Tag Archives: History
Modern nuclear subs can be so quiet and hard to track that in February 2009, a French and a British…
An ancient Roman text says Emperor Gallienus once punished a man for selling glass gems as real…
That Time the British Rioted for Three Months Over a 15% Increase in the Cost of Theater Tickets
In September of 1808 Covent Garden Theatre in London burned to the ground. The exact cause of the fire has never been established but due to the extensive amount of flammable items throughout combined with an amazing number of flaming light fixtures, fires of some sort at theaters were relatively common, even inspiring a London… Read More »
Did the Hanging Gardens of Babylon Actually Ever Exist?
The Pyramids of Giza. The Pharos of Alexandria. The Colossus of Rhodes. The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon. The Statue of Zeus at Olympia. The Mausoleum at Halicanarnassus. These are the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, celebrated for millennia as the greatest architectural achievements of antiquity. Sadly, today only… Read More »
The Nazi Space Shuttle
On December 8, 1941, the day after the surprise attack on Pearl Harbour, the United States declared war on the Empire of Japan. Three days later on December 11, Japan’s ally Nazi Germany declared war on the United States. This was to prove a major strategic blunder for the Nazis, for not only was the… Read More »
Christmas as we know it—with family get-togethers, yummy holiday food, games, kindness to others,…
How Close Were the Soviets to Putting a Man on the Moon Before the U.S.?
In the first episode of the AppleTV series For All Mankind, the people of the world gather around their television sets in the summer of 1969 and watch in awe as the first human being sets foot on the moon. But in this reality, that human being is not NASA astronaut Neil Armstrong but Soviet… Read More »
In the early 1910s, New York City took most of a landlord’s building for a road and subway project,…
When the shopping cart debuted in 1937, many shoppers refused to use it, so inventor Sylvan Goldman…
The Humble Metal Can That Won WWII
“An army marches on its stomach.” This adage, variously ascribed to Frederick the Great or Napoleon Bonaparte, captured one of the universal truths of warfare: that battles are won not by men and weapons, but by logistics – the ability to efficiently and reliably supply said men and guns with the ammunition, food, medicine, and… Read More »