Which Statues Should We Take Down? How To Fairly Judge Historical Figures by Today’s Standards
In the United States, questions of how we celebrate – or condemn – leaders in the past have never been more contentious. In 2017, a statue of Robert E. Lee was removed – leading to a race riot and ter...
9 Touko 202439min
The 160-Minute Race to Save the Titanic
One hundred and sixty minutes. That is all the time rescuers would have before the largest ship in the world slipped beneath the icy Atlantic. There was amazing heroism and astounding incompetence aga...
7 Touko 202449min
Vikings Went Everywhere in the Middle Ages, From Baghdad to Constantinople to….. Oklahoma?
Scandinavia has always been a world apart. For millennia Norwegians, Danes, Finns, and Swedes lived a remote and rugged existence among the fjords and peaks of the land of the midnight sun. But when t...
2 Touko 202442min
The 15-Hour Work Week Was Standard For Nearly All of History. What Happened?
There’s nothing in human DNA that makes the 40-hour workweek a biological necessity. In fact, for much of human history, 15 hours of work a week was the standard, followed by leisure time with family ...
30 Huhti 202434min
Pancho Villa’s 1916 Raid on New Mexico: The Pearl Harbor Bombing of Its Time
Before 9/11, before Pearl Harbor, another unsuspected foreign attack on the United States shocked the nation and forever altered the course of history. In 1916, Pancho Villa, a guerrilla fighter who c...
25 Huhti 202451min
A Radical Abolitionist Youth Movement Consumed America in 1860, Elected Lincoln, Then Disappeared Completely
At the start of the 1860 presidential campaign, a handful of fired-up young Northerners appeared as bodyguards to defend anti-slavery stump speakers from frequent attacks. The group called themselves ...
23 Huhti 202443min
Socrates May Have Been Executed For Revealing Secrets of Athens’ Religious Rituals
The influence of the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates has been profound. Even today, over two thousand years after his death, he remains one of the most renowned humans to have ever lived—and his de...
18 Huhti 202443min
The Age of Discovery Through American-Indian Eyes
A millennium ago, North American cities rivaled urban centers around the world in size. So, when Europeans arrived in the sixteenth century, they encountered societies they did not understand, having ...
16 Huhti 202444min
