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Gladiator Mosaic 320-30 AD Villa Borghese Despite what Hollywood would have you believe, gladiators were not given random weapons, sent into the arena and told to fight. When someone became a gladiator, they were assigned a specific type and style of fighting and practiced it constantly. A specific type of gladiator only fought another specific type of gladiator as determined by well established rules. These pairings were intended to prov...

Going on an Adventure Some might say that young Bilbo Baggins was ill prepared for the dangers of the great wide world when he set off from the familiar safety of his comfortable armchair and lovely feather bed at his ancestral home of Bag End nestled in the rolling hills of the Shire. They may have been right. It wasn't until nearly making his way into the stew of three nasty trolls along with his dwarven companions that he would find the means...

The RoadNot all roads lead to Rome. Though some, like highway 9 near the village of Langeid in the Setesdal Valley of southern Norway, lead back in time. A routine infrastructure project connected to the highway revealed a viking era cultural treasure few could have ever imagined.The DiscoveryAn archaeology team from the University of Oslo was quickly called in and--as the layers of earth were removed, like pages in a book--Viking burial sites sp...