I am lucky enough to have seen a few of these amazing castles.  Each entry has some great pictures and a link to wikipedia where you can learn about crazy ol’ Ludwig for example.  An interesting history indeed.  Thanks for the tip Dee!

From the fairytales, princes, princesses and Disney movies of childhood and even as we get older, the appeal of the castle remains at least partly because they so regularly serve as backdrops in video games, movies and books.

The ancient city of Nagar has some strange skeletle remains:

“It’s the skeletons of the humans that are strange because they were not ‘buried’ in the usual sense of below ground level, and the heads were missing,” said Oates, of Cambridge University’s McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.   “They were simply lying on a surface, on which the outline of the body itself was still visible — that is, they were not buried, but the room was rapidly filled in after their deposition,” she added.

Read the rest of the article at Discovery News.

I received this email recently and thought I would post on the site in hopes that the readers of the blog/site can help out Mike. Please leave you answers in the comments. Thank you!

Hi,

I have listened to and enjoyed many of your podcasts. Here are two historical issues I’m curious about.

Why, after WWII, didn’t the Allies occupy Italy as they did Japan and Germany? Fascism began in Italy, after all. Is this because Italy was conquered first, and many Italians then rebelled against Musollini? Was it because the Italians weren’t taken very seriously as a military force?

also, I live in Bogota, Colombia. This country is, obviously, named for Christopher Columbus. But this is a Spanish-speaking region, and in Spanish Columbus is Cristobal Colon. So, why in the world would they have used the English version of the man’s name instead of the Spanish one, which might have given us a nation named ‘Colonia.’ (That, of course, would have been strange, since it’s the word for colony.)

Best and thanks,

Mike C.

Update:  I posted the questions on the Historum forums in hopes of more answers and we got some…

Lucius writes:

Hi historypodcast,

Why is München Munich? Why is Venezia Venice? I guess we just don’t like furriners that much, so we change their names to suit us. Either that or we’re too dumb. Or both.

and HistoryBuff7 says:

Italy surrendered after the allies invaded and Victor Emmanuel III dismissed Mussolini because by 1943 the Italian people lost their faith in Mussolini and were tired of the war.

and Pedro has maybe the best answer about Colombia…

Cristóbal Colón was Italian and his Italian name was Cristoforo Colombo. Yes, just like the detective on TV. The ‘ia’ of course is a common suffix and rules of orthography dictate dropping the ‘o’ and adding ‘ia’.
Why they chose the Italian spelling over the Spanish I can only guess. Tradition? To honor? Sounds better than Colonium or any other Spanish option?

In this detailed article by History of American Women blog we learn more about the first Marylanders, Algonquian languages, Nanticokes, the Piscataway/ Conoy and other tribes…

The first Marylanders were Paleo-Indians who came more than 10,000 years ago from other parts of North America to hunt mammoth, great bison, and caribou. By 1000 B.C., Maryland had more than 8,000 Native Americans in about 40 different tribes. Most of them spoke Algonquian languages. They grew corn, peas, squash and tobacco. They also hunted, fished and traded with tribes as far away as New York and Ohio.

Click on the link above to read the whole article.

Thank you Drew M. from Orlando, Florida for this request.

Random Superman facts:

According to an interview with Joe Shuster shortly before his death, the name “Clark Kent” was chosen as a combination of the names of two movie stars, Clark Gable and Kent Taylor

In the words of Warner Bros. President Alan F. Horn, “I thought Superman Returns (2006) was a very successful movie, but I think it should have done $500 million worldwide. We should have had perhaps a little more action to satisfy the young male crowd.” $175 million is the maximum budget the studio is aiming for Superman: Man of Steel. from IMDB.

I originally missed this email when researching for this podcast but Stephanie S. sent me a great link to a little video.

Episode Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Superman

The encyclopedia of superheroes on film and television
Muir, John Kenneth, 1969- REF 791.43652 MUIR J

Additional Links:

Watch a public domain Superman cartoon here.

History of the “S” symbol: http://www.metropolisplus.com/Superman/

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~UG02/superman/history.html

http://www.vex.net/~dq711/superman.htm

Superman beware, kryptonite is real:
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/about-us/news/2007/april/news_11392.html

Superman at fifty : the persistence of a legend
Engle, Gary D., 1947- 741.50973

Great article found today on History of American Women.

Mary was accused of witchcraft, but refused to confess during the witchcraft trials saying, “I know nothing of it, there is another woman of the same name in Andover.”

Considered the Queen of Jerusalem…

Maria was the grandniece of the Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Comnenus of Constantinople (d.1180).   Maria only gave birth to daughters - one died young (prob bc.1171), and Isabella aged 2 on father’s death (1173). Maria was the stepmother of King Baldwin IV (her husband’s son by his first marriage of Agnes of Courtenay).

Find out more about Maria Comnena and other women in history at the Women of History blog.

It was on April 16, 1178 B.C. that the great warrior struck with arrows, swords and spears, killing those who sought to replace him, a pair of researchers say in Monday’s online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

Read the whole article at Discovery News.

On June 24th, 1975, an Eastern Airlines jet crashes near John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City, killing 115 people. The Boeing 727 was brought down by wind shear, a sudden change in wind speed or direction.

This is another great article from Obscure History.

More information about wind shear.

How to avoid wind shear from NASA.

The ancient Egyptian’s secret to making the strongest of all rigging ropes lies in a tangle of cord coils in a cave at the Red Sea coast, according to preliminary study results presented at the recent congress of Egyptologists in Rhodes.

Read the whole article at Discovery News.