By Hamish MacPherson
Back in the Day
According to myth, a Scottish nobleman, Henry St Clair or Sinclair, the First Earl of Orkney, sailed to Greenland and then North America IT was in this week of the year 1398 that a Scotsman discovered the American continent. Now all you fans of Christopher Columbus need not panic because I am certainly not going to claim that the Americas were discovered by the Scots nearly a hundred years before the Italian-born explorer navigated his way across the Atlantic to claim he had found a route to the East Indies. There is little doubt, however, that other Asians and Europeans had discovered North America thousands of years before Columbus. For the people we now correctly call native Americans were descended from the Asiatic people who walked across the land bridge that existed between what is now Siberia and Alaska no later than 15,000 years ago.
10 Legendary Mysteries Involving The Knights Templar
Few organizations have captured the world’s collective imagination like the Knights Templar. Certainly, no other group has such a dual image of pious devotion and absolute heresy. They served the poor and the pilgrims. They amassed a huge fortune and all but invented banking. They were put on trial and purged. A lot of fascinating mysteries surrounding the Templars walk the strange line between legend and history.
10The List Of 12 Who Escaped
Templars were famously burned at the stake after being convicted of heresy in the beginning of the 14th century, rounded up and slaughtered wholesale. Less popularly known is the story of the French Templars who escaped. Even the Templar organization as it exists today isn’t sure what the whole story was.
The Zeno Map
The Biblioteca Marciana in Venice, in St. Mark s Square, holds a book dated to 1558,
Dello Scoprimento dell’Isole Frislanda, Eslanda, Engroneland, Estotiland et Icaria fatto sotto il Polo Artico da due fratelli Zeni , (
About the discovering of the islands of Frisland, Esland, Engroneland, Estotiland et Icaria made under the Arctic Pole by two Zeno brothers ) published by Francesco Marcolini. In the introduction he explains that the narrative was written by Nicolò Zeno the Younger, great-nephew of Antonio and Nicolò Zeno, the two navigators whose travels are described in the text. Nicolò Zeno the Younger reports that he found five long letters of his ancestors in the family library and that he was able to proceed with a careful editing of their story, adding parts of the missing text on his own to connect the passages of the letters. With regret he adds that, having found them as a child in the family library and not comprehending their value he had irreparabl