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The Mongols Dined Atop their Live Enemies and Other Fascinating Historic Facts

Khalid Elhassan March 2, 2020 36 min

Battle of the Kalka River - Mongol Empire — Mongols feasting atop captives. Pintrest

Errol Flynn in 1938’s The Adventures of Robin Hood. Pintrest

21. The Difficulty in Tracking Down the Original Robin Hood

Robin Hood was probably just a generic period nickname for criminals, which makes tracking down the original outlaw legend difficult. In England, Robin was and remains a diminutive of the name Robert, and Robert was a very common first name back then – even more so than today.

Likewise, Hood was a common surname in medieval England. As a result, identifying just which criminals named Robin Hood or some variation thereof might have inspired the legend, is a particularly difficult task for historians. That partially explains why numerous candidates have been proposed over the years.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.