Topics

History

1,670 cards. Each one is a 40-second story with a five-minute read behind it. Page 14 of 28.

781. Hittite tablets proved a sound that Saussure had only predictedIn 1879 the young linguist Ferdinand de Saussure argued that the ancestor of most European and Indian languages once had sounds that had vanished from every known descendant. Deca…
782. Japan's lower house has served its full four years only once since 1952Members of Japan's House of Representatives are elected for four years, but prime ministers almost always dissolve the chamber early. Since the American occupation ended in 1952, …
783. Israel's anthem and the Greek revolution both began in one Romanian cityThe words of HaTikvah, now Israel's national anthem, were written in Iași by Naftali Herz Imber. Decades earlier, in 1821, Alexander Ypsilantis stood at a monastery in the same ci…
784. Mongol conquerors helped revive the very idea of a unified IranThe Ilkhanate was founded by Hulegu, a grandson of Genghis Khan, yet its official name was simply Iran, the Land of Iran. Its Mongol rulers hired historians to cast them as heirs …
785. In 1939 no Indian officer in the regular Indian Army ranked above majorWhen the Second World War began, India's army had no Indian generals, and its air force's most senior Indian officer was a flight lieutenant. Within six years the Indian Army had …
786. After 1947, a substantive major commanded Indian ground forces as a lieutenant-generalWhen British senior officers left India's army almost overnight in 1947, their Indian successors were pushed up the ladder in acting ranks far above their real ones. S. M. Shrinag…
787. Kathmandu is named after a shelter built from the wood of one treeAround the tenth century, King Gunakama Deva had a large wooden pavilion raised from the timber of a single tree. It was called Kasthamandapa, and the city that grew around it eve…
788. China once called Judaism the religion that removes the sinewChinese observers noticed that their Jewish neighbours refused to eat a certain nerve in the leg, a rule traced to a verse in Genesis. So they named the faith Tiaojinjiao, roughly…
789. Lithuania stayed pagan so long it became Europe's largest state firstWhile crusading knights were converting the Baltic by the sword, Lithuania's warrior rulers kept their old gods, cremating their grand dukes on pyres. By the 15th century this lat…
790. A Mexican Pacific port once welcomed samurai and ships laden with Chinese silkFor centuries Acapulco, in the rugged Mexican state of Guerrero, was where Asia met the Americas. The Manila galleon arrived yearly with silks from China and India, and in 1614 a …
791. An Austrian lakeside village of 780 people gave its name to an Iron Age cultureHallstatt squeezes onto a thin strip of shore beneath the Dachstein mountains, yet its salt made it rich thousands of years ago. The mine is the oldest still working anywhere, its…
792. Nobody knows which pass Hannibal used to cross the AlpsHannibal's march over the Alps into Italy in 218 BC is among the most celebrated feats in ancient warfare, yet its route remains a mystery. There is no archaeological trace, and t…
793. Troy's greatest warrior took off his helmet because it frightened his baby sonIn one of the Iliad's most tender scenes, Hector says goodbye to his wife Andromache at the city gate. Their infant son bursts into tears at the sight of his father's gleaming bro…
794. Ancient Egyptians mostly wrote in joined-up script, not hieroglyphsHieroglyphs fill museum walls, but everyday Egypt ran on hieratic, a flowing cursive brushed in ink on papyrus. For roughly three thousand years it carried tax receipts, letters, …
795. The Historia Augusta's six authors were probably one ancient hoaxerA key Latin source for a century of Roman emperors claims to be the work of six biographers writing for Diocletian and Constantine. In 1889 a German scholar argued that all six we…
796. China's capital has moved so often that its cities are named by compass pointBeijing means northern capital and Nanjing southern capital, and that is no accident. Tradition counts five great historic capitals of China, each tagged with a direction: Xi'an i…
797. Frankfurt's university was founded by its citizens, not a king or churchMost old German universities owe their existence to princes or the church. Frankfurt's was paid for by its own wealthy, liberal townspeople, with Jewish families supplying two thi…
798. The pope invented a brand-new title for Cosimo de' Medici, and emperors fumedIn 1569 Pope Pius V declared Cosimo de' Medici Grand Duke of Tuscany, a rank nobody in Italy had held before. The Holy Roman Emperor and the King of Spain were furious, insisting …
799. One limestone ridge explains where the Great Lakes sitThe layout of the Great Lakes is no accident. A band of hard Niagara dolomite curves from New York through Ontario to Wisconsin, and the lakes fill the softer lowlands worn away o…
800. Ancient Greek colonies were called homes away from home, and many outgrew their parentsBetween the 8th and 6th centuries BCE, Greek cities sent organised expeditions across the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Drought, land hunger, trade and political feuds all drov…
801. An earthquake handed the Ottomans their first foothold in Europe at GallipoliIn March 1354 a powerful earthquake flattened the town of Gallipoli and its walls. Within a month Ottoman forces had taken it, gaining their first stronghold in Europe and a sprin…
802. Genesis opens with two creation stories, and they call God different namesRead the first two chapters of Genesis closely and the seams show. In one account God, called Elohim, speaks the universe into being over six days. In the next, a deity named Yahw…
803. Mountain chiefs from central Afghanistan built an empire from Iran to BengalFor about 150 years the Ghurids were minor chiefs in the isolated hills of Ghor, paying tribute to bigger powers. Then, in a few decades of the 12th century, two brothers ruling j…
804. Ezekiel preached to exiles in Babylon for about 22 yearsEzekiel was a priest from Judah living among deportees beside a canal near Nippur in Babylonia. From 593 BC he delivered visions of fiery living creatures and wheels, foretold Jer…
805. A fig is really an inside-out bouquet of flowers pollinated by tiny waspsWhat we call a fig fruit is a hollow, fleshy stem lined inside with hundreds of minute flowers. The only way in is a tiny hole at the tip, and specialised wasps crawl through it t…
806. Napoleon's empire kept calling itself the French Republic for four yearsNapoleon was proclaimed Emperor of the French in May 1804 and crowned that December in Notre-Dame. Yet official documents went on describing the state as the French Republic until…
807. An insult to a so-called blacksmith slave launched an empire from Manchuria to CrimeaIn 546 the Turkic chief Bumin crushed a revolt for his overlords, the Rouran, and asked for a royal bride as reward. Their ruler sneered that a blacksmith slave had no right to as…
808. The dynasty that built the Colosseum descended from a centurion who fled battleVespasian's grandfather was a centurion who ran from the field at Pharsalus in 48 BC. Within four generations, shrewd marriages and tax-collecting had lifted the family into the S…
809. Romulus probably never existed, but Rome's hills were busy long before 753 BCRomans dated their city to 21 April 753 BC, when Romulus supposedly killed his twin and marked out a town on the Palatine. Archaeology tells a slower story: villages on separate h…
810. Maya builders may have ruined El Mirador by burning forests for plasterCenturies before Tikal peaked, El Mirador in Guatemala raised La Danta, a pyramid about 72 metres high and one of the most massive on Earth. The city thrived on fields fertilised …
811. Long before Napoleon, the Greeks named Elba the smoky island for its furnacesElba is remembered as Napoleon's first prison, but its fame is far older. Ancient Greeks called it Aethalia, from their word for smoky, because iron furnaces smouldered along its …
812. Epicurus prized pleasure, but his idea of it was a quiet, simple lifeEpicurean now suggests feasts and fine wine. Epicurus meant almost the opposite. The Greek philosopher, who founded his school in 307 BCE, taught that the highest pleasure is free…
813. Dhow is a European label that Arab and Indian sailors never usedEuropeans sorted ships by their rigging, so every Indian Ocean vessel with the familiar angled sail became a dhow to them. The sailors who built and crewed these boats saw no sing…
814. The Holy Roman Empire was dissolved partly to keep Napoleon from claiming itOn 6 August 1806 Francis II gave up the imperial crown and released every state and official from their oaths. He was not only bowing to defeat. By dismantling the whole imperial …
815. A holy man crowned Afghanistan's founder with sheaves of grainIn June 1747 a tribal grand council near Kandahar debated for nine days over who should lead the Afghans. A dervish ended it by praising the young Ahmad Khan, then tucking wheat o…
816. Divers off Dwarka found walls, a jetty and anchors beneath the seaLegend says Krishna reclaimed land from the sea to build Dwarka, a fortified city of gates on India's western coast. Underwater surveys by the Archaeological Survey of India have …
817. Just 3 percent of Turkey sits in Europe, yet holds 12 percent of its peopleEast Thrace, the corner of Turkey on the European side of the Bosphorus, covers only about 23,764 square kilometres. But it holds roughly an eighth of the population, part of Ista…
818. Spanish efforts to stamp out an Andean sacred cactus ended with it named after a saintAndean healers have used the San Pedro cactus in ritual for thousands of years. Spanish colonisers tried to suppress it and failed; the plant even acquired a Christian name, Saint…
819. One Egyptian dynasty produced Hatshepsut, Akhenaten, Nefertiti and TutankhamunBetween roughly 1550 and 1292 BC, a single royal line took Egypt to the height of its power. It is the only native dynasty with two women who ruled as pharaoh, it spawned the reli…
820. Rome's most reviled teenage emperor may have been smeared by hostile historiansElagabalus became emperor at 14 and was murdered at 18, and for centuries writers ranked him among Rome's worst rulers. But almost everything scandalous about him comes from a sen…
821. Mexico's least populous state has a volcano, remote islands and a giant limeColima is a sliver of Mexico's Pacific coast, holding just 0.3 percent of the national territory and the smallest population of any state. Yet it squeezes in an active volcano, mo…
822. The Comanche turned horses into the backbone of a Plains powerAs late as 1725, Comanche families were still loading their bison-hide tents onto large dogs. Within a few generations they had become the most celebrated horsemen of the southern…
823. The swirling pattern on Damascus blades came from coarse crystals, not magicLong before Europe's industrial furnaces, smiths in southern India and Sri Lanka sealed iron in clay pots and heated it into steel good enough to be traded across the known world.…
824. The earliest portraits of Jesus showed a beardless young man with short hairThe long-haired, bearded Jesus familiar from centuries of paintings did not exist for the first Christians. The oldest known portrait, found in Syria and dated to about 235, shows…
825. Chang'an's imperial palace covered nearly seven times the Forbidden City's areaThe Weiyang Palace in Chang'an sprawled across 4.8 square kilometres, the largest palace ever built. When the Han founder first saw his chancellor's enormous twin palaces, he scol…
826. San Francisco still guards against fire with 177 secret underground water tanksA cistern is simply a sealed tank for storing water, usually rain, and the idea is at least as old as Neolithic villages in the Levant. The same technology sits under Roman courty…
827. Colchis, land of the Golden Fleece, was a real kingdom rich in goldGreek myth sent Jason and the Argonauts to Colchis on the Black Sea to steal the Golden Fleece, and Medea was said to be born there. The place was real: a kingdom in what is now w…
828. Turnips and clover helped feed the workforce of the Industrial RevolutionBetween 1700 and 1850, each British farm labourer came to produce about two and a half times as much food. Humble turnips and clover, planted where fields once lay idle, did much …
829. How one Roman family's surname became the word for emperorCaesar began as a family nickname. After Julius Caesar's adopted son took the name and became Rome's first emperor, it hardened into a title for rulers and their heirs, and it sur…
830. In Canaanite myth, the storm god is swallowed by Death and the rains stopIn a myth recovered from clay tablets at Ugarit, the storm god Baal roars a challenge from his new palace window. Mot, the god of death, climbs in and swallows him, and drought gr…
831. Cao Wei seized China's throne by forced abdication and lost it the same wayIn 220 AD Cao Pi made the last Han emperor step down and founded the state of Wei. Forty-six years later his dynasty got a taste of its own medicine, when the Sima family, who had…
832. Cappadocia's fairy chimneys were carved by erosion from ancient volcanic ashCentral Turkey's Cappadocia looks like another planet: cones and spires of soft rock, some hollowed into churches, castles and underground cities. The landscape began with huge er…
833. Twin brothers with different fathers, and one immortality split between themCastor and Pollux shared a mother, Leda, but in the best-known version only Pollux was the son of Zeus. When mortal Castor was killed, Pollux gave up half his immortality so they …
834. Catania keeps rebuilding itself in black lava at the foot of EtnaSicily's second city sits at the base of Mount Etna, one of the world's active volcanoes, and has paid for it. An earthquake nearly erased Catania in 1169, lava almost engulfed it…
835. The short-lived African empire whose Napoleon-style coronation swallowed a third of the budgetIn December 1976 Jean-Bédel Bokassa, president of the Central African Republic, declared the country a monarchy and himself its emperor. His coronation a year later, modelled on N…
836. Rulers on the Black Sea's edge were archons to Greeks, kings to everyone elseAround the Kerch Strait, a Greek-Scythian kingdom fed Athens with grain and lasted as a Roman client state longer than any other. Its Spartocid rulers wore two faces at once, styl…
837. Krishna's big brother fought with a plough, and once outranked himBalarama, elder brother of Krishna, carries a plough as his weapon and was worshipped as a farming god long before he joined Vishnu's avatars. On Indo-Greek coins from the second …
838. Lithuanian and Russian descend from one lost ancestral tongue, most linguists agreeBaltic languages such as Lithuanian and Latvian share quirks with the Slavic family that no other branch of Indo-European has. For over a century linguists fought over whether tha…
839. Themistocles lured Persia's huge navy into a strait too narrow to fight inIn 480 BC Athens had been evacuated and Xerxes's army held the city. The Greek fleet, badly outnumbered, sat off the island of Salamis. Themistocles then sent a message to the Per…
840. Were the Bell Beakers a people on the move, or just a fashionable pot?Around 2800 BCE, a distinctive drinking cup shaped like an upturned bell began turning up from Portugal to Hungary, Sardinia to Ireland, often alongside copper daggers and archers…

Open the feed