Free Republic

A psychotherapist has claimed the trauma suffered by ancestors in the European witch hunts has harmed today's generation of women. Cali White, from West Sussex, insists women have inherited 'self-destructive' behaviours like a 'deep-rooted mistrust' of other females and a 'fear of being heard or seen' after their forebears had to adopt the traits to survive the witch hunts. During the Early Modern era - 1450 to 1750 - tens of thousands of women were executed as 'witches' across the continent. Cali is a lead curator of an exhibition I am Witch - Tales from the Roundhouse, which is to...

The Roman Ninth Legion's mysterious loss 16 March 2011 The disappearance of Rome's Ninth Legion has long baffled historians, but could a brutal ambush have been the event that forged the England-Scotland border, asks archaeologist Dr Miles Russell, of Bournemouth University. One of the most enduring legends of Roman Britain concerns the disappearance of the Ninth Legion. The theory that 5,000 of Rome's finest soldiers were lost in the swirling mists of Caledonia, as they marched north to put down a rebellion, forms the basis of a new film, The Eagle, but how much of it is true? It is...

During the dying days of the Roman Republic, with effete senators stabbing each other in the back when they were not busy in orgies, Julius Caesar followed the exact trajectory of a Leviathan—what Thomas Hobbes described beautifully hundreds of years later. Caesar, by this time opposed to the Senate, which obstructed his imperial aims, decided to cross the river Rubicon, thereby declaring war on the last vestiges of the craven republic. After crossing the river, Caesar famously said Alea Eacta Est, or the die is cast. Thus crossing the Rubicon is now considered a revolutionary act that aims to destroy...

The effects of the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004 are only too well known: It knocked the hell out of Aceh Province on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, leveling buildings, scattering palm trees, and wiping out entire villages. It killed more than 160,000 people in Aceh alone and displaced millions more. Similar scenes of destruction were repeated along the coasts of Southeast Asia, India, and as far west as Africa. The magnitude of the disaster shocked the world. What the world did not know was that the 2004 tsunami—seemingly so unprecedented in scale—would yield specific clues to one of...