The article "How Scientists From Around the World Helped Shape Modern Science" from BBC's HistoryExtra explains how science in the 16th to 18th Centuries wasn't only shaped by famous Europeans like Copernicus or Newton. Thinkers from Asia, Africa, and the Americas also made important contributions.
After almost 1,000 years, the historic Bayeux Tapestry is back where it began.
The 11th Century artwork is thought to have been made in Britain, and it's now on display at the British Museum — one of the UK's largest national museums, located in London — while on loan from France until summer 2027. Think of it as the original comic strip: instead of panels, it uses a continuous, nearly 70-meter-long strip of embroidered fabric (about the length of a football field) to tell the story frame by frame, image after image, all the way across.
The story it tells is the Norman Conquest of 1066: the year William the Conqueror, a duke from Normandy in modern-day France, invaded England and took the throne. Like a comic laid end to end, the tapestry shows the buildup, the battle, and the aftermath — soldiers, ships, horses, and even Halley's Comet all stitched into the sequence. That invasion permanently changed England's ruling family, language, and culture, and is often seen as the starting point of the modern British monarchy.
Moving the tapestry took hours of extremely careful work, since it's so old and delicate. Even people standing near it had to wear protective clothing so stray fibers wouldn't end up on the fabric. It's now displayed flat, inside a protective glass case. Safe to say, it may look like a large piece of fabric, but it's definitely not something you'd want to wipe your hands on if you're missing a napkin.
The loan is also part of a bigger cultural exchange between France and Britain — two neighboring countries separated by the narrow English Channel, with a long and sometimes tense shared history. In exchange for the tapestry, Britain is lending important historical objects of its own back to France.
The article "How Scientists From Around the World Helped Shape Modern Science" from BBC's HistoryExtra explains how science in the 16th to 18th Centuries wasn't only shaped by famous Europeans like Copernicus or Newton. Thinkers from Asia, Africa, and the Americas also made important contributions.
After almost 1,000 years, the historic Bayeux Tapestry is back where it began.
The 11th Century artwork is thought to have been made in Britain, and it's now on display at the British Museum — one of the UK's largest national museums, located in London — while on loan from France until summer 2027. Think of it as the original comic strip: instead of panels, it uses a continuous, nearly 70-meter-long strip of embroidered fabric (about the length of a football field) to tell the story frame by frame, image after image, all the way across.
The story it tells is the Norman Conquest of 1066: the year William the Conqueror, a duke from Normandy in modern-day France, invaded England and took the throne. Like a comic laid end to end, the tapestry shows the buildup, the battle, and the aftermath — soldiers, ships, horses, and even Halley's Comet all stitched into the sequence. That invasion permanently changed England's ruling family, language, and culture, and is often seen as the starting point of the modern British monarchy.
Moving the tapestry took hours of extremely careful work, since it's so old and delicate. Even people standing near it had to wear protective clothing so stray fibers wouldn't end up on the fabric. It's now displayed flat, inside a protective glass case. Safe to say, it may look like a large piece of fabric, but it's definitely not something you'd want to wipe your hands on if you're missing a napkin.
The loan is also part of a bigger cultural exchange between France and Britain — two neighboring countries separated by the narrow English Channel, with a long and sometimes tense shared history. In exchange for the tapestry, Britain is lending important historical objects of its own back to France.