Today is Wednesday, Dec. 24, the 358th day of 2025. There are seven days left in the year. This is Christmas Eve. Today in history: On Dec. 24, 2013, Britain's Queen Elizabeth II granted a posthumous pardon to code-breaker Alan Turing, who was criminally convicted of homosexual behavior in the 1950s. Also on this date: In 1814, the United States and Britain signed the Treaty of Ghent, which would end the War of 1812 following ratification by both the British Parliament and the U.S. Senate.
Do you enjoy solving puzzles? What would you do if given a foreign code to decipher but no guide to grammar and no dictionary? That is exactly the problem faced by archeologists and linguists with regard to a number of ancient writing systems that remain a mystery to this day, despite technological advances. They tell of advanced civilizations whose writing we cannot understand.
The word vampire first appears in English in sensational accounts of a revenant panic in Serbia in the early 18th century. One case in 1725 concerned a recently deceased peasant farmer, Peter Blagojevic, who rose from the grave, visited his wife to demand his shoes, and then murdered nine people in the night. When his body was disinterred, his mouth was found full of fresh blood. The villagers staked the corpse and then burned it.
Long before Christmas turkeys arrived shrink-wrapped in the shops, they walked to market on their own two feet. First introduced to England in the 1500s, the birds gradually gained in popularity to become a must on the dinner tables of London's wealthy. But before the advent of refrigeration and the railways, getting turkeys from Norfolk and Suffolk farms to the capital involved a long walk for the birds.
Born in June 1924 in a Jewish family, he describes how he had a relatively normal childhood until the Anschluss of 1938 - when Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany - meant that life "took a completely different meaning and survival became the only aim". "Jewish shops and premises, synagogues, offices and anything where there was a Jewish connection quickly became a target for violence, fire, destruction, robbery, and personal attack," he writes.
Today is Tuesday, Dec. 23, the 357th day of 2025. There are eight days left in the year. Today in history: On Dec. 23, 1972, in an NFL playoff game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Oakland Raiders, Steelers running back Franco Harris scored a game-winning touchdown on a deflected pass with less than 10 seconds left. The Immaculate Reception, as the catch came to be known, is often cited as the greatest NFL play of all time.
How­ev­er cel­e­brat­ed by his­to­ri­ans, scru­ti­nized by archae­ol­o­gists, and descend­ed-upon by tourists it may be, Pom­peii is not excep­tion­al - not even in the fate of hav­ing been buried in ash by Mount Vesu­vius in the year 76, which also hap­pened to the near­by town of Her­cu­la­neum. Rather, it is the sheer ordi­nar­i­ness of that medi­um-sized provin­cial Roman city that we most val­ue today, inad­ver­tent­ly pre­served as it was by that vol­canic dis­as­ter. The new Lost in Time video above recon­structs
The story of the birth of Jesus appears only in two of the four Gospels of the New Testament: Matthew and Luke. They provide different details, though both say Jesus was born in Bethlehem. The exact day, month and even year of Jesus's birth are unknown, said Christine Shepardson, a professor at the University of Tennessee who studies early Christianity. The tradition of celebrating Jesus' birth on Dec. 25, she said, only emerged in the fourth century.
Medieval underwear is supposed to be the ultimate non-subject: private, practical, and largely invisible. Yet medieval artists kept finding ways to show it-right at the moments when a body matters most. In manuscripts, panel paintings, and devotional imagery from Northern Europe, men's undergarments-usually called braies-appear when someone is working, humiliated, punished, exposed, or put on display for a moral lesson.
Research suggests that the introduction of monetary systems in Central Europe can be traced back to Celtic mercenaries. These men were paid for their services in Greece with coins and brought them back home with them. Around the middle of the 3rd century BC, the Celts began their own coinage, imitating gold coins of the Macedonian king Philip II (359336 BC).
For the modern scholar, Gómez's treatise offers a similarly rich array of information and insights. It provides an eyewitness account of a major environmental disaster affecting one of the most developed urban landscapes in Europe and shows how contemporaries analyzed the causes and consequences of natural disasters. It also offers a rich and varied example of how contemporary scholars could mobilize their written sources; exercise skills in reading and historical interpretation honed by their studies in law, medicine, and the classics;
Today is Friday, Dec. 19, the 353rd day of 2025. There are 12 days left in the year. Today in history: On Dec. 19, 2008, citing imminent danger to the national economy, President George W. Bush ordered a $17.4 billion emergency bailout of the U.S. auto industry. Also on this date: In 1777, during the American Revolutionary War, Gen. George Washington led his army of more than 12,000 soldiers to Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, to camp for the winter.
In 2023, two metal detectorists discovered an assemblage of five Anglo-Saxon gold and garnet jewels on a hillside near Donington on Bain in Lincolnshire, UK. Dating to the 7th century, they were found dispersed over a radius of 20-30 feet in plough soil, indicating they had recently been churned up by deep cultivation. The assemblage is the largest group of gold and garnet jewelry known from Lincolnshire.
In close air support, speed and precision matter, but trust matters more. Aircraft earn that trust by showing up under fire, surviving hostile environments, and delivering reliable support when ground forces need it most. Across generations of warfare, certain aircraft proved so effective that they reshaped how CAS missions were planned and executed. Close air support plays an important role in military operations because it delivers precise, immediate firepower to protect ground forces,
To characterize the Mexican-American War as only a training ground for the officers who would later serve on both sides in the Civil War is a simplification and a disservice to all who fought between 1846 and 1848, but, at the same time, there is truth to the label. The Mexican-American War provided the theater in which many of the most famous Civil War generals learned the art of warfare firsthand, and they made use of those lessons later to great effect.
The first computers weren't coded with words or languages, but by manipulating physical entities to do fairly basic calculations. "Programmers" would plug wires into sockets, set switches, turn dials, and spin rotors. It was, at the time, considered "women's work" because it was mostly clerical. But setting that aside, it was all mechanical in nature. These workers didn't call themselves "programmers" but "operators" because they physically operated the machine.
Brunanburh was a decisive clash between the West Saxon king Athelstan and a coalition force led by King Anlaf of Dublin, King Constantine of Alba, and King Owain of Strathclyde. After a day-long and exceptionally bloody battle, Athelstan's army emerged victorious. The defeated Hiberno-Norse forces retreated by sea to Dublin, while the northern British armies returned home. For Athelstan, the victory was the crowning moment of his reign, supporting his claim to be the "ruler of all Britain".
Archaeological investigations in the English city of York have uncovered evidence of early medieval occupation alongside substantial Roman remains, shedding new light on the city's long and complex past. The discoveries were made on the site of a new hotel development. Excavations carried out ahead of construction revealed pottery fragments, animal bones, building materials, and metal objects, including coins. These artefacts suggest sustained activity on the site.
The Donation of Constantine is one of the most famous forgeries of the Middle Ages, used for centuries to justify sweeping claims of Church authority. Yet in a medieval world where truth, power, and legitimacy were understood differently, the document's influence was far more complex than a simple act of deception. If the myth of Emperor Constantine's Donation were to be uncovered today, the headlines all over social media would be, "Fake news exposed!"
Like elsewhere in the world, New Year's resolutions in Germany are a bit like astrology, in the sense that some people take this very seriously, while others might be sarcastic about the whole concept but in the end, it's a great topic for small talk, as everyone has their own very special opinion on the matter. Most people know, of course, that it's also part of the tradition to abandon any New Year's self-improvement plan within the first weeks of January.
The Locarno Pact, actually a group of seven treaties (hence its other name: the Locarno Treaties), was signed on 1 December 1925 with the aim that peace continued in Europe despite the German government's disapproval of the Treaty of Versailles, which formally concluded the First World War (1914-18). The pact is named after the Swiss town of Locarno, where the delegates from seven European nations met.
All I want for Christmas is the Nairn Museum potato flask. Showcased as part of the Highland museum's virtual Advent calendar on Instagram last week, it's a late-18th-century Staffordshire pottery flask to be filled with strong drink and used to toast a safe journey for a traveller shaped like a very realistic, knobbly spud, complete with green bits. The benefactor who donated the flask apparently explained it was so ugly that no one in his family wanted to inherit it.
Why Are We Covering This? Understanding the military aircraft produced by Lockheed Martin is important for a few reasons. These aircraft represent significant advancements in aerospace technology and innovation, and they have ultimately shaped what we know of modern air combat and transportation. These aircraft also are crucial to the overall defense strategy of the United States and its allies in maintaining global stability.
