A popular urban legend that has been circulating for decades now claims that the beloved children’s nursery rhyme “Ring around the Rosie” is actually about the Black Death. Although this may make for a good story, it is, in fact, totally false; the song “Ring around the Rosie” did not even first appear until centuries after the Black Death had been effectively eradicated in England.
Continue reading ““Ring around the Rosie” Is Not about the Black Death, Nor Has It Ever Been”The Ancient Greek Sorcerer’s Apprentice
I have already written about how the modern story of “Cinderella” is probably derived from the ancient Greek story of Rhodopis, but the story of the “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” also originates from ancient Greece.
Misunderstood Myths, Part Six: The Moirai and the Graiai
Disney cartoons are an American cultural icon. Sadly, Disney has a habit of taking age-old stories, changing everything about them, and making cartoons of them. Then, unfortunately, the Disney version somehow automatically becomes the “official,” orthodox version of the story, even though the Disney versions often have very little at all in common with the originals.
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The Not-So-Pagan Origins of Easter
If you have been on the internet at all around this time of year, you have no doubt at some point encountered claims that Easter is actually a pre-Christian pagan holiday and that popular modern Easter traditions such as the Easter bunny and painting Easter eggs are actually thinly-veiled pagan customs. I am here to tell you that these claims are essentially bunk. Although the holiday of Easter takes its name in English from an obscure Anglo-Saxon dawn goddess, the holiday itself is of Christian origin and there is no evidence to support the notion that popular traditions such as the Easter bunny and the painting of Easter eggs were ever pagan.
What Three Hated Symbols Used to Mean Before They Were Hijacked by Extremists
Today, every time someone sees a swastika, he or she automatically thinks “Nazism” and whenever someone sees a pentagram or an upside-down cross, he or she immediately thinks “Satanism.” All three of these symbols, however, originally possessed very different meanings with far less sinister connotations.
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The Founding Fathers’ Views on Slavery
We have all heard that our country was founded on the idea that “all men are created equal.” That is certainly what Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence in 1776. Unfortunately, ideas are often quite different from actions. The vast majority of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America owned slaves and, for many of them, their public statements stood in stark contrast with their own private actions and beliefs. Nonetheless, their views on the issue of slavery were actually quite diverse and many of them changed their views on the subject over the courses of their lives. In this article, we will examine the unvarnished truth of some of the major Founding Fathers’ views on slavery.
The Story of the Liberty Bell
In 1751, Isaac Norris, the speaker of the Pennsylvania Assembly commissioned the creation of a new bell for the Pennsylvania Statehouse (later known as Independence Hall) in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of William Penn’s Charter of Privileges in 1701.
Caesar’s Real Last Words
On 15 March 44 BC, an event happened that changed history forever: a group of over thirty conspirators led by Gaius Cassius Longinus, Marcus Junius Brutus the Younger, and Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus assassinated the Roman politician and general Gaius Julius Caesar in the Theater of Pompey. It is an assassination that has gone down as one of the most famous in history. The assassination of Julius Caesar has been the subject of countless plays, books, films, television shows, and even video games.
Partially reinforced by these takes on Caesar’s assassination in popular culture, many people mistakenly believe that Julius Caesar’s last words were, “Et tu, Brute?” which means, “And you, Brutus?” in Latin—allegedly an expression of shock and horror at Marcus Junius Brutus’s betrayal. In reality, however, the historical Julius Caesar never uttered these words; no one knows what Caesar’s real last words were, but ancient writers attribute a number of different phrases to him in the moments leading up to his death.
Continue reading “Caesar’s Real Last Words”Enheduanna: The Earliest Poet Whose Name Is Recorded
March, as most of you probably already know, is Women’s History Month. In honor of this month, I thought I would write a series of articles about famous women from the ancient world. Unfortunately, this idea has been greatly hindered by the extreme rarity of such women. In fact, the ancient world was so overwhelmingly male-dominated that only a tiny handful of women’s names have even been recorded. Fortunately, however, there are a few famous women from the ancient world whose achievements truly stand out; finding them is just more difficult. Many of these famous ancient women were poets since poetry-writing was one of the few career options that was open to them.
In fact, the very first poet whose name has been recorded was actually a woman. Her name was Enheduanna and she was the daughter of Sargon of Akkad.
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The Story of Saint Patrick
Every year on March 17, people all across the United States celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day, but only a few people actually know who Saint Patrick really was.
The historical Saint Patrick was a Christian missionary who lived during the middle part of the fifth century A.D. Most early saints do not have any extant writings. Consequently, all information about these saints can only come from records written by others, who sometimes lived much later than the saint him or herself. This, however, is not the case with Saint Patrick. Two documents written by Patrick himself have survived to the present day. The first of these documents is a brief autobiography entitled Confession. The second is a letter written to the soldiers of Coroticus. These sources provide us with a great deal of firsthand information about Saint Patrick’s life.