The recipe is simple: take an empty glass bottle, fill it with gasoline or other suitably flammable liquid, and stuff a piece of cloth – preferably also soaked in gasoline – into the neck. To use, simply ignite the cloth and throw. The quintessential improvised weapon, the Molotov cocktail has become a potent symbol of armed rebellion and violent protest […]

Air raid sirens blared and curtains of tracer rounds rose into the sky as the ominous drone of aircraft engines grew ever closer. Suddenly, a flight of enemy aircraft swooped low over the sleeping anchorage, unleashing their deadly cargo of torpedoes and bombs onto an unsuspecting fleet. All around, geysers of water and flame erupted into the air, lighting up […]

On the morning of January 17, 1955, Eugene P. Wilkinson, commander of the U.S. Navy submarine USS Nautilus, transmitted one of the most consequential messages in the history of naval warfare: underway on nuclear power. Prior to this, military submarines were more aptly termed submersibles, with the majority of their time spent on the surface. Nuclear propulsion finally transformed the […]

It is one of the most widespread and recognizable religious symbols in the world: the anguished figure of a man, naked but for a loincloth and crown of thorns, hands and feet brutally nailed to a wooden cross. The crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth in 33 C.E. is perhaps the single most famous and consequential act of capital punishment, spawning […]

Has there ever been a piece of home decor that more perfectly encapsulates an era than the Lava Lamp? An icon of the psychedelic and hippie movements of the 1960s and 70s, this mesmerizing tube of undulating, brightly-coloured blobs is the perfect mood-setting accessory for when you just want to lay back in your bean bag chair, consume an illegal […]

Ah, pirates! As fellow YouTuber The History Guy so famously stated: don’t all good stories involve pirates? For hundreds of years, these raiders of the waves have struck fear into the hearts of sailors and captured the popular imagination with a romantic image of freewheeling, swashbuckling adventure. But while the world of fiction abounds with tales of pirates commandeering all […]

Gladiatorial combat may seem outdated and barbaric, but it is, at its heart, a combat sport like mixed martial arts, boxing, and even professional wrestling, with very similar appeal. There were clearly defined rules, a sense of dramatic flair with costumes, and even character archetypes. It was indeed bloody, but not as nearly as fatal as many think today. Not […]

“God…France…My son…Josephine.” These were the final words of Napoleon Bonaparte, spoken on May 5, 1821. The Corsican-born leader, who in less than two decades rose from humble artillery commander to Emperor of the French and conquered much of mainland Europe, died far from his beloved France – exiled to the remote, windswept island of Saint Helena. Napoleon’s cause of death […]

The Battle of Thermopylae as seen in the movie 300 was just one of many battles in the Graeco-Persian Wars. It wasn’t one the Greeks won, but we think of it as a kind of victory. Leading the Greeks through the push back against the Persians were the Spartans, a warrior society built on the backs of some rather brutally […]

On February 20, 1947, a captured German V-2 rocket roared off the launch pad at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico and streaked off into the sky. Within three minutes, it reached an apogee of 109.4 kilometres – just above the 100 kilometre Karman Line that defines the boundary of outer space. Though completely forgotten today, this launch was a […]

If you visit Pier 13 at the Canton Marine Terminal in Baltimore, Maryland, you will find two very different historic cargo ships. One is the SS John W. Brown, one of nearly 3,000 cheap, quick-to-produce “Liberty Ships” built to haul cargo during the Second World War. The other, by contrast, is one of a kind. With a gleaming white hull […]

There have been no small number of rather bizarre accidents from humans humaning, everything from that time the City of Boston almost literally drowned in molasses to how humans drilling a 14 inch hole accidentally created a 1,300-foot deep saltwater lake out of a formerly 10-Foot deep freshwater one (more on this hilarious event in the Bonus Facts later.) But […]

Despite all the veneration we often throw Ancient Rome’s way, the truth is the Ancient Romans built their empire on the backs of slaves, with an estimated 35% of the total population of that society in the 1st century BCE comprised of slaves. So how did slavery start in this civilization and what was it actually like to be a […]

On January 1, 1959, troops of the revolutionary 26th of July Movement marched into the Cuban capital of Havana, toppling the American-backed government of dictator Fulgencio Batista. Two weeks later, the leader of the revolution, former lawyer Fidel Castro, was sworn in as Prime Minister. Almost immediately, Castro began implementing a program of sweeping socialist reforms, nationalizing Cuba’s sugar and […]

In a fenced-off field near Langdon, North Dakota stands a strange and enigmatic object: a 24-metre high truncated concrete pyramid, looming over the prairie. Scattered around its base are other strange forms cast in concrete and steel, and a cluster of low, prefabricated buildings, now empty and slowly rusting away. These are the remains of the Stanley R. Mickelsen Safeguard […]

On December 26, 1991, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the world’s second-largest superpower and flagship for state communism for 74 years, suddenly ceased to exist. The Cold War, the four-decade- long ideological struggle between East and West, was finally over. But while December 26 marked the official birth of the newly-democratic Russian Federation, the dissolution of the Soviet Union […]

The world of aviation abounds with thousands of unique aircraft designs, from tiny ultralights to giant military transports. Yet no matter how advanced or outlandish these designs get, nearly all fall into one of only two basic categories: fixed wing or rotary wing. But the history of aviation, like that of all technologies, is riddled with false starts and dead […]