Britain Controlled the Globe by Farming Out Colonial Governance to the East Indian Company and other Corporations
How did Britain – an island nation the same size as Oregon – manage to control most of the world through its colonial empires? The answer is that it didn’t, at least not directly. Britain farmed out c...
15 Aug 20231h 13min
How the Monroe Doctrine Led to America Occupying Cuba, Panama, Hawaii, and Haiti
Following the Napoleonic Wars, a tidal wave of independence movements hit the Western Hemisphere. The United States was afraid that expansionist powers—namely Britain, France, Germany, and Japan—might...
10 Aug 202347min
A 1943 Translation Blunder Saved FDR, Churchill, and Eisenhower From Being Assassinated
In a recently bombed, spy-infested Casablanca, Morocco, the architects of Allied victory in World War Two meet. It is January 1943, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Charles de Gaulle,...
8 Aug 202332min
James Garfield – Overlooked for his Short Presidency – Was the Most Beloved Politician of Reconstruction
James Garfield was the last president born in a log cabin, and was raised by a poor widow on Ohio’s rugged Western Reserve. By his late twenties, he had become a respected preacher, state senator, and...
3 Aug 20231h 4min
Road Tripping with Henry Ford and Thomas Edison Through Rural America In Beat-Up Model Ts
Some of the most important moments in the lives of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison weren’t their inventions or business successes. It was their road trips through the most remote, rustic parts of America...
1 Aug 202358min
Did the South Lose the Entire Civil War Because One General Got Lost at the Battle of Gettysburg?
Did the Confederacy lose the entire Civil War on the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863 because one of their generals showed up late to a battle site? That’s a very simple answer to a very...
27 Juli 202353min
Alexander the Great’s Final Battle Nearly Killed Him with Drowning and War Elephants
In the years that followed Alexander the Great’s victory at Gaugamela on October 1, 331 BC, his Macedonian and Greek army fought a truly ‘Herculean’ series of campaigns in what is today Iran, Turkmeni...
25 Juli 20231h 5min
In 1938, America Underwent a 7-Year Transformation From an Weak, Pacifist Nation to the Arsenal of Democracy
Nobody would have thought that the United States could fight in a world war in 1938, let alone be a major reason for victory. That year, it was so politically isolationist and pacifist that its defens...
20 Juli 202337min
