Alexander selkirk is finally rescued

After spending over a decade mapping our Milky Way, the European Space Agency’s Gaia satellite is now being put into retirement. The spacecraft has almost depleted its reserves of the cold nitrogen ga

How a Castilian knight fought Christians and Muslims alike to become a national icon

I once met a man who claimed he saw a huge black panther (circa 1990) near his farmhouse in Scotland. It had a pheasant in its mouth. He ran to get his shotgun but the creature had vanished. I knew th

Alfred and Bede. These are the two figures who tower over the first half-millennium of the history of Anglo-Saxon England. There’s a reason for that, of course: they wrote this history. The Venerable

I use a lot of images in my blogs, published articles and presentations. Some are photos of people. Many are diagrams, graphs or copies of documents from parish registers, books and articles or websit

One day late in 1939, a small article appeared in our daily newspaper. It was submitted by the government and was an appeal for British women to knit socks for men in the army, which was unable to obt