I have had this little blog for nearly a year, and while I am not producing as much content as I would like, I am immensely proud of what I have written. January is a time to look back at …
Statue of Pheidippides, the famous original marathon runner along the road from Marathon to Athens. The story of the Battle of Marathon and its connection to the modern marathon is a wonderful one, and a little bit more complicated that …
The distance between Marathon and Athens is NOT a Marathon. Wait What? Read more »
Halloween or “All Hallows’ Eve” is the day before All Hallows Day, more commonly known as All Saints Day. Every day of the year is dedicated to a saint. The most common ones we still celebrate are St Patrick’s Day, …
First…HUMP DAY! Next… The days of the week in English are based mostly on Norse Gods. Wednesday comes from “Wodan’s Day.” As mentioned previously, as languages change and morph it is common for letters to drop off due to slight …
This is one of the most stunning images I have ever seen. In college I owned it as a poster. I found two copies of it at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History where I volunteer a couple …
Names are funny things. When translated through different languages over very long periods of time they can take very different forms. The great Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses II, as translated through Greek, ended up as Ozymandias. This is not all that …
About ten years ago, I was lucky enough to have a chance to visit Pompeii. Walking through the ancient city streets is a surreal experience (and one I highly recommend if you ever have the chance). At one street corner …
I wrote this vignette, using valid ancient sources as my base, for my middle school classroom. Rereading it, I realized that I still really liked it and that it sort of falls into both “Historical Perceptions” and “The History we …
