With great dictatorial powers, comes a great risk of ceasing to continue to breathe long before your elderly years, with the odds increasing markedly if you also just so happen to make enemies out of not just countless nations of the world, but within a relatively large percentage of your own population through brutality and… Read More »
For anyone sitting in gridlocked traffic on the way to a soul crushing job surrounded by other humans nattering on all day about their TPS reports as you truly internalize the pointlessness of everything because we’re all going to die and everything we ever said or did will be forgotten someday, you may at some… Read More »
Ever wonder what the first known religion is? Well, wonder no more. To begin with, according to anthropologists Hervey C. People and Frank W. Marlowe, religion can be broadly defined as “a set of beliefs and behaviors based on a shared worldview that separates the sacred, or supernatural, from the profane.” With that broad interpretation… Read More »
Throughout history humans have many stories discussing various supposed humans and other beings that we dismiss as legend as a matter of course. Perhaps no source of such legendary figures is more robust than figures related to various religions, with basically no one today, for example, thinking that Hercules ever actually existed, despite the countless… Read More »
So you and your significant other have been dating for a while, and you’ve finally decided to pop the question. Well the first thing you’re going to need is a ring, right? Preferably diamond, and costing the equivalent of three months’ salary? After all it’s traditional, isn’t it? Never mind that this so-called ‘tradition’ is… Read More »
On Christmas Day, 1914, the guns of the Western Front suddenly fell silent. All along the line, tens of thousands of soldiers lay down their weapons, climbed out of their trenches, and wandered into no-man’s land. Men who just hours ago had been actively trying to kill each other suddenly began fraternizing like old friends,… Read More »
In the heart of Rome stands one of the Eternal City’s most famous and well-preserved ancient monuments: the Pantheon. Constructed during the reign of Emperor Hadrian in the Second Century C.E, the building has been in near-continuous use for two millennia, first as a temple dedicated to the Olympian Gods, and then as a Catholic… Read More »
On the first of September, 1939, nearly 1.5 million troops, 2,750 tanks, and 2,300 aircraft of Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich stormed over the border into Poland. We all know what happened next: despite declaring war in solidarity, Poland’s allies Britain and France stood by and did nothing as Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union overran… Read More »
Grosse Île lies 50km east of Quebec City, one of 21 islands in the middle of the St. Lawrence River. Though its name means “Big Island” in French, Grosse Île is barely two kilometres square, home to a small collection of buildings from its days as a quarantine station for Irish immigrants arriving in Canada.… Read More »
In the mid-19th century, the Austrian Empire, which stretched for over a thousand miles (1600 km) from Italy to Ukraine, was a place of contradictions. The ruling patriarch, Minister of the Interior Baron Alexander von Bach, was on the one hand something of a despot, abolishing public trials, reducing the freedom of the press and imprisoning… Read More »
If you are like many parents watching your children’s booster seats slide around while they hop into the vehicle and otherwise wonder what precisely is the way you’re supposed to incorporate the seatbelt around the bits so it’s properly positioned on the kids (we’ll get into how to always do this one correctly later in… Read More »