pplpod

Avogadro's number — 6.022 times 10 to the 23rd — is one of the most fundamental constants in chemistry and physics. But Amedeo Avogadro himself never calculated it, never heard of it, and spent most o...

15 Jun 19min

Oda Nobunaga was the first of Japan's three great unifiers and the most revolutionary. He was the first Japanese commander to use massed firearms in battle, the first to build ironclad warships, and t...

15 Jun 23min

Hatshepsut ruled Egypt as pharaoh for over twenty years — wearing the false beard, using the male royal titles, and governing one of the most prosperous and peaceful periods in Egyptian history. After...

15 Jun 21min

Antoine Lavoisier named oxygen and hydrogen, disproved the phlogiston theory, wrote the first modern chemistry textbook, and established the law of conservation of mass. He was also a tax collector fo...

15 Jun 23min

Hadrian was the most cultured and most restless emperor Rome ever produced. He spent half his reign traveling the empire, built the wall that still bears his name across northern Britain, rebuilt the ...

15 Jun 23min

Dmitri Mendeleev was a wild-haired, long-bearded Russian chemist who reportedly arranged the elements into a periodic table during a marathon card game, sorting element cards the way he sorted playing...

15 Jun 22min

Shaka Zulu transformed a small Nguni clan into the most feared military force in southern Africa within a single decade. He revolutionized warfare with the short stabbing spear and the encirclement ta...

15 Jun 26min

Michael Faraday had no formal education, no university degree, and no mathematical training. He was a bookbinder's apprentice who taught himself science from the books he was binding, talked his way i...

15 Jun 24min