Culture is part of the unholy trinity—culture, chaos, and cock-up—which roam through our versions of history, substituting for traditional theories of causation. – Filipe Fernández–Armesto "Pathfinders: A Global History of Exploration"

The NYT confirms Haaretz's report that Benjamin Netanyahu was secretly warned before Oct. 7, 2023 by the Emirati president that Hamas planned a major attack, per 2 sources The warning was not shared with Israeli security chiefs, per 5 ex-officials nytimes.com/2026/09/25/world…

For anyone who wishes to learn more about earlier rounds of ethnic cleansing by the Israeli state, I recommend Walid Khalidi's All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied & Depopulated by Israel in 1948. It's a forensic examination of what happened to each and every Palestinian village after 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homeland, 75 years ago, never to return.

The Galileo affair was an unusual case in what was otherwise huge support for science "The Catholic Church gave more financial and social support to the study of astronomy for over six centuries, from the recovery of ancient learning during the late Middle Ages into the Enlightenment, than any other,& probably all, institutions." -JL Heilbron,The Sun In the Church

*Uprooting trees to uproot the people* Weeks before the olive harvest, Israel orders uprooting Palestinian olive trees across the occupied West Bank. Thousands have already been destroyed since October 2023. Environment destruction is part of the accelerated ethnic cleansing.

Tonight at an award ceremony, Peter Thiel is asked why he considers himself German. Thiel mentions speaking German until age 12 but doesn’t say he was not in Germany but SW Africa in an apartheid town pretending to be a Nazi village. The everyday greeting was “Heil Hitler.”

The Fall of Constantinople (1453). Mapped on the Real City. Work by me.

This remains one of greatest posts of all time and they didn't even realise

New open-access book: The Zoroastrian World. Download the PDF direct from the publisher: taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-e…

I’m Palestinian. I did nothing to anyone at a music festival. From the first day, I condemned the killing of civilians by Hamas and other armed groups. Neither did the children I treated in Gaza. Neither did the families who lost their homes, their children, and sometimes everyone they loved. Condemn Hamas for what Hamas did. Condemn any armed group for the civilians it killed. But please don’t turn “Palestinians” into a single person collectively guilty of those crimes. We are millions of individual human beings with different beliefs, different choices, families we love, and lives we want to live. Please don’t make us prove our innocence before you allow us our humanity.

It was such a treat to discuss my novel with Al Vuona on his superb program!

Yawn.

Danish astronomer, Ole Rømer, who used the Moons of Jupiter to determine the speed of light, was born 25 September 1644 #histsci thonyc.wordpress.com/2013/09…

Beautiful topographic map of the UK from 1922. Published just after the death of the great cartographer John George Bartholomew by his company. Source: buff.ly/34e8VXq

So with the warning to look away from this one if you've yet to sit down for dinner (even you, that one single anonymous benefactor who X analytics suggests reads all of my posts!): Next to the myth that Medieval Europeans never bathed, the belief that they never used toilets either, preferring simply to soil themselves or throw their waste out into the street, is perhaps pop history's equivalent of the proverbial bad penny - in that no matter how hard you tried to be rid of it, it keeps cropping up everywhere. Often in greater numbers, too. Now while I know full well a post that statistically only one person will read will do absolutely nothing to dent the onslaught of Medieval bathroom deniers - since I'm a sucker for punishment and a hardcore ye olde toilet truther, I thought I'd do my bit for the war effort and assure you: contrary to popular belief, Medieval Europeans (in my case, the English specifically) in fact cared a great deal about where they did their business. After all, when even a member of the king's household was in 1307 found relieving himself on the walls of a London back alley, far from the incident being shrugged off as "the done thing", he was in fact jostled and shamed by passers by. Somewhat more tragically, when later in 1339 a child beggar was killed by a passing cart whilst engaging in similar outdoor toileting, the official account of the incident specifically labelled him "Little more than a savage" over the act - and you really can't get a firmer condemnation of public urination than that. The real tragic irony of it all, of course, is that the poor kid wouldn't have to have gone far at all to find a proper place to spend a penny. By the 15th Century, after all, some of the busiest parts of London already boasted over a dozen public latrines, one of which (the famous "Whittington’s Longhouse") catered for over a 100 people, whilst others were flushed by a private running water supply even back then! Indeed, building public toilets ("Houses of easement", in the wonderful lingo of the day) was both increasingly seen as an important official duty, as a well as a sound philanthropic venture for the well to do. 'High end' facilities such as those built by the Wardens of London over London Bridge in the 1380s rubbed shoulders with less fancy, but still serviceable, stone or even tile lined privies built near churches and other places of mass attendance. Nor was this just a preoccupation of Londoners! Public conveniences appear in almost all later Medieval English towns and cities, most often built over bridges such as the one crossing the Ouse in York, so that the waste could be carried as far away from the urban centre as possible. Not to be outdone, the treasurers of Norwich in the 1450s spent good money on purpose built guttering for their local toilets - while at roughly the same time, the waterfront of Hull carried no less than 5 facilities, all maintained by the public purse. That's not even to mention the abundance of private privies increasingly found across Medieval England - but as there's only so many times you can talk about toilets in polite society without being asked firmly to leave, here's the source of today's information, which much like the Middle Ages is far cleaner than you might think!: "Urban bodies", by Carole Rawcliffe - pages 140 to 142!

Preach!

114 children all with single sniper shots to the head. Some as young as 5 years old. Read that again. They're "hunting" children for fun. #StopTheGame

Dear History Friends, Any books will you suggest as a must read to understand the black death, and not restricted to the British perspective?