Was Robin Hood Actually an Anglo-Saxon Hitman

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 unlikely suspect: an Anglo-Saxon hitman who may have assassinated the King of England. Today’s gues…

Andrew Mellon Nearly Ended Big Government Forever. FDR Destroyed Him For It

When Andrew Mellon arrived in Marion, Ohio, for his interview with President-elect Warren Harding in December 1920, nobody met him at the train station. The third-richest man in America picked up his worn leather valise and his cane and walked a mile down the road to Harding's house, mounted the re…

The Mongols on the High Seas: The Yuan Dynasty's Massive Navy

Genghis Khan built a formidable land empire, but he never crossed the sea. Yet by the time his grandson Kublai Khan had defeated the last vestiges of the Song empire and established the Yuan dynasty in 1279, the Mongols controlled the most powerful navy in the world. How did a nomad come to conquer…

Amazon Won’t Destroy Bookshops Because 600 Years of Disruptions Haven’t Either

In 1784, a young German immigrant named Bernard Quaritch walked into the London office of Henry George Bohn, one of the largest booksellers in England, and told him: "Mr Bohn, you are the first bookseller in England. I mean to become the first bookseller in Europe." Bohn hired him as an assistant. …

The Ancient World's Best Military Technology Was Constantinople's City Walls

On May 29, 1453, Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II captured Constantinople, bringing an end to over a thousand years of Byzantine rule. The city's formidable walls, which had stood nearly impenetrable for eight centuries, finally fell to hisforces. With its conquest, Constantinople was declared the new capi…

Edgar Allen Poe’s Self-Sabotage, Early Death, and Path to Becoming America’s Greatest Poet

In the summer of 1849, Edgar Allan Poe knocked on the door of his friend John Sartain's Philadelphia workshop, wild-eyed and without luggage. He had fled a train in New Jersey after overhearing passengers plotting to kill him. His senses had grown so acute, he said, that he could hear whispers from…

England's Last Knights Fought in Armor Until the 1640s

The 17th-century battlefield ushered in a new era, with formed musketeers and pistol-wielding cavalry gradually taking over from the knights and men-at-arms that had dominated the European battlefield. But knights could still be found on these battlefields as late as the 1640s, proudly donning thei…

Vikings Went from Christendom’s Terror to Its Best Crusaders

In 1861, an archaeologist named James Farrer broke into a grass-covered Neolithic tomb on the Orkney Islands expecting to find ancient bones and treasure. The tomb was empty. But its walls were covered with runic inscriptions, dozens of them, carved by Norse visitors centuries earlier. Most were mu…

Why the Most Powerful Muslim Rulers in the Middle East Considered the Crusaders a Minor Annoyance

When the First Crusade arrived at the walls of Antioch in 1097, the two most powerful Muslim rulers in Syria were not preparing a joint defense. They were trying to destroy each other. Ridwan of Aleppo and his brother Duqaq of Damascus had been locked in a fratricidal war over their dead father's t…

The Gold Rush Created Get Rich Quick Schemes and ‘Move Fast and Break Things’

On the morning of January 24, 1848, a carpenter named James Marshall climbed into a ditch beside a half-finished sawmill in the Sierra Nevada foothills, stooped down, and found gold. He crawled out clutching his hat to his chest like a hurt child, showed the men a teaspoon of yellow flakes, and sai…