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After Sauron's defeat at the end of the Third Age, the kingdoms of men are restored.
In his 20s, Dostoevsky was drawn into the idealism of his age. He joined a group of political idealists who met to debate utopian socialism.
Tom Bombadil is an enigmatic, merry hermit of the countryside, known as "oldest and fatherless" by the Elves. He is truly ancient, and claims he was "here before the river and the trees."
To understand the nature of evil, first note that the dragon is a perversion of the natural world.
Picasso died in 1973 at the age of 91.
From 1793 to 1795, France mandated "metric time": 10 hours in a day, 100 minutes in an hour, etc.
For the early believers, being Christian in the Roman Empire was a dangerous business.
Gondor's White Tree is a symbol of the realm. When we encounter it in The Return of the King, it's been dead for 150 years.
Michelangelo did not want to paint the Sistine ceiling. He never considered himself a painter.
Literature & Philosophy:
The Gospels say Christ was buried in a rock-cut tomb owned by Joseph of Arimathea, a wealthy disciple.
You read Narnia books as a child, or had them read to you, but you likely weren't aware of their spiritual depth.
Jan van Eyck's (and his brother Hubert's) Ghent Altarpiece was centuries ahead of its time in 1432.
The Hobbit was published a few months before the Snow White movie came out in 1937.
Tolkien, in an unsent letter, said he disliked Frank Herbert's Dune "with some intensity".
Right now, the US has more railway tracks than any other country (155,000+ miles).
Christ's battle with temptation isn't only that — it's a battle for the soul of all humanity.
Thomas Cole's "Course of Empire" tracks 5 stages of civilization, from birth to eventual collapse.
Middle-earth is our Earth long ago, as Tolkien said:
Look at car colors since 1990.
These were the charges against him: