The 1618 Defenestration of Prague explained: May 23rd was the 400th anniversary of this famous incident in which Protestants threw Catholic nobles out a window of Prague Castle, and this article from BBC’s History Extra blog explains the precipitating factors, mechanics (how did they survive the fall) and fallout. Comes about just as I’m editing a scene in which the papal representative to Bohemia expressed a desire to do the same thing to Edward Kelley* – evidently defenestration was a thing in Prague as recently as 1948.
The ‘lawe of nations’: how diplomatic immunity protected an Elizabethan assassin: especially timely after the recent attempted murder of Russian ex-spy Sergei Skripal.
Rot, drills and inequity: the tangled tale of teeth: just the images from this current Wellcome Collection exhibition are enough to feed any nascent dentistry phobias for all time. An example of while I love history, I wouldn’t have chosen to live in any time period prior to the invention of modern medicine.
What Magic Got Trump Elected?: less about magic and more about New Thought/modern self-help mentalities and how they inform modern business goals. Introduced me to my new vocabulary word: egregore, a kind of occult product of the group mind (see also: tulpa).
* Though the nuncio wanted to he didn’t, settling for kicking Dee and Kelley out of Bohemian lands. Much tidier, but didn’t last.
