Old furniture, broken cups, worn-out shoes and stinky mattresses: we don't think twice about throwing things out that we don't need anymore. And books? Here things are a bit different. Apart from the fact that you may find it morally abject to throw out a book, that noble carrier of ideas, the object retains its economic value...

Medieval scribes had to create their own nibs by whittling the ends of feathers. To test them, they often drew doodles that were never intended to be seen. Many of the doodles are extremely imaginative. This artist liked to create weird, hybrid creatures. (CNN) -- My personal favorite is this.

Fund it is an Ireland-wide initiative that provides a platform for people with great ideas to attract funding from friends, fans and followers across the world.

STRAINS OF AMBIGUITY IN MEDIEVAL PREJUDICE In medieval Europe, Christian artists veered between extremes when portraying Jews in religious book illustrations, murals, statues and windows. Jewish men, and a few women, were depicted either as kindly Old Testament elders or hawk-nosed, greedy, murderous demons.

Archaeologists have found two Medieval horn and antler chess pieces during the final stages of a dig in Northampton town centre. The excavation is at St John's Street, at the location of Northamptonshire County Council's new £43m headquarters. Archaeologist Jim Brown said the pieces were "clear evidence" of demand for a "leisure product" in middle to late 12th Century Northampton.

The spectacular Crusader Bible is one of the greatest illuminated manuscripts in the world, renowned as much for its unrivalled and boldly colored illustrations as it is for its fascinating history. The work brings Old Testament stories alive in bright images replete with medieval castles, towns, and battling knights in armor, all set in thirteenth-century France.

Mountaintop village of Monsanto, in eastern Portugal, sits 2,486 above sea level Locals have adapted homes around the enormous boulders, rather than attempting to move them Some of the granite stone houses date back to 16th century Living beneath a roof that weighs more than the average cruise ship may make some people a little nervous.

Uma pintura do Terreiro do Paço, uma do Rossio, outra do Mosteiro dos Jerónimos e uma quarta do Convento de Mafra. No incío do ano, Álvaro Roquette e Pedro Aguiar-Branco, do Antiquário AR-PAB, compraram a um antiquário internacional - preferem não revelar nem o nome nem a nacionalidade - quatro óleos que mostram como eram estes lugares antes do terramoto de 1755.

Qatar Digital Library will hold half a million records on modern Gulf history and Arabic science London, Asharq Al-Awsat -Accessing detailed accounts of what life used to be like in the Arabian Peninsula has long frustrated historians.

Medieval copies of Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain and Prophecies of Merlin and Gerald of Wales' Topography of Ireland and Conquest of Ireland are to go up for auction Penned in the hands of long-forgotten monks in the days before mass printing, they helped preserve the works of two giants of Welsh history.

Lena Dunham is to adapt Karen Cushman's 1994 children's book Catherine, Called Birdy, for the big screen. Speaking at the New Yorker festival in New York, Dunham revealed that she was currently working on a screenplay of the novel, which is set in 1290 England.

Just for fun, some GIF animations of images from books and manuscripts at the University of Pennsylvania's Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts. Click on the links below each GIF to view and share the tweets in which they originally appeared. Danse Macabre The Danse Macabre, or Dance of Death comes out...

Over the centuries from the Classical period ( c. fifth century BC) to Byzantine times in the middle ages, the Greeks developed clepsydrai to perform more and more elaborate functions, adding a vessel to catch the dripping water, which raised a float and a pointer indicating the correct time.

This is the blog for our major new research project on The Lady's Magazine (1770-1818), run out of the University of Kent. The research is funded by a two-year Leverhulme Research Project grant and will result in a host of publications about the contents of and contributors to this early, long-running and groundbreaking women's magazine, as well as a fully annotated index available online.

Date: Saturday 9 May 2015 Venue: Birkbeck, University of London Call for paper deadline: Friday 12 December 2014 "...if a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live" (Martin Luther King, 23 June 1963, Speech at the Great March on Detroit) This one day multi-disciplinary conference explores where and when a positive value has been placed on dying and death.