Theme
The stories they tried to erase
7 stories
King Philip IV arrested the Knights Templar on Friday the 13th, 1307 — tortured their Grand Master into confessing heresy, then burned him alive when he recanted on the scaffold.
A Siberian peasant with no formal education took de facto control of the Russian Empire's domestic policy in 1915 — appointing and dismissing ministers while the Tsar commanded armies at the front.
When asked how to tell Cathars from Catholics at Béziers, the papal legate answered: 'Kill them all — God will know his own.' Twenty thousand were massacred in a single day.
The Roman Emperor Elagabalus reportedly offered large sums to any doctor who could surgically provide him with a vagina — documented in the 3rd century historian Cassius Dio's Roman History.
Giordano Bruno was burned alive in 1600 for arguing the stars were distant suns with inhabited planets — a claim every exoplanet discovery since 1995 has proven correct.
In 415 AD, a Christian mob tore the mathematician Hypatia apart with roofing tiles while she rode home through Alexandria — because she was advising the Roman governor against the Archbishop.
For 200 years, educated Europeans believed a woman had secretly ruled the Catholic Church as pope in the 800s — and included her officially in the list of popes carved into Siena Cathedral.