Day 1066: Battle of Hastings

And so it was that in 1066, William the Conquer, a Norman, of France invaded England and brought the Old English Anglo-Saxon era to an end.  Since then, the languages of English and France merged to form Middle English which eventually became Modern English after the War of the Roses and the end of the Middle Ages.  At least that's how the story goes.  What I noticed a long time ago is that, especially with these big events from thousands of years ago, it's less about what happened and more about a) what happened after and b) the gist of the story.  It's hardly as though all of Old English was immediately gone after the Battle of Hastings, but it still stands the single change in the entire wave of history.  Similarly, my students have recently been "learning" about the different social classes of the Middle Ages.  I use the quotation marks because I know well that most of what I'm teaching is at best an exaggeration...and at worst a lie.

They say history is written by the victors, and that's definitely true, but it's also written by the lazy...and hundreds of years later.  I'm quite curious to hear how our history will be condensed into a few short battles, inventions, or rulers hundreds of years from now...