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The Knights Templar were among the most famous of the Christian military orders. The organization existed for approximately two centuries in the Middle Ages. It was created in the aftermath of the First Crusade of 1096, to ensure the safety of the large numbers of European pilgrims who flowed toward Jerusalem after its conquest. Officially endorsed by the church in 1129, the Order became a favored charity across Europe. It grew rapidly in membership and power. Templar knights, easily recognizable in their white mantle with a distinct red cross, made some of the best equipped, trained, and disciplined fighting units of the Crusades. Non-warrior members of the Order managed a large economic infrastructure throughout Christendom, innovating many financial techniques that were an early form of banking, and building numerous fortifications across Europe and the Holy Land. The Templars' success was tied closely to the success of the Crusades. When the Holy Land was lost and the Templars suffered crushing defeats, support for the Order's existence faded. Rumors about the Templars' secret initiation ceremony created mistrust, and King Philip IV of France, deeply in debt to the Order, began pressuring Pope Clement V to take action. On Friday, October 13, 1307, King Philip had many of the Order's members, including the Grand Master Jacques de Molay, arrested, tortured into "confessions", and burned at the stake. In 1312, Pope Clement, under continuing pressure from King Philip, forcibly disbanded the entire Order. (more...)

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From Wikipedia's newest articles:

...that the 1673 history of Cheshire by Sir Peter Leycester (pictured) questioned Amicia Mainwaring's legitimacy, leading to a "paper war" of 15 pamphlets with the Mainwaring family?
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...that the first ever Representative Assembly in 19th century British India was formed in the Kingdom of Mysore?
...that when John Sands excavated a ~2,000 year old building on the remote Scottish island of St Kilda he unearthed tools that the 1877 residents recognised?
...that the Niedermünster in Regensburg was the wealthiest and most influential house of canonesses in Bavaria?
...that least-squares spectral analysis is a method for estimating a frequency spectrum, based on a least squares fit between data and trigonometric functions?
...that the events surrounding the lynching of Joe Coe in Omaha, Nebraska in 1891 are said to foreshadow the lynching of Willy Brown 28 years later?
...that Dutch abstract artist Jules de Goede described his art by saying "A reflection of the world like it visually appears is not quite enough ... I try to show what is invisible"?

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In the news

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Al Gore (pictured) share the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.
Turkey recalls its ambassador to the United States, after the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs passes a resolution condemning the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire.
British writer Doris Lessing wins the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature.
A Soyuz-TMA spacecraft carrying Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor, the first Malaysian astronaut, is launched for a mission to the International Space Station.
Gerhard Ertl wins the 2007 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his studies of chemical processes on solid surfaces.
Dozens die in fierce fighting between pro-Taliban militants and the Pakistan Army in North Waziristan.
Roman Catholic priest Christian Von Wernich is sentenced to life imprisonment by an Argentine federal court for murders, torture and abductions committed during the 1976–83 Dirty War.
Albert Fert and Peter Grünberg win the 2007 Nobel Prize in Physics for their independent discoveries of giant magnetoresistance.

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On this day...

October 13:

54 – Claudius was fatally poisoned by his wife Agrippina the Younger, making her 17-year-old son Nero the next Roman Emperor.
1773 – French astronomer Charles Messier discovered the Whirlpool Galaxy (pictured), an interacting, grand-design spiral galaxy located at a distance of approximately 23 million light-years in the constellation Canes Venatici.
1843 – The Independent Order of B'nai B'rith, the oldest continually-operating Jewish service organization in the world, was founded in New York City.
1917 – An estimated 100,000 people in the Cova da Iria fields near Fátima, Portugal witnessed "The Miracle of the Sun."
1943 – World War II: With a new government led by General Pietro Badoglio, parts of Italy switched sides to the Allies and declared war on the Axis Powers.

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Today's featured picture

The Soyuz TMA-9 mission on the Soyuz rocket launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, September 18, 2006 carrying a new crew to the International Space Station. The spaceflight was the first time since before the Columbia accident that twelve humans have been in space simultaneously; three aboard the International Space Station (Expedition 13), three aboard Soyuz TMA-9, and six aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis, flying mission STS-115. The observer in the lower right gives a distorted sense of scale because the rocket is actually 46.1 metres (151.2 ft) tall, although it appears to be much smaller here.

Photo credit: Bill Ingalls, NASA

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