GoKawiil
Tech News
Historical pamphlets describing 17th-century British disasters, such as the Bristol flood and a reported shower of wheat, went to notable lengths to convince readers of their truthfulness. Authors cited named eyewitnesses, sometimes including their addresses or occupations, and in one case invoked the Lord Chancellor of Ireland as a source to lend authority to an account of a cross appearing in the moon.
A historical essay revisits the famous Monty Python coconut sketch and points out that coconuts were actually well-documented in medieval England, despite the film's joke suggesting otherwise. The piece cites surviving fifteenth-century coconut cups held by Oxford and Cambridge colleges as physical evidence that the fruit reached Britain centuries before the film's setting.
A historical essay argues that Victorian Britain's ruling class, despite lacking rigorous STEM education and favoring leisure, partying, and sport over austere work habits, presided over a century in which Britain became the world's richest nation with dominant naval, industrial, and commercial power. The piece contrasts this with modern narratives that equate success with intense discipline, early rising, and relentless labor.
New research led by Curtin University and the University of York has identified Brimham Rocks in North Yorkshire as the true source of the massive sandstone pillars forming the Devil's Arrows near Boroughbridge. Each stone weighs over 25 tonnes and stands up to seven meters tall, and the study overturns earlier assumptions that nearby Plumpton Rocks supplied the material. The monument likely dates to around 2000 BC, during the Late Neolithic or Early Bronze Age.