James Cook Mapped the Globe Before Dying At the Hands of Hawaiians Who Once Worshipped Him
Christopher Columbus and Ferdinand Magellan are known for discoveries, but it was Captain James Cook who made global travel truly possible. Cook was an 18th-century British explorer who mapped vast re...
21 Aug 202556min
American Anarchists: The Original Domestic Extremists
In the early twentieth century, anarchists like Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman championed a radical vision of a world without states, laws, or private property. Militant and sometimes violent, ana...
19 Aug 202539min
100 Years Before Ford v. Ferrari, a Horse Breeder Revolutionized Thoroughbred Racing Through a Similar Obsession With Progress
Horse racing was the most popular sport in early America, drawing massive crowds and fueling a cultural obsession with horses’ speed and pedigree. In the early 1800s, every town in America with a few ...
14 Aug 20251h 14min
Western Rome Fell Due to Germanic Immigration, Mass Inflation, and a Bloated Bureaucracy
It took little more than a single generation for the centuries-old Roman Empire to fall. In those critical decades, while Christians and pagans, legions and barbarians, generals and politicians squabb...
12 Aug 202539min
Why the Atomic Bombing of Japan is as Justified in 2025 as it was in 1945
It's been 80 years since the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the question of whether or not those bombings were justified has never been more contentious. That wasn't the case in the immediate...
7 Aug 202552min
Surviving the Siege of Leningrad with Sawdust Bread and Iron Determination
The first year of the siege of Leningrad that began in September 1941 marked the opening stage of a 900-day-long struggle for survival that left over a million dead. The capture of the city came tanta...
5 Aug 202546min
Depression-Era Governor Huey Long Wanted to Confiscate Individual Fortunes Over $1 Million, Possibly Leading to His 1935 Assassination
The most radical piece of legislation in the 20th century was Louisiana Governor Huey Long’s “Share Our Wealth Plan,” a bold proposal to confiscate individual fortunes exceeding $1 million to fund hea...
31 Jul 20251h 5min
Rope Equals Fire as Humanity’s Most Important Invention: It Allowed Hunting Mammoths and Building Pyramids
“‘Rope!’ muttered Sam[wise Gamgee]. ‘I knew I’d want it, if I hadn’t got it!’” Sam knew in the Lord of the Rings that the quest would fail without rope, but he was inadvertently commenting on how civ...
29 Jul 202555min
