A Brief History On February 14, 1349, the city of Strasbourg, France was the scene of a St. Valentine’s Day massacre 150 times worse than the more famous Chicago incident! Digging Deeper Digging deeper, we find Strasbourg at the time an independent Imperial City located in the region now known as Alsace on the French-German border. Lest you think anti-Semitism was something invented by the Nazi’s in World War II, pogroms against people practicing the Jewish faith go back a long time, even before the earliest settlement of Strasbourg in 12 B.C. In 1349, only a year after an epidemic of…
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A Brief History As you may have read earlier on our site today, on February 14, 269, Saint Valentine reportedly experienced martyrdom. He is but one of numerous saints whose lives and/or deaths can be considered unusual or “cracked”. Traditionally, Christians commemorate the saints with what is generally known as a Calendar of Saints, marking the various feast days of saints. We shall do similarly by providing our own Calendar of Saints featured on History and Headlines. Whether you are a Christian or not, the stories of these individuals are nevertheless quite fascinating! And yes, we are posting two Saint…
A Brief History On February 14th, many of our readers celebrate Saint Valentine’s Day, a day associated with the martyrdom of the famous saint who was allegedly sentenced by a Roman emperor to be beaten with clubs and beheaded for refusing to renounce Christianity. The execution possibly occurred on February 14, 269. Valentine’s brutal demise is but one of numerous unusual deaths that are covered on History and Headlines. This article will be unlike most every other article on our site, because it will be periodically updated to provide a comprehensive, albeit not exhaustive, list of history’s more unusual deaths.…
A Brief History On February 13, 1945, bombers from the Royal Air Force (RAF) and the American Air Force (USAAF) struck the eastern German city of Dresden, a city so beautiful it was once known as the “Florence on the Elbe,” incinerating tens of thousands of people. Digging Deeper Digging deeper, we find the Allies decisively beating the military forces of Nazi Germany on all fronts, including in the air. The British were particularly bitter about the destruction and death caused to British cities and civilians at the hands of Germany’s Luftwaffe (air force) early in the war and then again…
A Brief History On February 13, 2004, astronomers discovered that a white dwarf star known as BPM37093 is actually the largest diamond yet discovered in the universe! Digging Deeper Digging deeper, we find our great gem in the constellation Centaurus, about 50 light years away. White dwarf stars are now known to consist largely of crystallized carbon, which we know better as diamond! With a mass of 11 x 10 to the 29th power in U.S. pounds, the pulsating orb has been described as being 10 billion trillion trillion carats by the television show Modern Marvels (in a program about carbon), making it a…