Round earth and/or stone works raised over a burial. They started occurring in the Neolithic and were very common in the early Bronze Age. They continued to be built up to and including Anglo-Saxon times.
Round barrows
Fact of the Day
In 1506 the Principal of Magdalen Hall, Oxford, was accused of baptising a cat as part of a conjuring ritual to find buried treasure. He later became Bishop of London and a notorious heretic hunter, and was mockingly known as 'Bloody Bishop Christen-cat'.
Quote of the Day
"London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers of the Empire are irresistibly drained.
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~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
On This Day
1152 The Duke of Normandy and future Henry II of England became Duke of Aquitaine when he married Eleanor, eight weeks after the annulment of her marriage to Louis VII of France.
1554 Former mentor to Edward VI, William Thomas, was executed following the failure of the Wyatt Rebellion against Mary I.
1804 Napoleon was proclaimed emperor by the French senate.
1812 The assassin of Prime Minister Spencer Perceval, John Bellingham, was hanged. He had been held prisoner in Russia when working as an export agent, and the British government had refused to compensate him. A civil servant told him to take matters into his own hands, which he did. A plea for insanity failed, but the public ensured that his family were thereafter well supported.
1911 Composer Gustav Mahler died from a bacterial infection in the heart, aged 50. The last word he uttered was 'Mozart'.
1980 Mount St Helens erupted in what has been called the most disastrous volcanic eruption in United States history. Between 55 and 60 people were killed, and the direct cost was about $1.1 billion (in 1980).
1991 Helen Sharman became the first Briton in space when she participated in the Soviet Soyuz TM-12 mission.