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Wittenberg

6 stories from this place.

The Coroner’s Report June 27, 2026 · Campo dei Fiori, Rome

The Dominican Friar Burned at the Stake in Rome on 17 February 1600 for Holding That the Universe Is Infinite and That Other Stars Have Their Own Planets

Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake in the Campo dei Fiori, Rome, on 17 February 1600. The Roman Inquisition's verdict identified eight specific theological errors. Among them were the doctrines of an infinite universe with countless inhabited worlds. He was 52. His statue at the execution site was erected in 1889 by an Italian liberal-republican fund-raising campaign against the modern Vatican.

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The Footnote June 27, 2026 · Castle Church, Wittenberg

The Probably-Imaginary Nail That Started the Protestant Reformation on 31 October 1517

Martin Luther's *Ninety-Five Theses* are conventionally dated to 31 October 1517 — All Hallows' Eve. The substantial standard tradition has Luther nailing the substantial document to the door of the Castle Church at Wittenberg. The single source for the nailing is Philip Melanchthon, writing in the 1540s, and modern scholarship substantially doubts that the nailing actually happened.

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The Cabinet June 24, 2026 · Alexandria

The Astronomy Book That Synthesised Three Centuries of Greek Observation and Ruled Europe for Fourteen Centuries

Claudius Ptolemy's *Mathēmatikē Syntaxis* — known to Europe as the *Almagest* through its 9th-century Arabic translation — was the single dominant astronomical reference work of the Western world from approximately 150 AD to 1543. Most of its observational content was inherited from Hipparchus of Rhodes three centuries earlier.

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