A Brief History On July 10, 1040, Lady Godiva is supposed to have ridden naked on horseback to force her husband, the Earl of Mercia, to lower taxes. Digging Deeper Before and since Lady Godiva’s legendary ride, many other women have made great impressions on culture, society and history mainly because they were in the buff. This article lists Medieval women (those who lived from about 476-1517) famous for being naked or who, at one point in their lives, had famously been naked. The order they will be presented in is not a ranking, but merely a chronological listing. Please…
Browsing: Naked History
A Brief History Historian Linda Hall asks, “Were Ancient women powerful or powerless?”1 One might refine this question to ask, “Were Ancient women famous for being naked powerful or powerless?” The women listed below unquestionably wielded power on men and women alike despite and in some cases because of their physical attributes. This article therefore explores some of Antiquity’s most famous women known for being naked and their influence on history. Digging Deeper 1) Nefertiti (c. 1,370 B.C. – c. 1,330 B.C) Known primarily for the beautifully sculpted bust that is on display at the Egyptian Museum in Berlin, Nefertiti, wife of…
A Brief History On November 27, 1835, 2 Englishmen were hanged for the crime of sodomy (Section 15, Offences Against the Person Act of 1828) and a third man was convicted of being an accessory, receiving a sentence of 14 years “penal transportation.” (Not to be confused with “penile transportation!” Penal transportation means being hauled off to a penal colony.) The law the men were charged under had replaced the Buggery Act of 1533. Digging Deeper James Pratt (age 30) and John Smith (age 40) were allegedly engaged in intimate homosexual acts when the building’s landlord and the landlord’s wife…
A Brief History On August 7th, 1908, the Venus of Willendorf, one of the earliest depictions of female nudity, was discovered in Austria. Digging Deeper In our previous article in this series, we had listed the top ten women famous for being naked, or who, at one point in their lives, had famously been naked. Of course there are many more prominent ladies who have disrobed in a public setting or who have been artistically represented in a state of undress. In this article, we examine eleven more such women. For the latest installment in this series, the “Top 10 Black…
A Brief History On May 17, 1990, homosexual people around the world breathed a sigh of relief and vindication when the General Assembly of the World Health Organization ruled that homosexuality would no longer be considered a mental illness, paving the way for the culture shaking changes that have followed in the next 26 years. Digging Deeper One major change in American culture was marked when the first legal same sex marriages in the United States were performed on May 17, 2004 in Massachusetts. The Netherlands had broken this taboo in 2001 and as of now a total of 15…
