Duckwise

In the pantheon of Greek mythology, Zeus was king of the gods on Mount Olympus, god of thunder and sky, and a prolific rapist who made Harvey Weinstein look like a Boy Scout. In Hesiod's 8th century BC poem the "Theogony" young Zeus and the Titaness Metis were married, and she became pregnant (in some versions of the story, he raped her), but when the child was prophesied to be even wiser than him, he decided to play it safe by swallowing his pregnant wife whole (no really, the child was going to be wiser than him). Six wives later into his career, Zeus was married to his queen, Hera, when one day he experienced a terrific headache. That pregnant wife he'd eaten a while back was now coming back to haunt him, and suddenly an armor-clad goddess of wisdom with a pet owl exploded out from his head, landing on the ground right before his eyes to the astonishment of all the other gods and completely ruining Zeus's hair. Yes, this was Zeus's daughte...

Sir John Franklin was considered a man of benevolent character, with a strong and jovial personality; the sort of man whose hearty laughter must have always appeared incredulous, the kind with raised eyebrows and a raised lower lip in a sort of frown and smiling side eyes given both ways.  His first wife of two years, Eleanor, a poet, died of consumption at the tender age of 29 (when he was 39).  Three years later, John married his late wife's friend, Jane Griffin, who had just gotten over an unrequited love for that nerd Roget who published Roget's Thesaurus.  Well-traveled, intelligent and ambitious, Jane didn't necessarily marry John because he was a hunk (he was chubby and mostly bald), but with his clout and her drive, they were a formidable social force.  The year after their wedding, John was knighted and became Sir John, making Jane into Lady Jane.  He was Lieutenant Governor of Van Diemen's Land (now known as Tasmania) from 1837 to 1843, during which ...

It was a classic story of boy sees the inbred girl of his brother and sister, brother allows boy to emerge from a fiery chasm in the earth and kidnap his inbred daughter/niece, boy takes girl/niece to the Underworld to be his queen, girl's mother/boy's sister goes into a deep depression and forbids the plants to grow, girl's father/boy's brother decides girl needs to return to the world above, but girl now has to return to the Underworld on a yearly basis for the time of one month per pomegranate seed she ate there, so every year girl's mother/boy's sister gets depressed and doesn't let the plants grow, and that's why we have winter.  His name was Hades (known to the Romans as Pluto), and he was quite a catch.  Despite a difficult childhood in which his father ate him alive and didn't barf him back out until he was a full-grown god, Hades had come to manage his own business as ruler of the Underworld, and as god of the earth's riches, he was ...

In order to have a happy, harmonious family get-together during the holidays, it's a good idea to steer away from topics like religion and politics. Unfortunately for the family of "Good King Wenceslaus," the Přemyslid dynasty that ruled the Duchy of Bohemia in the early 10th century, this was rather difficult given that Wenceslaus's dad, Vratislaus I, was a second generation Christian, his mother, Drahomíra of Stodard, was the pagan daughter of a chief, and everyone in the family was constantly vying for greater political sway over the country. When Wenceslaus was 13, his dad died in battle against the Hungarians, making his grandmother Ludmila (Vratislaus's mother) regent until Wenceslaus could come of age. Drahomíra, doing what any of us would do in similar circumstances, hired assassins to strangle her mother-in-law Ludmila to death with her own scarf. After Christian nobles overthrew Drahomíra to place 18-year-old Wenceslaus on the throne, he...

It's approximately the year 5 BC, but C is fashionably early, so any Magi better move their tookas to Bet Lehem before the Holy Family goes back to Natzrat! According to the 8th century chronicle Excerpta latina barbari , a title which translates as "Excerpts in Bad Latin" (which sounds like the title of a Ricky Martin biography with an award that nobody has ever heard of embossed on the cover and a featured segment on NPR that makes you change the station faster than a pled ge drive), Gathaspa was one of three Magi to present gifts to the Christ-child. Better known as Caspar or Gaspar today, an 8th-9th century Irish text describes him as the whippersnapper of the three Maagi, young and beardless, and sources disagree on whether he was a king or noble of Tarsus or India. The gift to the child most commonly attributed to Caspar is myrrh, arguably the least popular of the three gifts. A resin derived from myrrh trees (myrrh, meaning bitter), myrrh wa...

It is circa 5 B.C. and three Magi traverse the desert in search of a baby to worship. It is not their baby. It is everyone's baby. More specifically, it is the big man upstairs' baby, so it would be incredibly rude not to make an appearance. Magi is specifically the plural of "Magus," a priest of Zoroastrianism. Although their names and number are not given in the Gospel of Matthew (the biblical source of the Adoration of the Magi), they are named in the 8th century Latin manuscript Excerpta latina barbari.   Melichior, more commonly known as Melchior, is the melchiest of the Magi.  If there was a children's storybook about Melchior, it would be called "The Melchiest Magus".  According to western Christian traditions, Melchior was a king from Persia, and his gift to the Christ-child is gold, signifying the child's kingship over all the world.   Either that or Melchior couldn't be bothered to think of anything creative a...