Humans have been around for around 350,000 years, but it has only been a short time since they began to group together in what we call civilizations. In all of our history on this planet, humans have only civilized themselves for approximately 10,000 years thanks to the development of agriculture, […]
Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant have a few things in common; not only were they popular actors during Hollywood’s Golden Age, but they both used a way of speaking known as the Mid-Atlantic or Transatlantic accent. Although Hepburn was American and Grant was from England, you wouldn’t know it by […]
Depending on who’s doing the talking, those who have given away intelligence about the military and security infrastructure of the United States have been called spies, heroes, and traitors. But knowing the historical contexts around such leaks can help us understand why the leakers did what they did, and whether […]
The romance of Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII had it all – passion, intrigue, and betrayal. Anne was neither the first nor last of Henry’s wives, but she remains the most enigmatic, and their relationship the most tumultuous. Small details about their life together reveal just how over the top […]
If there’s one member of the Federal Bureau of Investigation that pretty much everyone in the world could name without trouble, it’s J. Edgar Hoover. Best known as the country’s most famous G-man, Hoover’s work as director of the FBI began in 1924, when Hoover took control, it was simply […]
Historic landmarks have been attracting tourists for hundreds – in some cases, thousands – of years. Monuments like the Roman Colosseum, the Great Wall of China, and the Eiffel Tower are so distinct that you can probably identify them just by their silhouettes – but what do you really know […]
What happened to the Garden of Eden? This question has plagued many to go searching for the location of the fabled garden, and as such people have nominated places as crazy as Mars and Missouri as its source, while many scholars believe it never existed at all. Certain descriptions in […]
What with being such a private, insular community, many people are curious about the Amish lifestyle and beliefs system. Leaving the Amish faith is extremely hard on any individual who decides to become “English” (the Amish term for everyone who isn’t Amish), but, fortunately, ex-Amish stories have provided us with […]
The Great Pyramid of Giza. The Great Wall of China. The Parthenon. The Eiffel Tower. Stonehenge. Great structures capture our imagination and give us a lasting collective heritage. (They also provide the backdrop to innumerable selfies.) But while they may last for centuries, these familiar objects have widely divergent building […]
Anybody looking for Julius Caesar facts is bound to find something interesting along the way – namely, his wild reputation for sex. The ancient Romans didn’t have the same hangups about sex that many societies do today; much of Julius Caesar’s sex life was considered normal by their standards, but […]
