Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
© Ωριγένης, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC-BY-SA 3.0.
Following an appalling atrocity in fourth-century Thessalonica, two strong and determined men refused to back down.
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The ten-year-old got away from a royal castle disguised as a bundle of hay.
From Wikimedia Commons.
Edmond Halley will forever be associated with the comet named after him, but his greatest achievement was getting Sir Isaac Newton to publish ‘Principia Mathematica’.
© François Bernardin, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC-BY-SA 3.0.
In 6th century France, a faithful kitchen servant sold himself into slavery to rescue a kidnapped boy.
© Tom Pennington, Geograph. Licence: CC-BY-SA 2.0.
John Goodricke’s observations of Algol won him the Copley Medal while still in his teens, despite his disability.
© Erin Clark, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Headquarters, via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC-BY-SA 2.0.
A telling satire on fashionable thinking among the elite.