus tended to be in the thousands, or at most in the tens of thousands. Davis, by contrast, has calculated that between 1 million and 1.25 million European Christians were captured and forced to work in North Africa from the 16th to 18th centuries.

Davis’s new estimates appear in the book Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, and Italy, 1500-1800 (Palgrave Macmillan). (Read more.)

More HERE.

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Blocking Security Clearances

 From The Last Refuge:

It should not come as a surprise to see the same methods deployed against President Trump in 2024 that were used by the FBI in 2016.  The difference is now that President Trump understands the full power of his office in the security clearance process and that he doesn’t need the FBI.

In 2016 the FBI used their power to conduct security clearances as a tool to stall and block President Trump appointments.  Historically this is one of the ways a very corrupt and political FBI interfere in any system that might be against the interests of the Intelligence Community that controls them. However, in 2024 President-Elect Trump and his transition team have already taken a different approach. (Read more.)

 

Some thoughts from It Can Always Get Worse:

The Islamic State (IS) rendered its verdict on Donald Trump’s re-election in the main editorial of the 469th edition of its weekly newsletter, Al-Naba, published on 14 November. The editorial is entitled, “The Unbelievers Will Not Be Successful”, drawn from Qur’an 23:117.

Al-Naba begins: “Politicians have overflowed with commentary about the expected changes after the taghut Trump takes power, [speaking] in a tone that suggests the world is subject to his absolute control and whim. They talk about him with a crazy, obsessive tendency, as if he was the orchestrating master of the Affairs of Creation! This is not an exaggeration, merely an unvarnished description of reality.” (Read more.)

FEMA in Georgia. From The Daily Wire:

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer revealed Tuesday that a whistleblower claimed a FEMA supervisor in Georgia directed a family to remove Trump campaign signage from their home, saying it was not “looked kindly” on by the agency. 

Comer made the statements during a hearing where lawmakers grilled FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell about an agency employee who told relief workers in Florida to “avoid homes advertising Trump.” Criswell has maintained that the guidance was an isolated incident and not the result of agency policy to skip over “politically hostile” homes.

But testimony from Comer and other lawmakers testimony casts doubt on Criswell’s comments. 

“My staff made contact with a new whistleblower who provided a credible account that a FEMA contractor visited the home of an elderly disabled veteran’s family around October 10 following Hurricane Helene,” Comer said after the committee came back from recess. “While there he recommended that they remove Trump campaign materials and signs from both their house and yard. He warned the family that his FEMA supervisor does not take kindly to Trump supporters and that they are seen as domestic terrorists.”  (Read more.)

 

From The Rand Paul Review:

Biden and the left walked right into Trump’s trap.  The former president baited the Biden-Harris team into an emotional reaction highlighted by the trash reference. 

“They treat you like garbage. They treat our whole country like garbage.  How do you like my garbage truck? Trump asked reporters. This truck is in honor of Kamala and Joe Biden.” – President-elect Donald Trump

Trump made the comments during a publicity stunt in Green Bay just ahead of election night.  The best part was that The Don went to the extent of wearing a bright orange garbage collector safety vest. 

Trump even had his team pick him up from the local airport using a garbage truck.  He then rode that truck all the way to the Green Bay rally. (Read more.)

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The Strange Legend of the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary

 From LBV:

The French were not the only encyclopedists; nor were they the first. In fact, they were inspired by the French translation of the Cyclopaedia or Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, a work published twenty-three years earlier by the Englishman Ephraim Chambers, a globe maker turned author/editor who had, in turn, translated French scientific texts. In the Cyclopaedia, he included an entry under the same heading as Diderot, Agnus scythicus, which referred to a zoophyte (an animal with plant characteristics) with the appearance of a lamb living in Tartary. Other names given were Agnus vegetabilis and Agnus tartaricus, as well as endonyms like Borometz, Borametz, and Boranetz. (Read more.)

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The Versailles Boudoir

Marie-Antoinette could never escape the sexual rumor mill. And her friend Princesse de Lamballe was not guillotined but torn to pieces by a mob. According to The Smart Set:

From early in her rule, the Austrian-born queen inspired in her French subjects the most virulent misogyny. The market was flooded with whole libraries of violent pornography that depicted her as a wasteful and treacherous nymphomaniac who conducted orgies at Versailles, fornicated with cardinals and generals, and spied on France for the Austrians while satisfying her lusts. The most inventive, mock-serious work, Historical Essay on the Life of Marie-Antoinette hit the underground market in 1781 and was updated almost every year until her death, with vivid illustrations of the queen lifting her skirts for the entire male court. It was soon supplemented by Anandria, which depicted her in a lesbian love triangle with her ladies-in-waiting — the French having a particular obsession with the “German vice” — and sexually molesting her young son, the eight-year-old Dauphin.

This hallucinogenic strain of pornography might sound too extreme to have been taken seriously, but it resurfaced after the Revolution with concrete force as Marie-Antoinette was shuffled into ever more humiliating prisons. Her every public appearance was met with streams of abuse about her carnal desires; even a farewell to her most loyal friend, the Princess de Lamballe, who would soon end up on the guillotine, was reported in the press as a depraved lesbian embrace. The low point came at her trial in 1793, when the deposed queen — by now frail, pallid, and gray-haired — was accused before the packed court of committing incest with her son, the Dauphin....(Read more.)

More HERE. Share

Boiling the Frog Slowly

 From Tierney's Real News:

The good news is that people are awake now and realize this is all a scam - even many who declared there was no fraud in 2020!

In 2020, I was warning people daily of the post-election steal - but few were listening. It was like yelling into an empty room. Today, Democrats are openly stealing races - because we didn’t stop them last time - and have even admitted that they are counting ILLEGAL ballots in many races. They feel emboldened and don’t care that what they are doing in illegal. They figure they will get away with it again.

Below is a snapshot of the fraud - in real time - day by day. There’s NO reason for these states to take weeks to count ballots - unless they are making them in the back room!

On election night, Trump was ahead by 7 MILLION in the popular vote (52%) and the numbers pointed out glaringly that there was NO way that Biden could have ever gotten 81 MILLION votes in 2020 unless they manufactured them out of thin air. (Read more.)

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Medieval Anglo-French Wars (1076-1453)

 From The Collector:

One of the more famous conflicts between France and England, the Hundred Years’ War, was a period of sporadic fighting between the two kingdoms that lasted for 116 years. The fighting started as a result of the death of the king of France, Charles IV, in 1328 at the age of 33. He left no direct heirs, and his closest relative was Edward III, the king of England. French nobles, however, refused to acknowledge any rights Edward had on the French throne, and crowned Philippe, Count of Valois, as the new king of France. Thus ended the Capetian dynasty, and began the reign of the Valois monarchs.

After the French demanded the return of Gascony, Edward III responded with military force. The English saw major successes in the first phases of the war, winning significant victories at Crécy in 1346 and Poitiers ten years later. English victories and the capture of the French king, Jean II, led to the Treaties of Brétigny and Calais, where vast portions of French land were ceded to England.

Jean, however, died in captivity, and his son, Charles, refused to abide by the treaties. He reignited the conflict and put France on the offensive. French pressure on the English petered out after the death of Charles V in 1380. Civil unrest in both kingdoms led to a pause in the conflict, but the unrest in England was quelled earlier than in France, and Henry V of England decided to take advantage of the situation by launching an invasion. (Read more.)

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The Sea Monsters of Ancient Greek Mythology

 
From The Greek Reporter:

These two sea monsters are almost always referred to in Ancient Greek mythology as a pair. This is because they were said to be two monsters on either side of a narrow strait, making them far more dangerous to ships than they ever would have been individually. Scylla was a multi-headed, serpentine monster that reached out to grab sailors from their boats. Charybdis was essentially an enormous, living whirlpool that would devour entire ships whenever it got the chance.

The most famous Greek myth featuring these two sea monsters is the Odyssey. This is the story of Odysseus attempting to sail back to Greece after the Trojan War. In this story, the goddess Circe advises Odysseus to sail closer to Scylla than to Charybdis. She points out that it would make more sense to lose six men than the entire ship. (Read more.)

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