World War II killed somewhere between 70 and 85 million people - roughly 3 percent of the entire human population alive in 1940. That number is so large it becomes abstract until you consider... Read More →
In January of 41 AD, a Praetorian tribune named Cassius Chaerea stepped into a covered passageway beneath the Palatine Hill in Rome and stabbed the emperor Caligula to death. He had many reasons, most... Read More →
On August 2, 1776, fifty-six men gathered in Philadelphia and signed what amounted to a death warrant - their own. By putting their names on the Declaration of Independence, they were committing treason against... Read More →
The office of the American presidency was invented on the fly. In 1787, the founders sat in Philadelphia arguing about whether the executive should be a single person or a committee of three. They... Read More →
In the summer of 1776, thirteen scrappy strips of coastline declared war on the most powerful empire on earth. The British had more ships, more soldiers, more money, and more experience. What the colonies... Read More →
The number everyone quotes is twelve. Twelve Titans, twelve original gods, neat and clean. It is the kind of satisfying round number that mythology teachers write on whiteboards and tourists read on plaques at... Read More →
Most people know Ares. The brooding Olympian with the spear and the bad reputation - disliked by his own parents, repeatedly humiliated in battle, and somehow still managing to be one of the most... Read More →
Say “pyramid” and most people picture exactly one place: Egypt. Maybe they conjure the Great Pyramid of Giza, rising from the desert like a limestone mountain someone forgot to erode. It’s an understandable reflex.... Read More →
Somewhere on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, about 400 miles southwest of the Azores, a U.S. Navy submarine sits in roughly two miles of water with a pair of nuclear torpedoes still aboard.... Read More →
Twelve of the first eighteen American presidents owned enslaved people at some point in their lives. Eight of them owned enslaved people while actively serving as president. They presided over a nation founded on... Read More →
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