The U.S. States That Were Their Own Nations
Each of the 50 states in the United States has a unique history. 13 of them were originally British Colonies. Some of them were former Spanish or French territory. Most of them were officially US terr...
16 Aug 202013min
The Church of the Holy Sepulcher
Ask most Muslims what the holiest site is in Islam, and they would all obviously tell you it is the Kaaba at the Great Mosque of Mecca. Ask most Christians what the holiest site is in Christianity, an...
15 Aug 202011min
Pedro Rodrigues Filho: The Real Life Dexter Who Hunted Criminals
For eight seasons, the TV show Dexter showed the fictional life of a crime solving forensics expert who just so happened to have been a serial killer who killed serial killers. This got me wondering, ...
14 Aug 20208min
Damnatio Memoriae: Erasing People from History
The ancient Romans had a practice called Damnatio Memoriae, which was to banish someone’s memory from public life. It was also sometimes known as oblivion. It called for the complete deletion of the p...
13 Aug 20209min
The Washington Generals
Sports history is littered with really bad teams. The 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers didn’t win a single game and wound up losing 26 in a row. The 2012 Charlotte Bobcats went 7-59 for a .106 winning percen...
12 Aug 20209min
Kayfabe: The Secret Code That Built Professional Wrestling
One of my dirty secrets is that I’m a fan of pro wrestling. Whenever I tell people this the first thing I inevitably hear is, “you know it's fake right?” This idea that people think professional wrest...
11 Aug 202011min
Drug Lord Hippos
Pablo Escobar was the biggest drug lord the world has ever known. At the height of his power, he had a near-monopoly on cocaine trade in the United States. He had a peak inflation-adjusted net worth o...
10 Aug 20208min
Queen Victoria: The Grandmother of Europe
Traditionally, the royal families of Europe would arrange marriages amongst their children to establish alliances and bonds between their houses. While this really isn’t done that much anymore, it als...
9 Aug 20209min
