A Brief History of Every King of Portugal: The Second Dynasty (House of Avis)

[See also: A Brief History of Every King of Portugal: The First Dynasty (House of Burgundy)] The Interregnum [1383-1385] The first post in this series ended in a cliffhanger in 1383. D. Fernando, the last Portuguese King of the House of Burgundy, had just died without a male heir. His only daughter, D. Beatriz, was

Neptune and Vulcan (Part 2): A not-so-random sample

Historical anecdotes and general thoughts on Neptune/Vulcan dilemmas [Follow-up to: Neptune and Vulcan (Part 1)] I In the first part of this series I introduced the Neptune/Vulcan class of dilemmas thusly: I also briefly discussed the following examples of Neptune/Vulcan dilemmas in modern physics/astronomy1: That post ended with the natural epistemological interrogation: So how should

Neptune and Vulcan (Part 1)

An astronomical lesson on epistemology I In 1846, Urbain Le Verrier made a historic presentation to the Parisian Academy of Sciences. He had calculated how the gravitational effect of each known planet in the solar system affected the orbit of each other planet, and shown that the orbit of Uranus was not fully consistent with

The Crown of Karpov

[Note: This post is also available on Substack] Earlier this year Ding Liren became the Chess World Champion after beating Ian Nepomniachtchi in tiebreaks. If you read any news about it, you probably realised that the protagonist in that match was arguably a man who wasn’t playing in it: Magnus Carlsen, the previous world champion

Out of the Mist [announcement]

On 5th August 1578, the Portuguese king D. Sebastião led his armies into the Battle of Alcácer-Quibir, known in Morocco as the Battle of the Three Kings. There the flower of Portuguese nobility perished, and the King was lost to History. The crisis triggered by this national catastrophe would soon lead to the loss of

How I accidentally became British

I came to the UK to do my PhD, back in 2014. At the time, Portuguese politics were still very much dominated by the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis; and every time someone my age announced their intention to go abroad someone would inevitably bring up that one time that our then Prime Minister

Portuguese Independence: The emergence of a kingdom

A few days ago it was the 5th of October, the Portuguese holiday which celebrates the institution of our First Republic. Curiously, it is a little-known fact that this is also the day associated with the most famous date in Portuguese History: 1143, the year of Portugal’s independence (and thus ironically also of the institution

Mea Culpa: The oldest borders in Europe (and in the World)

Dear most excellent reader, I write to you today as an act of contrition. I have sinned against Rigour and against you. I have proved undeserving of your trust. I have no excuse, so I don the proverbial hairshirt and shall do my utmost to mortify my pride as a collector of facts about Portugal

A Brief History of Every King of Portugal: The First Dynasty (House of Burgundy)

There is something curious about the relationship between monarchies, national identities, and the passage of time. Even if you know that monarchies have systematically sought to promote narratives where national identities are inextricably connected to their lineage – where the person of the monarch is conveniently presented as a link between the present and the

Things I learnt writing my thesis’ Introduction (Part 3): The arrow of time and the genesis of the Big Bang

(See also: Part 1 and Part 2) If there is one obvious landmark in the history of cosmology which my thesis‘ introduction absolutely couldn’t ignore, it is the Big Bang theory. The realisation that the Universe is in constant expansion may have challenged a certain view of the Cosmos as a static stage for physical