Today marks the 680th anniversary of a fierce, bloody and amusingly brief conflict you’ve probably never heard of – but I guarantee you will relish reading about it. For historian Alex Brown, the fact that the Battle of Neville’s Cross, fought near Durham on 17 October 1346, is so overlooked is inexplicable. It’s got everything you need from a medieval skirmish – spectacular miscalculations by warring sides, entertaining quotes from onlookers, the capture of a king and several earls. And to top it all, despite being over by 5pm on the day, Neville’s Cross was a genuinely decisive battle that significantly influenced relations between England, Scotland and France. You could read about it all in a 15th century chronicle delightfully named the Scotichronicon – or you could enjoy this blow-by-blow account from Brown here.
There’s a big fitness trend doing the rounds thanks to influencers who claim that heading straight into a short burst of cardio straight after weight training will massively increase your muscle “gains”. As ever, The Conversation’s health editors were keen to dig into the evidence. There’s a strong history of research on the subject of mixing cardio and strength training, including on which to do first, but not a lot of it points to this bandwagon being one worth jumping on.
The latest article in our series on the augmented human looks at the remarkable progress being made on the science behind bionic eyes. They’re currently used to enable those with sight loss to see again but in the future, they could be used to augment our vision in unexpected ways, such as by giving us the ability to zoom in on a far away object, just like a camera.
Also this week, what it’s like to discover a Roman fort, why you should let little ones get muddy this weekend and the big problem with those annoying prompts that tell you there’s “only one left in stock!” when you shop online.
