Category | Culture & Heritage

Arizona Man Fights to Keep Gadsden Flag Flying Outside His Home

Posted on 25 August 2010

An Arizona man fighting to keep a historical American flag flying outside his home vows he will not take it down unless a judge orders him to.

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Legendary D-Day piper Bill Millin dies

Posted on 23 August 2010

Second world war bagpipe-player Bill Millin, whose music boosted morale during the D-Day Normandy landings, has died.

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Five stunning stone circles (besides Stonehenge)

Posted on 31 July 2010

Every year thousands of tourists flock to Stonehenge, the iconic stone circle on Salisbury Plain, England. While so much attention is focused on this site, especially with the recent discovery of another monument near Stonehenge, people often forget there’s (sic) more than a thousand stone circles in the British Isles and Continental Europe.

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2,200 ‘knights’ reenact medieval battle in Poland

Posted on 18 July 2010

Some 2,200 “knights” from across Europe donned suits of armour, flowing capes and linen shirts on Sunday to reenact one of medieval Europe’s bloodiest battles.

Cockney to disappear from London ‘within 30 years’

Posted on 01 July 2010

In London, Cockney will be replaced by Multicultural London English – a mixture of Cockney, Bangladeshi and West Indian accents – the study shows.

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British archaeologists fight with Italian farmer to save ancient aqueduct

Posted on 09 June 2010

British archaeologists are battling with an Italian farmer to save the site of an ancient aqueduct which provided Rome with fresh water 1,900 years ago.

Archaeologists given the rune around

Posted on 09 June 2010

A new study of rune stones from Viking times shows that many of the carvings are meaningless.

Historian reveals new insights into medieval rune stones

Posted on 08 June 2010

“The language and factual information of runic inscriptions are fairly well researched, but we know little about how Viking Age people read a rune stone,” says Marco Bianchi at the Department of Scandinavian Languages, whose dissertation investigates Viking Age written culture in the provinces of Uppland and Södermanland.

Kubb tournament touts appeal of ‘Viking chess’

Posted on 06 June 2010

Bag sets, bocce ball and washers are popular lawn games found at summer cookouts and gatherings.

The Swedish Historical Society is trying to add another game to that mix.

Vandals deface Uffington White Horse in Oxfordshire

Posted on 05 June 2010

Vandals have targeted the ancient Uffington White Horse in Oxfordshire by spraying part of it purple.

Officers from Thames Valley Police were called to the 3,000-year-old chalk monument at about 2200 BST on…

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The decline and fall of the British boozer

Posted on 31 May 2010

Britain’s pubs are having a hard time. Just how many pubs are closing depends on who you ask. The Times (London) has suggested it’s 52 per week, the Telegraph says six per day, and the Lost Pub Project lists a grand total of 10,284 departed boozers. Whatever the exact numbers, the pub is a Great British institution under severe pressure, and it’s as likely to be the apparently successful bar as the street-corner dive that is shutting up shop. Why?

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Save our Anglo-Saxon stone!

Posted on 27 April 2010

Part of an ancient Northamptonshire monument to England’s first female hermit is up for sale. Should it be allowed to leave Britain?

A sketch of the stone

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Viking Thomasinas: Cross-gender name elements in Viking naming practices

Posted on 27 April 2010

Vikings had the same concerns about choosing their children’s names as we do, says a researcher from the University of Leicester who delivered his paper at a recent Viking conference. The sixth Midlands Viking Symposium was held at the University of Nottingham on April 24th, with eight talks by Viking experts.

Dr Philip Shaw, a Lecturer in English Language and Old English, offered his expertise on how the Vikings named their children. He discussed the practice of giving names derived from male names to female children, which was commonplace in the Viking Age.

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England least patriotic nation in Europe, too scared to fly the flag

Posted on 19 April 2010

The English are the least patriotic people in Europe, a St George’s Day poll found today.

Their fear of being smeared as racist is greater than their enthusiasm for expressing their love of their country, it found.

Only one in ten would happily fly the cross of St George to celebrate their national saint’s day.

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Pictish symbols revealed to be a written language

Posted on 01 April 2010

A new study has discovered that Picts, a people living in Scotland during the Early Middle Ages, did have a written language made from the symbols they inscribed in stone. A British team has been able to partially decipher these symbols using used a mathematical process known as Shannon entropy which allowed them to spot the distinctive patterns characteristic of written language in the symbol stones.

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Religious beliefs are the basis of the origins of Palaeolithic art

Posted on 29 March 2010

This statement isn’t new, but for years anthropologists, archaeologists and historians of art understood these artistic manifestations as purely aesthetic and decorative motives. Eduardo Palacio-Pérez, researcher at the University of Cantabria (UC), now reveals the origins of a theory that remains nowadays/lasts into our days.

Nottingham hosts Robin Hood events and exhibition

Posted on 29 March 2010

The City of Nottingham has started to cash in on the hype for the upcoming Robin Hood movie by teaming up with Universal Films and director Ridley Scott to create an exhibition at Nottingham Castle and Sherwood Forest. Furthermore, Nottingham City Council and Nottinghamshire County Council have declared May Robin Hood Month.

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Greenland Vikings ‘had Celtic blood’

Posted on 22 March 2010

Norsemen who settled in southern Greenland carried more Celtic than Nordic blood – but they were still decidedly Scandinavian.

How Nature Inspired the Alphabet

Posted on 17 March 2010

32,000 years ago, ancient humans gathered in a cave in Lascaux, France, where, by firelight, they created the first hand-drawn forms–scenes depicting man’s relationship with the natural world.

Gloucestershire’s cheese rolling cancelled for health and safety fears

Posted on 13 March 2010

A centuries-old cheese rolling contest has fallen victim to health and safety — but not because of the broken bones and dozens of other injuries sustained each year.

Organisers of Gloucestershire’s annual competition have cancelled the event due to be held on May 31 because of concerns raised by the police and local authority over traffic and crowd control.

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