Carthage Must Be Destroyed

Recently I’ve been doing a lot of reading on the early Church. Being a nerd about history I tend to invest a lot of time in such things. As anyone versed in early Church history would know, you cannot avoid running into the formation of the New Testament canon. Growing up, I never really thought about how the canon was formed. I kind of thought that God told all of the authors of the Bible to write their letter or letters and then get together and compile it into one book and tell everyone that this is God’s inspired word. This is incorrect. I don’t think that a great many Christians, even if they can see this as a silly and naive notion, can, in fact, offer up a more accurate account of the formation of the canon. The canon, or the 27 books that make up the New Testament, was a collection of books written between AD 49 through as late as AD 95 (depending on your dating of Revelation). However, these were not the only Christian books/letters in circulation at this time. In fact the boo...

You can't resist the list. There is too much on the line for you to just gloss over this. Way too epic. I promise I'll get back to the Battle of Vienna afterwords. What do I mean by greatest battles? First of all it is a battle , not a campaign . It is a single confrontation that is a defining moment in history. But honestly I don't always hold to that. The Battle of Britain was a sort of a campaign, but ya gotta include it, right? Now the defining moment could be many things: changing the course of history (cliche, I know, but you know what I mean), winning against unsurmountable odds, sparking a shift in cultural thought, brilliant leadership and strategies, HUGE AND EPIC, the end or beginning of an era, the stuff of legend, and so on. It does get a little tricky when you have an several important battles that are linked together such as Thermopylae, Platae and Salamis. The success of one is dependent on the other(s). I usually just pick one. The same goes for the Americ...

In light of the recent events in Egypt, I wanted to talk about the ethnoreligious group in Egypt known as the Copts. "If you come to a Coptic person and tell him that he’s an Arab, that’s offensive. We are not Arabs, we are Egyptians... When we hear the word "Copt", that doesn’t only mean "Christian", it means "Egyptian"." –Bishop Thomas of Cusae and Meir, a Copt. HISTORY You may or may not know much about Egyptian history after the pharaohs. I will bring us up to speed. For most of their ancient history, the people in Egypt were ethnic Egyptians and they did the Egyptian thing–pyramids, embalming, and senet . In 434 B.C., the Persians took it over for a wee-bit. A hundred years later along came Alexander, who the Egyptians viewed as a liberator, and following his early death, the Hellenistic (Greek civilization outside of Greece) Ptolemaic Kingdom reigned along the Nile. The capital moved from Memphis to newly established Alexandria. Hellenizati...

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Time for my first Totally Awesome Person Post. It is what is says it will be. Most of these people will be from the History vs. History post I did several months back. Other people will make it on the list as well, I got good suggestions for folks I had not thought of. So without further ado... Today's Totally Awesome Person is Sgt. Yakov Pavlov. Yes, he's a Russian. Better than that he's a Soviet who was honored with being named a " Hero of the Soviet Union " by Joseph Stalin. He also served in the Communist party. You are probably thinking: "Wow this Danny McNight guy is really open-minded to have written his first Totally Awesome Person post about a member of the Soviet Union. That takes a lot of courage." And to that I would say: "Heck yeah." But honestly, it doesn't matter where you're from if you accomplished what Pavlov did in the the fall of 1942. People should drink to his memory not for his ideology, but his sheer tenacity an...

When most of us look at a crescent on a flag, we generally think of one thing: is it waxing or waning? .... ok, not that. We generally think of something other than that: Islam. A great many nations use the crescent in their national flag. Algeria, Azerbaijan, Pakistan, Tunisia, Turkey are just a handful. This is flag for the Republic of Turkey. Although a republic now, Turkey is still very heavily Islamic, with over 97% of its population considering itself Islamic. The same could be said of other countries using the crescent–Algeria (99% Muslim), Azerbaijan (99%), Tunisia (99%), Pakistan (97%), and so on. So the Christians have the cross and the Muslims have the crescent, right? Not exactly. The history of the crescent predates Islam and even Christianity. The city of Byzantium, which later became Constantinople and then Istanbul, adopted the crescent flag before the birth of Christ. No one knows for sure why the flag was used. Some speculate that it was adopted after the Romans defea...

This is my second of three/four installments on the Battle of Vienna. I haven't decided how many yet. There were some questions as to what a Grand Vizier actually is. I am sorry that Disney's Aladdin wasn't that helpful. The Grand Vizier was the top minister of the Sultan and could only be axed by the Sultan himself. He had absolute power of attorney and could call together all the other ministers in the land to deal with matters of state. So... the sultan is numero-uno, and the Grand Vizier is his right-hand man. Sieging the City The Ottoman Turks were not fighting alone. The Khanate of Crimea, Moldovia, Transylvania and Wallachia aided the Ottomans, bringing the total force to 150,000 troops and 300 canons. Leopold and 80,000 civilians high-tailed it out of city as the Ottomans advanced closer to Vienna. The Emperor entrusted 11,000 soldiers, about 5,000 volunteers and 300+ cannons to Ernst Rüdiger von Starhemberg. The task of defending the city would be a difficult one....

I like this story so much I'm creating an animation of several key moments in the battle. This is a blocked out screenshot of the Turks laying siege on Vienna from a hill top. Still pretty rough, but you get the idea. Maybe I'll post a clip as things come along.

Ottomans, Poles, Austrians, Germans, Catholics, Muslims, sieges, cavalry charges, heroics, awesome quotes, coffeehouses, secret messengers, strangulation and subterranean battles ALL IN ONE STORY. I'm just saying. After eight months of researching I finally have enough material to write a new post. Crazy, you think? or perhaps lazy... No. Dedication. Dedication towards my passion of history makes me thorough. I have travelled far and wide, endured hardships that are unimaginable, and danced with death itself all to bring to you an unspoiled and rich story that will send you on an emotional roller coaster and heal your troubled soul. I ask you to stand with me this day and count yourself among the blest to be educated once again at the feet of my blog. Just stare at the shiny colored box for a few minutes and come away a better person. By the way, it's so good it'll be a trilogy. In 1453 the Ottoman Turks conquered Constantinople and finally brought an end to the Roman Empir...