Middle Ages – Doyle's Space

Hourglass History

I’ll never forget the wicked witch and her hourglass in the Wizard of Oz.

The hourglass is one of the most recognizable instruments ever devised for measuring the passage of time, yet its origins are far more mysterious than those of the sundial or the water clock. Unlike those earlier devices, whose histories can be traced back to ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, and China, the hourglass appears relatively late in the historical record. Despite frequent claims that the Romans or ancient Greeks invented it, no convincing archaeological or written evidence supports those assertions. Historians generally agree that the hourglass emerged in medieval Europe sometime between the eighth and fourteenth centuries,

Why Do We Call Jail the “Clink”?

It was not derived from the television series “Hogans Heroes”, where Colonel Klink was in charge of the German prison camp.

The nickname “the clink” for a jail is one of the oldest pieces of English criminal slang still in common use today, and its origins stretch back more than six centuries. Although many people assume the word comes from the metallic sound of prison bars, handcuffs, or cell doors clinking together, historians and linguists generally agree that the term almost certainly originated

What is an Iron Maiden?

A human-sized, coffin-like cabinet lined with inward-pointing spikes.

The Iron Maiden is one of the most infamous devices associated with medieval cruelty, yet its actual history is far more complicated—and far less medieval—than popular imagination suggests. Typically described as a human-sized, coffin-like cabinet lined with inward-pointing spikes, the device is said to have been used to enclose a victim so that the spikes would pierce the body upon closing, causing a slow and agonizing death.