Who was Attila the Hun? Attila the Hun is known as the most prolific killer of the Early Middle Ages. But the facts about Attila’s life are much more complicated than that. Born into the royalty of a small but ambitious steppe tribe, Attila and his brother Bleda were groomed […]
You’ve heard of Nero, of course. He’s a highlight of world history in high school – the crazy Roman emperor who supposedly fiddled with a tune while the city burned to the ground. You’ve heard he was out of his mind, sure, but you have no idea exactly how nuts […]
The Victorian Era lasted throughout most of the 1800s. This period of time was known for its technological advancements and for its increased social mobility. And with that came new beauty trends that spread from Britain to the United States by word of mouth and publications aimed at women – […]
A post on Medium in May 2016 attempted to tackle a seemingly unanswerable question: what’s the weirdest town in America? To do this, Lyman Stone used 20 different variables, including what percentage of each city’s population was foreign-born, married, working, in the armed forces, etc. He then compared that data […]
Bobby Fischer epitomized the notion that there is a very thin line between genius and insanity. Because Fischer refused interviews and famously cut off contact with acquaintances who talked about him publicly, many Bobby Fischer stories and Bobby Fischer facts did not emerge until after his death. Some may never […]
If you grew up in the United States, you probably learned the United States Customary System (USCS) for weights and measures. USCS terms like inches, feet, pounds, and miles are derived from the British Imperial System, steeped in a long history of application and use. Any introduction to the metric […]
Kings live some of the most extraordinary lives of any human beings. They can have seemingly limitless wealth, power, and time to do what they want. But one thing seems to mirror extraordinary lives: extraordinary deaths. The kings on this list have some of the most unusual, sometimes painful deaths […]
It’s impossible to meet the incredibly unrealistic and changing beauty standards of our world, and many of us have already spent way too much time trying to pluck, paint, or contour ourselves into stacking up. It may not be a surprise to learn that this is basically a timeless issue, […]
Many of the stories about Davy Crockett (1786-1836) are wrapped up in myth and masculinity, much of which was propagated by Crockett’s own hand. He wrote an autobiography, aptly titled A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett of the State of Tennessee, which detailed – and perhaps embellished – […]
Any time a highly respected historical drama comes along, whether on the big or small screen, be prepared for dozens of articles about all the things it got wrong. Uncovering those inconsistencies may be illuminating, but the relationship between history and its fictionalized depiction is a codependent one. Even with […]
