To “doodle” means to draw or scrawl aimlessly, and the history of the word goes back to the early 20th century. Scribbling haphazard words, squiggly lines and mini-drawings, however, is a much older ...

We all know medieval marginalia is full of some pretty sick snail fights. No one knows why, exactly, but there are hundreds of old drawings of snails in combat with knights in old manuscripts. The ...

A half-man, half-bird beast playing a flute. A cat’s head popping out of a snail shell. A woman barfing up a tiny demon. These are just some of the otherworldly critters that scribes in the Middle ...