A Brief History Inferno (Italian for “Hell”) is the first part of Dante Alighieri’s 14th-century epic poem Divine Comedy.  It is followed by Purgatorio and Paradiso.  It is an allegory telling of the journey of Dante through Hell, guided by the Roman poet Virgil.  In the poem, Hell is depicted as nine circles of suffering located within the Earth.  Allegorically, the Divine Comedy represents the journey of the soul toward God, with the Inferno describing the recognition and rejection of sin. Digging Deeper: Inferno by Dante Alighieri, translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Canto I Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself…

A Brief History On July 20, 1304, the forces of King Edward I of England successfully took Stirling Castle during the First War of Scottish Independence.  Although the Scots would ultimately maintain their independence, key to the English victory was the intimidating-sounding “Warwolf,” allegedly the largest trebuchet ever made.  This mighty siege engine catapulted rocks or other projectiles that weighed up to 300 pounds and was capable of battering down the walls of any castle.    Digging Deeper Intimidated by the weapon, the Scots tried to surrender the castle, but Edward (known as “Longshanks”) wanted to see the effectiveness of…

A Brief History On July 17, 1917, King George V of the United Kingdom changed the British royal family’s name from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to the more English-sounding Windsor. Digging Deeper A blatantly political move, changing the German name was done under pressure from a war-weary nation that had been fighting  in what at the time had been the biggest and costliest war in human history.  England had even been bombed by German bomber aircraft named Gotha, causing that much more resentment. As a cousin of both Czar Nicholas II of Russia and Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, King George knew the incestuous nature…

A Brief History “Fragment of a Novel” (1819) is an unfinished vampire horror story written by Lord Byron (1788–1824).  The story, also known as “A Fragment” and “The Burial: A Fragment”, was one of the first in English to feature a vampire theme.  The main character was Augustus Darvell.  John William Polidori (1795–1821) based his novella The Vampyre (1819) on the Byron fragment.  The vampire in the Polidori story, Lord Ruthven, was modelled on Byron himself.  The story was the result of the meeting that Byron had in 1816 with Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) where a “ghost writing” contest was…

A Brief History On July 13, 2013, self-appointed community watchman George Zimmerman, an Hispanic-American, was found not guilty of having murdered 17-year-old African-American Trayvon Martin on February 26, 2012.  The case was closely watched across America and prompted strong racial tensions. Digging Deeper Because of Zimmerman’s outward appearance, the public assumed, with help from the media, that he was white.  He is white but also Hispanic and has some African background.  The media also falsely portrayed the video and audio recordings of the incident where Zimmerman observed and then shot to death the unarmed black teen.  The 911 call was altered…