The Roman Emperor Who Spread Christianity Most Was Arguably Augustus (Even Though He Died in 14 AD)

Rome seemed fundamentally opposed to Christianity in the first century. After all, the empire fed Christians to lions, taxed their communities, and crucified their followers, making Rome look like the natural enemy of everything the new faith stood for. Christians returned the hostility in the Book…

5,000 Years of Punctuation: Why It Terrified Roman Scholars and Started a Russian Revolution

The first punctuation mark was a triangular symbol pressed into clay somewhere in Mesopotamia. Spaces between words were unknown for millennia, until a group of Irish monks pioneered them in the eighth century.  Flash forward 1200 years, and in 1905, Moscow's typesetters went on strike because a ne…

Charlemagne Dreamed of a Sword With Four Words on It and They Predicted Exactly How His Dynasty Would Fall

Late at night in his palace at Aachen, Charlemagne had a dream. A mysterious figure approached him carrying a sword engraved with four Germanic words: raht, radoleiba, nasg, and enti. The meaning seemed immediately clear to the emperor, who fancied himself a philosopher as well as a conqueror. Ther…

Cicero—Rome’s Greatest Orator—Saved the Capital From Insurrection, But Couldn’t Save the Republic From Collapse

On December 7, 43 BCE, a sixty-three-year-old man was carried in a litter down a woodland path near the Italian coast, fleeing soldiers who had been sent to kill him. When they caught up, he ordered his attendants to set down the litter, put his head out, and offered them his neck. They cut it off,…

Do Napoleons or Hitlers Really Matter? Whether Leaders Make History or Their Societies Make Them

On March 13, 1930, Adolf Hitler was sitting in the passenger seat of his chauffeur-driven car when a trailer truck sped through an intersection and struck the vehicle, pushing it across the road and stopping just short of crushing it. Everyone survived. Three years later, Hitler became chancellor o…

Washington’s Most Revolutionary Moment Was Surrendering Absolute Power

Washington’s most extraordinary achievement was not winning the Revolutionary War or helping found a new nation. It was something far rarer: He gave up power, twice. First, when he resigned his command after victory. Then again, when he stepped down as president, establishing a precedent no law req…

Japan's Military Refused to Surrender Even After Two Atomic Bombs and a Coup Nearly Succeeded

At 1:15 p.m. on April 12, 1945, Franklin Roosevelt was sitting for a portrait at his cottage in Warm Springs, Georgia, when his face suddenly fell forward. He raised his left hand to his temple and whispered to his cousin Daisy: "I have a terrific pain in the back of my head." He was dead by 3:35. …

Is Patton America’s Most Overrated General?

George S. Patton is considered one of America’s greatest generals for his blitzes across Europe in World War 2. He is celebrated for breaking out of Normandy because his Third Army push out of their holdings along the coast, unleashing a lightning-fast armored blitz across northern France that rout…

Stalin’s Ordered Killing of Trotsky Created the Playbook for Modern Political Assassination

Ramón Mercader expected to easily kill Leon Trotsky, silently and instantly. He had rehearsed the blow for months, practiced the angle, tailored a pocket into his raincoat to conceal the shortened ice axe. On August 20, 1940, he stood behind Trotsky -- who was the principle leader of the 1917 Bolsh…

Belisarius Reconquered Africa and Italy for Rome. Why Did Rome Destroy Him for It?

In 533, a twenty-eight-year-old general named Belisarius sailed from Constantinople with 15,000 men to reconquer North Africa from the Vandals, a kingdom that had held it for nearly a century since the sack of Rome. The last time the Eastern Empire had attempted the crossing, the entire fleet had b…