Massacre of Verden

The Massacre of Verden (German: Blutgericht von Verden) was an alleged massacre of Saxons in 782 near the present town of Verden in Lower Saxony, Germany, ordered by Charlemagne during the Saxon Wars.

In 782 A.D. some 4,500 Saxon leaders are said to have been beheaded for practicing their indigenous paganism, having officially, albeit under duress, converted to Christianity and undergone baptism. The river Aller was said to have been flowing red with their blood. Charlemagne's motives were to demonstrate his overlordship and the severity of punishment for rebellion.
The effect was that the Saxons lost virtually their entire tribal leadership and were henceforth largely governed by Frankish counts installed by Charlemagne. The Saxon leader, Duke Widukind, had escaped to his in-laws in Denmark, but soon returned, submitted to Charlemagne, and accepted conversion.

The veracity of this event is questioned in some quarters: there may have been a misspelling in the original source by which the Latin delocabat (meaning exiled or displaced) erroneously became decollabat (meaning beheaded). Archaeological evidence for the massacre has not been found, although the bodies of the slain could have been buried elsewhere by their next-of-kin.
On the issue of beheading the historian Ramsay MacMullen notes that in 681 a council of bishops at Toledo called on civil authorities to seize and behead all those guilty of non-Christian practices of whatever sort. These massacres were common on both sides throughout the Christianization of Europe, with similar events involving pagan Saxons, Germans and Celts and Christians documented in Britain and Ireland.

Who built the Pyramids

The question of who built the pyramids, and how, has long been debated by Egyptologists and historians. Standing at the base of the pyramids at Giza it is hard to believe that any of these enormous monuments could have been built in one pharaoh's lifetime. Herodotus, the Greek historian who wrote in the 5th century B.C., 500 years before Christ, is the earliest known chronicler and historian of the Egyptian Pyramid Age. By his accounts, the labor force that built Khufu totalled more than 100,000 people. But Herodotus visited the pyramids 2,700 years after they were built and his impressive figure was an educated guess, based on hearsay. Modern Egyptologists believe the real number is closer to 20,000.

Mark Lehner and Zahi Hawass have been trying to solve the puzzle of where the 20,000 - 30,000 laborers who built the pyramids lived. Once they find the workers' living area, they can learn more about the workforce, their daily lives, and perhaps where they came from. Mark has been excavating the bakeries that presumably fed this army of workers, and Zahi has been excavating the cemetery for this grand labor force. It is believed that Giza housed a skeleton crew of workers who labored on the pyramids year round. But during the late summer and early autumn months, during the annual flooding of the fields with water from the annual innundation of the Nile flooded the fields, a large labor force would appear at Giza to put in time on the pyramids. These farmers and local villagers gathered at Giza to work for their god kings, to build their monuments to the hereafter. This would ensure their own afterlife and would also benefit the future and prosperity of Egypt as a whole. They may well have been willing workers, a labor force working for ample rations, for the benefit of man, king, and country.

Knights Templar (Freemasonry)

The full title of this order is The United Religious, Military and Masonic Orders of the Temple and of St John of Jerusalem, Palestine, Rhodes and Malta.

Knights Templar is an international philanthropic chivalric order affiliated with Freemasonry. In some countries it forms part of the York Rite, while in others it is a separate order on its own. The original medieval Order of Knights Templar was established after the First Crusade, and existed from approximately 1118 to 1312. There is no known historical evidence to link the medieval Knights Templar and Masonic Templarism, nor do the Masonic Knights Templar organizations claim any such direct link to the original medieval Templar organization. Though it has been said that its affiliation with Masonry is based on texts that indicate persecuted Templars found refuge within the safety of Freemasonry, the order its self states that "there is no proof of direct connection between the ancient order and the modern order known today as the Knights Templar." The official motto of the Knights Templar is In Hoc Signo Vinces, the rendition in Latin of the Greek phrase "εν τούτῳ νίκα", en toutōi nika, meaning "in this [sign] you will conquer".

nanotechnology

Nanotechnology, shortened to "nanotech", is the science and technology of building devices, such as electronic circuits, from single atoms and molecules.

Manipulation of atoms, molecules, and materials to form structures on the scale of nanometres (billionths of a metre). These nanostructures typically exhibit new properties or behaviours due to quantum mechanics. In 1959 Richard Feynman first pointed out some potential quantum benefits of miniaturization. A major advancement was the invention of molecular-beam epitaxy by Alfred Cho and John Arthur at Bell Laboratories in 1968 and its development in the 1970s, which enabled the controlled deposition of single atomic layers. Scientists have made some progress at building devices, including computer components, at nanoscales. Faster progress has occurred in the incorporation of nanomaterials in other products, such as stain-resistant coatings for clothes and invisible sunscreens.

Although nanotechnology is a relatively recent development in scientific research, the development of its central concepts happened over a longer period of time.

Paul Hoffman - The Left Hand of God

The first truly hyped release of 2010, The Left Hand of God has a lot going for it - at least, on the surface. Gritty, dark fantasy cover art, great word of mouth & a tantalizing plot all add up to a lot of sound and fury. And, to give it credit, Hoffman does write a very more-ish book, fast-paced from start to finish.

The book's protagonist is Thomas Cale, an orphan in the care of the Redeemers. The Redeemers are a sinister, reclusive religious order that stress penitence & punishment (also torture and the occasional bout of pedophilia). Although the orphans are cut off from the world, it doesn't take much for Thomas to figure out that the abandoned kids are being trained into an army of killers.