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The Knights Templar escort Christian pilgrims to Jerusalem in an illustration from around 1800. Centuries after the Templars’ dissolution, Friday the 13th was erroneously attributed to their arrest. The knights confessed under torture. After the arrests came seven years of inquisition, then hundreds and hundreds of public executions by burning.
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Pope Pius V, one of the most anti-Semitic of popes, issued a papal bull on this date in 1569, Jewish people fell from the heights because of their faithlessness and condemned their Redeemer to a shameful death,” it began. “Their godlessness has assumed such forms that, for the salvation of our own people, it becomes necessary to prevent their disease.”
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The Buggery Act 1533, formally An Acte for the punishment of the vice of Buggerie was an Act of the Parliament of England that was passed during the reign of Henry VIII. It was the country's first civil sodomy law, such offences having previously been dealt with by the ecclesiastical courts.
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The Egyptians Act 1530 was an Act passed by the Parliament of England in 1531, it allowed people to call themselves Egyptians.
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The plague was a bad disease that could kill you.The bubonic variant (the most common) derives its name from the swellings or buboes that appeared on a victim's neck, armpits or groin. This disease cane from rats.
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Military campaigns to wrest the Holy Land from Muslim control. Considered at the time to be divinely sanctioned, these campaigns, involving often ruthless battles, are known as the Crusades.
