Before the Cold War, Russia and America Were the Closest of Distant Friends

Nearly a century of Cold War tensions between the United States and Russia hide the incredibly close friendship that the two nations enjoyed before this period. From America’s colonial founding in the 1600s to the eve of World War One, the two distant nations relied on each other in a surprising nu…

The Horrifying Sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald, the Titanic of the Great Lakes

One of the worst nautical disasters in recent American history is the sinking of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald. On November 10, 1975, the “storm of the century” threw 100 mile-per-hour winds and 50-foot waves on Lake Superior. The ship found itself at the worst possible place, at the worst possible time…

Inside the Deadly German U-Boats That Brought Britain to Its Knees (But Were Deadlier for Their Own Crews)

Over the course of World War II, Germany’s submariners sank over three thousand Allied ships, nearly three-quarters of Allied shipping losses in all theaters of the war. Winston Churchill famously declared the only thing that truly frightened him during World War II was the U-boat threat. But the t…

Manifest Destiny, Powered by Coal: How “Black Gold” Conquered the American Continent

America’s growth from a rugged frontier nation to the globe’s industrial superpower in the space of 100 years can be explained by one word: coal. Before coal dominance, American buildings were defined by height limits imposed by stonework. The tallest building in the 1830s was Baltimore’s 235-foot …

Ancient Athens Picked Its Leaders by Lottery for Over 200 Years. Some Think This System Should Replace Electoral Democracy

For almost two centuries, Ancient Athens—the most successful democracy in history—selected citizens by lottery to fill government positions. Athens adopted sortition—a random lottery system—to select most public officials and the members of the Council of 500, a reform pioneered in 508 BC to break …

How Would Nixon Have Handled the Cuban Missile Crisis?

The "Madman Theory" was Richard Nixon's foreign policy strategy during the Vietnam War era, where he deliberately cultivated an image of being unpredictable and irrational—hinting he might escalate to nuclear extremes—to intimidate adversaries like North Vietnam and the Soviet Union into concession…

Diogenes, the Father of Ancient Greek Stoicism, Loving Trolling His Audience and Could Out-Shock Borat

The famous street artist Banksy shocked the art world in 2018 when his painting, Girl with Balloon, partially shredded itself moments after selling it for over a million dollars. at a Sotheby's auction in London. Banksy had secretly built a mechanical shredder into the painting's ornate frame, turn…

Blown Off Course: How History’s Windy Turning Points Sank the Armada and Saved Japan from the Mongols

The greatest energy source for civilization before the steam engine was wind. It powered the global economy in the Age of Sail. Wind-powered sail ships made global shipping fast and cheap by harnessing free, reliable ocean winds to propel large cargo loads over vast distances without needing fuel o…

Maps Have Bigger Problems Than the Mercator Projection. They Invent Mountain Ranges and Usually Eliminate New Zealand

Maps have always had problems. Five hundred years ago, maps were wildly inaccurate simply because cartographers were drawing the edge of the known world, limited by slow ships and nonexistent satellite data, resulting in continents that were too large, too small, or entirely misplaced. All of those…

The Great Mathematicians of the Early 1900s Ran into an Unsolvable Problem. They Realized Math Made No Sense

In the 1800s, it seemed like mathematics was a solved problem. The paradoxes in the field were resolved, and even areas like advanced calculus could be taught consistently and reliably at any school. It was clearly understandable in a way that abstract fields like philosophy weren’t, and it was on …