Easter and Easter Eggs (and Lent!)
People tell a lot of stories about the origins of Easter - is it a pagan holiday? A Christian holiday? How is it related to Passover? Here we try to sort that [...]
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04, 2020
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04, 2020
History of Passover
If you're preparing to celebrate Passover at home, here are some helpful links: First, what even is Passover? Who were the first people to celebrate Passover? Why? https://quatr.us/west-asia/where-did-passover-come-from-jewish-holidays.htm Second, the Bible story [...]
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04, 2020
Qingming Jie: Friday April 3
This major Chinese holiday is, like so many other spring holidays, related to the extremely ancient Babylonian New Year celebration. In China, people were certainly celebrating Qingming Jie by the time of [...]
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03, 2020
Fun history and science activities to do at home
A copper penny Quatr.us Study Guides has piles of fun, simple activities you can do to illlustrate historical and scientific points. I'll start with our biology activities - each activity [...]
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03, 2020
Matilda of Canossa: Women’s History Month
Cathedral of Pisa (the Duomo) We've been so distracted that we haven't been doing our usual Women's History Month posts, but there's still ten days left in March! So here's [...]
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03, 2020
Early plagues: Athens and measles (?)
New diseases have struck human populations since humans first evolved (and before that, they struck earlier primates). Generally they follow a predictable path: at first, they kill a lot of people. If [...]
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03, 2020
Nowruz 2020: Friday March 20th!
About time we had a holiday, am I right? This is a traditional Persian celebration of the New Year in the spring, descended (like Easter and Passover) from the extremely ancient Babylonian [...]
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03, 2020
Epidemics and diseases in history
With all this coronavirus stuff going on, what are some other epidemics and pandemic diseases from the past? What can we learn from them? Four lessons: Diseases change over time, and come [...]
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03, 2020
Queen Esther and Purim
Purim is a Jewish holiday coming up on March 9-10, with roots going back to very old Babylonian New Year celebrations and the Zoroastrian New Year. And it's a perfect story for [...]
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03, 2020
#MeToo, Heloise, and Abelard
St. Germain des Pres was already standing in Heloise's time (Paris, 1000 AD) We used to tell Heloise and Abelard as a love story, but I hope now we are [...]
