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Goliath, a giant of a man from Philistia, has challenged Israel’s warrior-heroes to meet him in single combat, but only a shepherd boy is brave enough to step up.
When Goliath, a mountain of a man from Philistia, challenged Israel’s warrior-heroes to mortal combat only David, a shepherd boy, stepped up. King Saul felt shame that only this brave but hopeless boy was ready to fight for the nation. On the other hand, the prophet Samuel had foretold that a man ‘better than thou’ would take Saul’s crown, and it was a relief to know that there was no such man in all his kingdom.
Alexander, who had just taken the bath intended for his vanquished enemy Darius of Persia and was now eating Darius’s supper, was interrupted by a commotion in the camp.
It is November 5th, 333 BC. Aided by his fast friend Hephaestion, the young King Alexander of Macedon in northern Greece has just defeated Darius III, King of Persia, at the Battle of Issus on the modern-day Turkish-Syrian border. The first thing he did after taking possession of the enemy camp was to go to the hot bath prepared for Darius. ‘So this’ he laughed as slaves poured in fragrant salts ‘is what it is to be a king!’
A Danish soldier in the seventeenth century imposes the severest sentence he can think of.
Flensburg is now in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, but until 1864 it was Flensborg, an important harbour town in the Kingdom of Denmark. At one time, brewing was a major industry, and if this story is to be believed, to be deprived of a drop of Flensborg beer was as much as man could bear.
William the Conqueror’s purge of the English Church was halted by a humble bishop and a dead king.
After the Conquest in 1066, William of Normandy appointed an Italian, Lanfranc, as Archbishop of Canterbury, and set about clearing out the English bishops. Wulfstan was the last, stubbornly protecting the English from their new masters, and it seemed God was on the side of the old religion, too.