The May Fourth Movement
Few dates in China are as significant as May Fourth, which marks two distinct revolutionary periods in modern Chinese history. On May 4th, 1919, student protests erupted in China in response to the...
22 Jan 14min
The Year 2025
525 days ago, I began looking at the state of the world every century, then every fifty years, and finally every twenty-five years as the pace of change accelerated. After almost a year and a half, ...
21 Jan 15min
The Julio-Claudian Dynasty (Encore)
The Roman Empire was ruled by a single family for its first century. The family was actually a merger of two of the most distinguished clans in Roman history. This family included some of the best a...
20 Jan 14min
The Great London Fire of 1666
From September 2 to September 5, 1666, one of the largest urban fires in history took place. The Great Fire of London swept mercilessly through the city, reducing roughly 80% of its buildings to smo...
19 Jan 13min
The Grateful Dead
One of the most popular music groups over the last half-century is also one of the most unlikely. They were seldom played on the radio, they almost never appeared on network television, and they on...
18 Jan 14min
The Tokyo Trials
Following the conclusion of World War II, decisions needed to be made about how to handle the defeated Axis Powers. Due to the vast scale of atrocities committed, it was not feasible to punish everyo...
17 Jan 15min
Insanely Ridiculously Absurdly Large Numbers
One of the first mathematical concepts that most of us grasp when we are children is that there is no such thing as the biggest number. No matter what number you pick, you can always add one to it.You...
16 Jan 16min
The House of Wisdom
The Abbasid Caliphate stood as a vibrant center of commerce, technology, and learning from the 8th to the 13th centuries. At the heart of this Islamic dynasty was the House of Wisdom. It was an ext...
15 Jan 15min
