Archive for November, 2008

  • The Regents Canal

    The Regents Canal

    Posted on November 28, 2008 | No Comments
    The Regent’s Canal was built to link the Grand Junction Canal’s Paddington Arm, which opened in 1801, with the Thames at Limehouse. One of the directors of the canal company was the famous architect John Nash. Nash was friendly with the Prince Regent, later King...

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  • Sator Square

    Sator Square

    Posted on November 20, 2008 | 1 Comment
    The Sator Square is a word square containing a Latin palindrome featuring the words SATOR AREPO TENET OPERA ROTAS written in a square so that they may be read top-to-bottom, bottom-to-top, left-to-right, and right-to-left. The earliest known appearance of the square was found in the...

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  • Signoria

    Signoria

    Posted on November 13, 2008 | No Comments
    A Signoria (from Signore or Lord) was an abstract noun meaning (roughly) ‘government; governing authority; de facto sovereignty; lordship in many of the Italian city states during the medieval and renaissance periods. The perennial “power vacuum” of medieval Italy In the sixth century AD the...

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  • Kubla Kahn

    Kubla Kahn

    Posted on November 11, 2008 | No Comments
    In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree : Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man     Down to a sunless sea. So twice five miles of fertile ground With walls and towers were girdled round : And there were gardens bright with...

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  • Daniel Dunglas Home

    Daniel Dunglas Home

    Posted on November 8, 2008 | No Comments
    Daniel Dunglas Home (pronounced ‘Hume’) (March 20, 1833 – June 21, 1886) was a Scottish Spiritualist, famous as a physical medium with the reported ability to levitate to a variety of heights, speak with the dead, and to produce rapping and knocks in houses at...

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  • Synarchy

    Synarchy

    Posted on November 2, 2008 | No Comments
    Joint rule The earliest recorded use of the term “synarchy” is attributed to Thomas Stackhouse (1677-1752), an English clergyman who used the word in his New History of the Holy Bible from the Beginning of the World to the Establishment of Christianity (published in two...

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  • Henry the Navigator

    Henry the Navigator

    Posted on November 2, 2008 | No Comments
    The Infante Henrique, Duke of Viseu (Porto, March 4, 1394 – Sagres, November 13, 1460); pron. IPA: [ẽ'ʁik(ɨ)]), was an infante (prince) of the Portuguese House of Aviz and an important figure in the early days of the Portuguese Empire, being responsible for the beginning of...

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  • Christopher Columbus

    Christopher Columbus

    Posted on November 2, 2008 | No Comments
    Christopher Columbus (Italian: Cristoforo Colombo) (1451 – May 20, 1506) was an Italian navigator, colonizer and explorer whose voyages across the Atlantic Ocean—funded by the Spanish crown—led to general European awareness of the American continents in the Western Hemisphere. Though not the first to reach...

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  • The Great Plague

    The Great Plague

    Posted on November 2, 2008 | No Comments
    Medieval people called the 14th century catastrophe either the “Great Pestilence”‘ or the “Great Plague”. Writers contemporary to the plague referred to the event as the “Great Mortality”. The term “Black Death” was introduced for the first time in 1833. It has been popularly thought...

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  • Dieppe Maps

    Dieppe Maps

    Posted on November 1, 2008 | 1 Comment
    131 The Dieppe maps are a series of world maps produced in Dieppe, France, in the 1540s, 1550s and 1560s. They are large hand-produced maps, commissioned for wealthy and royal patrons, including Henry II of France and Henry VIII of England. The Dieppe school of...

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