Appleton Oaksmith: The Confederate Blockade Runner Who Became Lincoln’s Public Enemy #1
Appleton Oaksmith was a swashbuckling Civil War-era sea captain whose life intersected with some of the most important moments, movements, and individuals of the mid-19th century, from the California ...
5 Sep 202449min
The Bible Triggered Two Communications Revolutions: The Codex and the Printing Press
For Christians, the Bible is a book inspired by God. But it has been received by different cultures and language groups in (sometimes) radically different ways. Following Jesus’s departing instructio...
3 Sep 202452min
Steering an Aerial Plywood Box Through Enemy Fire: The Glider Pilots of WW2
In World War II, there were no C-130s or large cargo aircraft that could deliver heavy equipment– such as a truck or artillery piece – in advance of an airborne invasion. For that, you needed to put t...
29 Aug 202441min
Why Few Presidents Had Beards, And Only One Had a Mullet
From George Washington’s powdered pigtail to John Quincy Adams’ bushy side-whiskers and from James Polk’s masterful mullet to John F. Kennedy’s refined Ivy League coif, the tresses of American leaders...
27 Aug 202434min
How Much Did Average Germans Know About the Holocaust During World War Two?
This is the question that historians have argued since the end of World War Two. How much did an average person know, and, more importantly, how responsible were they? What made people “perpetrators,...
22 Aug 202440min
Carthage Lost the 2nd Punic War from Hannibal’s Logistics Failure and His Brother’s Bad Strategy
Iberia was one of three crucial theatres of the Second Punic War between Carthage and Rome. Hannibal of Carthage’s siege of Saguntum in 219 BC triggered a conflict that led to immense human and materi...
20 Aug 202447min
The Real Robin Hood May Have Been an Anglo-Saxon Hitman Who Killed an English King
Contrary to popular belief, Robin Hood may not have been the merry medieval outlaw of Sherwood Forest. Rather, a look at real historical figures who inspired the legend are narrowed down to the most u...
15 Aug 202443min
Civilization Owes Its Existence to the Horse
The use of horses by humans began roughly 5,500 years ago on the windswept grasslands of the Pontic- Caspian Steppe when a daring man (or a woman – we have no way of knowing) jumped on the back of a d...
13 Aug 202440min
