Every Roman Emperor Who Was Assassinated
Augustus died in his bed at Nola on 19 August AD 14, in the same room as his father, and his last words, Suetonius says, were to his wife: “Live mindful of our wedlock,... Read More →
Category: History
Every Founding Father Who Signed the Declaration of Independence
The leftmost column of names on the Declaration of Independence belongs to Georgia. New Hampshire is over on the right, John Hancock sits alone in the middle underneath the text in no column at... Read More →
Every US President
The first American presidency started late because of the weather. The Confederation Congress had scheduled the inauguration for the first Wednesday in March 1789, and then, in the National Archives’ own account, “the early... Read More →
Every One of the 13 Original Colonies
One hundred and twenty-six years separate the first of these colonies from the last. Virginia’s settlers landed in 1607; Georgia’s did not arrive until 1733. The gap shows. When the First Continental Congress met... Read More →
Every Titan in Greek Mythology
Hesiod names Heaven and Earth’s twelve children without calling them anything at all. The name arrives later, and as an insult. The children had turned on their father, and those sons, Hesiod says, ‘great... Read More →
Every Greek God of War: All 21 Divine Beings of Battle in Greek Mythology
Hesiod gives Strife fourteen children and no husband. In the Theogony (in Hugh G. Evelyn-White’s translation), “abhorred Strife bore painful Toil and Forgetfulness and Famine and tearful Sorrows”, and then, sharing a single line... Read More →
Every Civilization That Built Pyramids
There are stepped pyramids at Guimar, on Tenerife, and for a long time they drew the sort of visitor who suspects the ancient Egyptians got around more than the textbooks admit. Thor Heyerdahl took... Read More →
Every Nuclear Weapon That Has Been Lost and Never Recovered
On March 10, 1956, a B-47 Stratojet left MacDill Air Force Base in Florida and headed east across the Atlantic, bound nonstop for an overseas base. Somewhere over the Mediterranean it simply failed to... Read More →
Every U.S. President Who Was Also a General
There is a painting in the Capitol Rotunda, twelve feet by eighteen, that shows neither a battle nor a signing. John Trumbull’s ‘General George Washington Resigning His Commission,’ painted between 1822 and 1824, catches... Read More →
All U.S. Presidents Who Owned Slaves While in Office
On January 24, 1801, weeks from the end of his presidency, John Adams wrote to a Quaker correspondent named George Churchman and set down a sentence almost none of the men around him could... Read More →
