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A large cemetery from the time of the Crusades was discovered near a medieval stone church in Salo Perttel, a former municipality in Finland.A landowner in the municipality of Salo was looking over excavation work for the installation of geothermal pipes when he spotted an iron object poking out of a mound of dirt. He pulled it out and found himself holding a nearly complete He was reported to archaeologists from the University of Turku and the Turku Museum Centre.The find has now led to the discovery of an extensive grave field, not far from the grey granite medieval church...

For most of human history, the disasters wrought by nature were utterly unpredictable, their causes wholly unknown. They were merely a random act of God that could lay waste to whole cities without warning. On the morning of May 20, 1202, thousands of people across an enormous swath of the Earth experienced such destruction.The Forgotten 1202 earthquakeThe History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered1.13M subscribers | 79,737 views | December 12, 2022

In 1187, Saladin managed to defeat the Crusader states and reconquer Jerusalem, prompting Richard to initiate another military campaign to regain Christian control over the Holy Land. After Acre surrendered to him, the king started to descend along Israel's coast with his forces. "Ultimately, Richard and the Crusaders wanted to reconquer Jerusalem, but first the monarch decided to march south to capture Jaffa," the archaeologist explained. The march along the shore allowed the troops to be protected by the Mediterranean Sea on their right side and to receive the logistical support of their fleet. Lewis pointed out that Richard proved...

Scientists have discovered extinct strains of smallpox in the teeth of Viking skeletons - proving for the first time that the killer disease plagued humanity for at least 1400 years. Smallpox spread from person to person via infectious droplets, killed around a third of sufferers and left another third permanently scarred or blind. Around 300 million people died from it in the 20th century alone before it was officially eradicated in 1980 through a global vaccination effort - the first human disease to be wiped out... He said: "We discovered new strains of smallpox in the teeth of Viking skeletons...

Archaeological evidence suggested that 25 individuals whose remains were found in a burial pit near a Crusader castle near Sidon, Lebanon, were warriors who died in battle in the 1200s. Based on that, Tyler-Smith, Haber, and their colleagues conducted genetic analyses of the remains and were able to sequence the DNA of nine Crusaders, revealing that three were Europeans, four were Near Easterners, and two individuals had mixed genetic ancestry... ...when the researchers sequenced the DNA of people living in Lebanon 2,000 years ago during the Roman period, they found that today's Lebanese population is actually more genetically similar to...

About 700 years ago, a bronze ring depicting St. Nicholas — the saint who inspired the modern-day figure of Santa Claus — slipped off the finger of its owner, likely either a crusader or a pilgrim traveling to the Holy Land. The ring lay buried in the dirt for hundreds of years, until a gardener in Israel found it last week while weeding in Lower Galilee. The gardener, Dekel Ben-Shitrit, 26, turned the unusual ring over to Israel's National Treasures Department, where archaeologists dated the metal artifact to between the 12th and 15th centuries, during the Middle Ages. [The Holy...

A classroom assignment on Islam says one negative effect of the Crusades is that Christians are still treating Muslims harshly. “I almost fell over,” said Barbara Light. Mrs. Light, of Westwood, New Jersey, was helping her 13-year-old daughter prepare for a World History test when she discovered some rather shocking lessons. “The Christians’ harsh treatment of Muslims in the Holy Land led to bitterness that has lasted to the present,” one worksheet stated.

A U.S.-based Saudi professor and former U.N. fellow says he agrees with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that the Holocaust is a "myth" and says America eventually will collapse like the Soviet Union. Abdullah Mohammad Sindi, who has taught at four American schools, told Iran's Mehr News Agency Dec. 26, "I agree wholeheartedly with President Ahmadinejad." "There was no such a thing as the 'Holocaust,'" Sindi said, according to the Middle East Media Research Institute. "The so-called 'Holocaust' is nothing but Jewish-Zionist propaganda. There is no proof whatsoever that any living Jew was ever gassed or burned in Nazi Germany or...

One day, if this goes on, schools will no longer be allowed to teach about September 11, just as many European schools are not allowed to teach about the Holocaust, to avoid offending Muslims. Between the blasphemy/incitement laws and the voluntary censorship, a bubble of historical ignorance is being created and maintained in the hopes that this will prevent acts of Muslim terror and avoid exposing the failure of Muslim integration into multiculturalism.

Schools are dropping the Holocaust from history lessons to avoid offending Muslim pupils, a Governmentbacked study has revealed. It found some teachers are reluctant to cover the atrocity for fear of upsetting ........

Schools are dropping the Holocaust from history lessons to avoid offending Muslim pupils, a Governmentbacked study has revealed. It found some teachers are reluctant to cover the atrocity for fear of upsetting students whose beliefs include Holocaust denial. There is also resistance to tackling the 11th century Crusades - where Christians fought Muslim armies for control of Jerusalem - because lessons often contradict what is taught in local mosques. The findings have prompted claims that some schools are using history 'as a vehicle for promoting political correctness'. The study, funded by the Department for Education and Skills, looked into 'emotive...

SCHOOLS AXE CONTROVERSIAL SUBJECTS Schools are dropping controversial subjects from history lessons - such as the Holocaust and the Crusades - because teachers do not want to cause offence, Government research has found. The way the slave trade is taught can lead white children - as well as black pupils - to feel alienated, according to the study by the Historical Association. Some teachers have even dropped the Holocaust completely from lessons over fears that Muslim pupils might express anti-Semitic reactions in class. And one school avoided teaching the Crusades because its "balanced" handling of the topic would directly contradict...

Teachers are dropping controversial subjects such as the Holocaust and the Crusades from history lessons because they do not want to offend children from certain races or religions, a report claims. A lack of factual knowledge among some teachers, particularly in primary schools, is also leading to “shallow” lessons on emotive and difficult subjects, according to the study by the Historical Association.

In Cheshire, two students at the Alsager High School were punished by their teacher for refusing to pray to Allah as part of their religious education class. ... British schools are increasingly dropping the Jewish Holocaust from history lessons to avoid offending Muslim pupils, according to a report entitled, Teaching Emotive and Controversial History, commissioned by the Department for Education and Skills. British teachers are also reluctant to discuss the medieval Crusades, in which Christians fought Muslim armies for control of Jerusalem: lessons often contradict what is taught in local mosques.

Some British schools are dropping lessons on the Holocaust and the Crusades, seeking to avoid antagonizing Muslim students. A Historical Association report, funded by the department for education and skills, said teachers feared confronting “anti-Semitic sentiment and Holocaust denial among some Muslim pupils.” Some teachers also “deliberately avoided teaching the Crusades” because “a balanced school treatment would have challenged teaching in some local mosques.” Give the study credit for raising the point that almost any history lesson could put some noses out of joint. Teaching about the slave trade, for instance, could leave both white and black children feeling alienated....

A report by Britain’s Department for Education and Skills notes that an increasing number of schools are dropping the teaching of the Holocaust from history lessons to avoid offending Muslim students. The report, titled Teaching Emotive and Controversial History, also observes that many teachers are reluctant to discuss the Crusades because the lessons frequently contradict what is taught in local mosques. It gets worse. The website Family Security Matters (h/t Weasel Zippers) reports: In an effort to counter ‘Islamophobia’ in British schools, teachers now are required to teach ‘key Muslim contributions such as Algebra and the number zero’ in math...

Considering the Crusades in the Context of the Current Conflict with Radical Islamists By: Msgr. Charles PopeRecent and persistent attacks by radical Muslims, especially the most recent beheadings of 21 Egyptian Christians, have many asking what can or should be done to end such atrocities. Military actions by numerous countries, including our own, are already underway. Most feel quite justified in these actions and many are calling for more concerted efforts to eliminate ISIS and related zealots who seem to know no pity, no reason, and no limits. I do not write here to opine on the need for...

Conservative media were in an uproar last week over the President’s remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast. He said that we see “faith being twisted and distorted … sometimes used as a weapon” and “lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ." Nearly everyone took the statement to mean “Catholic pot, don’t call the Muslim kettle black.” And they were quick to point out that the “terrible deeds in the name of Christ” were...

Catholic cardinals need to step up? Where's Cardinal Dolan? every single Christian denomination must rise up in arms against this "Muslim-defensive" statement. Perhaps there is a fear of stoking the fires in the Middle-East but there comes a time when fear must give way to political courage. Obama needs a ferocious rebuttal on the history of the Crusades who sought to recapture the Holy Land taken by Muslim invaders.

[Medieval Islamic astronomers predict eclipse of the moon] Earlier this year, as conflict raged in northern Syria, two professors, one Lebanese and the other American, both from elite universities in the Washington, D.C. area, passed the long night at Queen Alia International Airport in Amman, Jordan, drinking tea. They pondered the weighty issues of the region: whether the nation-state paradigm was the residue of colonialism or a reality to which nations of the Middle East must conform; American military engagement and its consequences; and, of course, the sources of violent extremism. At one point, the Lebanese professor lamented, “These...