Time for Wiki Wednesday.
You know - you go to Wikipedia, you click on "random article," you report on the outcome.
Here's my random Wiki Wednesday find for this week:
Crisis of the Late Middle Ages
Around the start of the 14th century a series of events began that brought centuries of European prosperity and growth to a halt. Three major crises would lead to radical changes in all areas of society - they were demographic collapse, political instabilities and lastly religious upheavals.
A series of famines and plagues, beginning with the Great Famine of 1315-1317 and specially the Black Death of 1348, reduced the population perhaps by half or more. Along with depopulation came social unrest and endemic warfare. Popular revolts in late medieval Europe were common, civil wars between nobles within countries were common such as the War of the Roses, and there were international conflicts between kings such as France and England in the Hundred Years' War. The unity of the Catholic Church was shattered by the Great Schism. The Holy Roman Empire was also in decline, in the aftermath of the Interregnum (1247-1273), the Empire lost cohesion and politically the separate dynasties of the various German states became more important than their common empire.
Hmm, maybe a new Corvette wouldn't be a solution here, seeing how fourteenth century men hit their mid-life crisis crisis of the late middle ages at about age twelve. That's way before they would have gotten their driver's license.
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