#17 "The Unsung Heroes, Villains, Events, Crazes, Fads and Achievements of the First Millennium"

The Unsung Heroes, Villains, Fallacies, Achievements, Fads, Events, Atrocities, and Crazes of the the Last Millennium
Here are Renaissance Magazine's choices of the millennium, a sampling of curios, oddities, and ideas whose time came briefly, then passed, as well as some of the great villains and dreamers of the era. In an effort to get beyond the caricatures of history, our selections place the small beside the great, and the insider next to the outsider, striving to let the unknown rise out of the shadow of the known, as the line between the two often ran pretty thin. Our survey seeks to shine an entertaining spotlight on a handful of the famous and forgotten.

The Year 1000 and the Second Coming
While the historic Jesus lived in the first millennium, he was also a man of the second. In the medieval mind, Jesus of Nazareth was scarcely a historic figure. He was virtually a neighbor, if not a member of the family. Jesus himself, as reported in the Gospels, had predicted his return, as well as predicted the end of the world. Life at the end of the tenth century wasn't exactly a bowl of cherries. To many it seemed that the biblical prophesies were coming true. They had to wonder; when, exactly, was everyone's number up?