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history

HISTORY: Were Witches Really Burned at the Stake in Salem?

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witch burning at the stake - deposit photos

Between 1692 and 1693, accusations of witchcraft were made in and around the town of Salem in Massachusetts, leading to the  arrests of about 150 people. These charges were taken seriously, and the ensuing trials resulted in the executions of 19 people.  But how were these “witches” executed? Were any burned alive at the stake, a common punishment for convicted witches in Europe? After all, at the time Salem was part of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, an English colony. The answer is no; witches in England’s American colonies were killed another way. “At Salem no one was burned. Instead, … Read more

NEW RELEASE: Shadows Over Milan – Edale Lane

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Shadows Over Milan

QSFer Edale Lane has a new FF alt historical book out, Night Flyer book 5: Shadows Over Milan. What happens when heroes fall? Murder strikes Milan, threatening the city’s future under an ominous shadow of war. Was it the Spanish, the Germans, the Milanese, or were darker forces at play? The city is thrust into a frenzy only the Night Flyer can quell, but can she halt the wheels of war? Maddie’s greatest fears are realized when the Night Flyer suffers a serious injury that leaves her just short of dead. Florentina suffers more than physical pain as she grapples … Read more

The History of Halloween

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Halloween - pixabay

Each year on 31 October, people dress up, go to parties, go trick-or-treating, or watch their favourite horror films to celebrate the holiday that has become known as Halloween. Today, many queer people affectionately refer to Halloween as “Gay Christmas” – and it’s not hard to see why. The holiday has allowed LGBT+ people to express themselves freely in oppressive cultures. While other annual holidays are rooted in normalcy and repetition, Halloween is the birthplace of experimentation. Halloween is the most wonderful time of the year for queer people, but many aren’t aware of its fascinating history. In fact, Halloween … Read more

HISTORY: Nine People You Probably Didn’t Know Were Queer

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public domain art

Every LGBT+ History Month, we come together to celebrate queer culture and our many achievements. But while it’s relatively easy to find icons and heroes to look up to nowadays, it can seem like there aren’t many queer figures to connect to who lived before the 20th century. In many periods of history, LGBT+ people weren’t exactly welcomed out of the closet, so it can be difficult to find openly queer idols. Fortunately, historians have done the hard work of uncovering lots of prominent figures’ sexualities, so you can have a whole new batch of people who you learned about … Read more

HISTORY: Greece’s Gay Warrior Army

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gay greek warrior - deposit photos

In the fourth century BC, a fearsome army named the Sacred Band of Thebes was formed, and it was made up entirely of gay couples. Lawmakers in countries across the world have been banning LGBT+ people from their militaries for more than a century, from America’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and trans military ban, to the UK’s ban on LGBT+ people in the armed forces, which was only lifted in 2000. While the US insisted during the era of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” that LGBT+ service members “would create an unacceptable risk to the high standards of morale, good order, … Read more

NEW RELEASE: Prolepsis – J. Scott Coatsworth

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Prolepsis - J. Scott Coatsworth

QSFer J. Scott Coatsworth has a new MM sci-fi time travel story out: Prolepsis. PROLEPSIS pro.lep.sis: The representation of a thing as existing before it actually does What if you could change the course of queer history, one story at a time? It’s the fall of 1986, the age of walkmans, mix tapes, floppy discs and Jolt Cola. Sean’s a twenty-five-year-old closeted gay sci-fi geek who runs a popular pulp ‘zine called Prolepsis. A geek with a crush on the cute guy named Jason who works at the post office. One day a pink envelope from an author named I.H. … Read more

HISTORY: The World’s Oldest-Known Porn Was Super Queer

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Queer Historical Porn

On a huge red basalt outcrop in the remote Xinjiang region of northwest China, the world’s oldest porn, the Kangjiashimenji Petroglyphs, can be found – and they’re super queer. The Kangjiashimenji Petroglyphs are bas-relief carvings that are thought to have been created between 3,000 and 4,000 years ago. Petroglyphs, or ancient rock carvings, have been found across the globe, but what makes the Kangjiashimenji Petroglyphs special is that they are graphically sexual. Discovered in the late 1980s by Chinese archaeologist Wang Binghua, the petroglyphs depict elaborate copulation and fertility rituals, queer sex, and gender non-conforming figures. Full Story from Pink … Read more

Was Buckingham Palace Once the Site of a Gay Brothel?

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Buckingham Palace - Pixabay

For our alt history fans… Hundreds of years ago, there was likely to have been a gay brothel on the site where Buckingham Palace now stands, historians believe. According to LGBT+ historian Norton Rictor’s 2013 essay The Gay Subculture in Early Eighteenth-Century London, gay cruising spots and brothels may have started popping up in London in the early 1600s. Although evidence is scarce, in 1649 English politician Clement Walker made an observation that has fascinated Londoners for centuries. In his Anarchia Anglicana, Walker wrote that “there stood “new-erected sodoms and spintries at the Mulberry Garden at S. James’s”. At the … Read more

Two Old Stone Balls Found in Scotland – And The Jokes Practically Write Themselves – Live Science

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scottish stone balls - live science

Two polished stone balls shaped about 5,500 years ago — linked to a mysterious practice almost unique to Neolithic Britain — have been discovered in an ancient tomb on the island of Sanday, in the Orkney Islands north of mainland Scotland. Hundreds of similar stone balls, each about the size of a baseball, have been found at Neolithic sites mainly in Scotland and the Orkney Islands, but also in England, Ireland and Norway, Live Science previously reported. Some are ornately carved — such as the famous Towie ball discovered in northeast Scotland in 1860 — but others are studded with … Read more

A history of Martian illusions – Live Science

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Mars

Humans have been seeing strange things on the surface of Mars for centuries. Perhaps it’s because, other than Earth, Mars is the closest thing in the solar system to a habitable planet, or perhaps it’s simply because it’s close enough to get a pretty good look at. Either way, Earthlings have been fooled time and again by the rocky Martian surface and their own psychology. People have at various times reported finding everything from canals to spooky humanoid faces to alien Martian bases on the surface of the Red Planet — though each sighting has been thoroughly debunked. In this … Read more