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1,092 cards. Each one is a 40-second story with a five-minute read behind it. Page 11 of 19.

  1. Cavour helped unify Italy without ever really planning toCount Camillo Cavour is remembered as a chief architect of a united Italy, yet his goal for most of his career was more modest: enlarge Piedmont by annexing Lombardy and Venetia. …
  2. Cao Cao, China's favourite villain, looks different in his own recordsAs a young man, Cao Cao visited the famous character judge Xu Shao and was told he would be a treacherous villain in peaceful times and a hero in chaotic ones. The verdict stuck. …
  3. Batu Khan's march into Europe stopped because of a death in MongoliaBy late 1241 Batu Khan and his general Subutai were planning to push the Mongol armies into Austria, Italy and Germany. Then word arrived that the Great Khan Ögedei had died that …
  4. Sold as a captive boy, Baybars rose to rule Egypt and SyriaBaybars began life among the Kipchak nomads north of the Black Sea. Fleeing the Mongols, his tribe was caught up in their invasion of Bulgaria, and he was sold at the slave market…
  5. A wet nurse's son who built Southeast Asia's largest empire everIn 1534 a young Burmese officer named Ye Htut was caught in a secret romance with the king's half-sister, a crime counted as treason. Instead of executing him, King Tabinshwehti l…
  6. Before founding fascism, Mussolini was jailed as an anti-war socialistIn September 1911 Benito Mussolini joined a socialist riot against Italy's war in Libya, denounced it as imperialist, and served five months in jail. Within a decade the same man …
  7. A mining-share bubble left young Disraeli in debt for a quarter centuryIn 1825, barely twenty, Benjamin Disraeli gambled on shares in South American mining companies during a speculative boom. When the bubble burst he and his partners had lost £7,000…
  8. Bolesław the Brave paid a saint's weight in gold and won a kingdomWhen the missionary bishop Adalbert of Prague was martyred in 997, Duke Bolesław of Poland ransomed his body by paying its weight in gold. It looked like piety, and it was, but th…
  9. Boris of Bulgaria played Rome against Constantinople to win his own churchIn August 866 a Bulgarian embassy arrived in Rome carrying a long list of questions from its ruler, Boris I, for Pope Nicholas I. They went home with 106 detailed answers on faith…
  10. Boudica's real name may be lost, and Boadicea began as a typoBoudica means roughly Victorious Woman in the ancient British language, and it may have been an honorific rather than the name she grew up with. The familiar Victorian spelling Bo…
  11. Béla IV rebuilt Hungary with stone castles after the Mongols overran itIn 1241 King Béla IV of Hungary lost his army to the Mongols at Mohi and fled, pursued from town to town all the way to Trogir on the Adriatic. When the invaders unexpectedly with…
  12. How one Byzantine marriage deal created the Varangian Guard and Christian Rus'Facing rebel generals in the late 980s, Emperor Basil II needed soldiers fast. Prince Vladimir of Kiev offered 6,000 warriors and the return of a captured Crimean city, but only i…
  13. Augustus the Strong snapped horseshoes by hand and bought himself the Polish crownFrederick Augustus of Saxony was called Iron-Hand, the Saxon Hercules and simply the Strong, reputedly for bending horseshoes apart with his bare hands. His appetites were equally…
  14. Babur lost Samarkand three times, then founded the Mughal Empire insteadBabur became a king at eleven because his father's dovecote collapsed into a ravine with him in it. The boy spent the next decade winning and losing cities, above all Samarkand, w…
  15. Before the White House, Barack Obama was Barry, a schoolboy in JakartaFrom age six to ten, the future 44th president lived in Jakarta, enrolled as Barry at a Catholic primary school and then a state one, and grew fluent in Indonesian. His mother top…
  16. Antigonus the One-Eyed nearly reassembled Alexander's empire before his rivals ganged upA catapult bolt at the siege of Perinthus in 340 BC probably cost Antigonus an eye and gave him his nickname. For years afterwards he guarded Alexander's supply lines in Anatolia,…
  17. Antiochus the Great rebuilt an empire to India, then lost Asia Minor to RomeAt eighteen, Antiochus III inherited a Seleucid empire falling apart, with rebel governors in Persia and breakaway kingdoms in Bactria and Parthia. He marched east in Alexander's …
  18. Bolivia is named after Bolívar, but Sucre was its first presidentWhen Upper Peru declared independence in August 1825, its assembly named the country after Simón Bolívar and offered him the presidency. Bolívar, doubtful the landlocked state cou…
  19. Santa Anna fought ten years against Mexican independence before switching sidesAntonio López de Santa Anna spent more than a decade as a royalist officer hunting Mexico's independence rebels, then changed sides in 1821 once his commander did. Side-switching …
  20. Arminius used his Roman army training to trap three legions in a German forestArminius spoke Latin, held Roman citizenship and equestrian rank, and had commanded auxiliary troops for Rome. That insider knowledge made him deadly. In autumn AD 9 he fed the go…
  21. Assyria's last great king built a library unrivalled until AlexandriaAshurbanipal ruled Assyria for 38 years from 669 BC and trained as a scholar as well as a warrior. He poured the empire's wealth into collecting Mesopotamian writings, and his lib…
  22. Askia Muhammad came home from Mecca 50,000 ducats in debt and more powerfulIn 1496 the Songhai ruler Askia Muhammad set off for Mecca with 500 horsemen and 1,000 foot soldiers, founded a hostel for West African pilgrims in Medina, and returned owing 50,0…
  23. The Quechua word for chicken may come from the last Inca emperor's nameEarly Quechua dictionaries list atawallpa and wallpa as words for chicken, and for centuries historians assumed Atahualpa was named after the bird, even translating his name as ha…
  24. Attila the Hun's name probably meant little father in GothicThe ruler Romans dreaded as the Scourge of God may have carried a gentle nickname. Most scholars trace Attila to the Gothic word atta, father, plus a diminutive ending, making it …
  25. Angela Merkel dodged Stasi recruitment by claiming she was hopeless at keeping secretsFinishing her physics degree in Leipzig, Angela Kasner applied for a teaching post and was told the job came with a condition: report on colleagues to the Stasi. She turned it dow…
  26. Salazar quit his first ministry after five days, then ruled Portugal for 36 yearsIn June 1926 army officers travelled out to Santa Comba Dão to recruit an economics professor as finance minister. António de Oliveira Salazar lasted five days in Lisbon; when his…
  27. Anawrahta turned a dry Burmese backwater into rice country and an empireVerifiable Burmese history starts with one king. In 1044 a prince named Min Saw took the throne of Pagan, a small realm in central Burma's parched dry zone. Within two decades his…
  28. Andrew Jackson, the orphaned frontier brawler who wiped out America's national debtIn 1835 the United States owed nothing, the only time a president has ever cleared the national debt. The man in charge was Andrew Jackson, an orphan who carried a British officer…
  29. Named 'the healthy dog' as a baby, he grew up to reunite Madagascar's highland kingdomTo shield their newborn from jealous rivals and evil spirits, a Malagasy royal couple around 1745 gave him a deliberately humble name meaning the healthy dog. That boy, later call…
  30. Alcibiades switched sides from Athens to Sparta to Persia and backFew politicians have changed teams as often as Alcibiades. During the Peloponnesian War the dazzling Athenian general fled to Athens's enemy Sparta, then to Persia, then returned …
  31. Alexander Dubcek grew up in a Kyrgyz commune before leading the Prague SpringThe man who promised socialism with a human face spent his boyhood in an idealistic workers' cooperative in what is now Bishkek. In 1968 Alexander Dubcek loosened communist rule i…
  32. Napoleon called Tsar Alexander I a shifty Byzantine, and others found him equally puzzlingAlexander I talked like a liberal, ruled like an autocrat, and flipped Russia's stance toward Napoleon four times in eight years. Contemporaries could not agree whether he was a m…
  33. The tsar who freed 23 million serfs also sold Alaska to AmericaIn 1861 Alexander II signed the decree that ended serfdom on private estates, freeing more than 23 million people. Six years later he sold Alaska to the United States, partly fear…
  34. Alexander Nevsky's famous battles may be smaller than the legend suggestsAlexander Nevsky is celebrated as the prince who beat Swedes on the Neva and German knights on a frozen lake, a saint, a hero of a 1938 film. Yet no Swedish source mentions his gr…
  35. Russia's Most Quiet tsar reigned through riots, rebellion and a church splitTsar Alexis earned the nickname Tishayshy, the Most Quiet, for his gentle manner, and he left behind letters and a charming set of instructions for his falconers. His three decade…
  36. Alfredo Stroessner ruled Paraguay for 35 years under a near-permanent state of siegeFrom 1954 to 1989, Paraguay voted for Alfredo Stroessner eight times, often with him alone on the ballot. Behind the elections sat a state of siege renewed every 90 days for over …
  37. An Ethiopian emperor threatened to divert the Nile to protect Egypt's ChristiansAround 1321, Emperor Amda Seyon of Ethiopia sent envoys to Cairo with a startling warning: stop persecuting Coptic Christians, or he would turn the Nile from its course. The Mamlu…
  38. The maths teacher who escaped a death sentence and went on to lead IrelandIn May 1916 a British court martial sentenced a little-known mathematics teacher to death for his part in Dublin's Easter Rising. A general reviewing the case asked who he even wa…
  39. Egypt tried to erase Akhenaten, the pharaoh who put one sun disc firstAkhenaten tore up centuries of Egyptian religion to worship the Aten, the disc of the sun, and built a new capital in its honour. After his death, later rulers smashed his statues…
  40. Called the Mad Caliph by enemies, al-Hakim is revered by millions todayAl-Hakim became ruler of the Fatimid empire at eleven, crowned with a jewelled turban after being called down from a sycamore tree. Critics later dubbed him the Nero of Egypt; the…
  41. Al-Nasir Muhammad became sultan of Egypt three separate timesAt eight years old, al-Nasir Muhammad was placed on the Mamluk throne of Egypt as a figurehead. He was pushed aside, recalled, sidelined again, and only on his third reign, beginn…
  42. Before he sacked Rome, Alaric spent years trying to become a Roman generalAlaric the Goth is remembered for the sack of Rome in 410. Yet for most of his career he wanted in, not out: a proper Roman command, pay and grain for his people. After losing tho…
  43. Alauddin Khalji bought the Delhi throne partly by catapulting gold into crowdsTo win popular backing in 1296, Alauddin Khalji had gold pieces fired from a siege catapult into a crowd at Kara, and recruited soldiers without so much as a fitness test. The dis…
  44. A village headman with a few muskets reunited Burma and renamed YangonIn 1752, with an invading army at the gates of the royal capital, the chief of a small Burmese village declared himself king. His own father begged him to surrender. Within five y…
  45. Ahmad Shah Durrani went from a conqueror's bodyguard to empire builderLegend says Nader Shah of Persia clipped the ear of a young Afghan officer and told him the mark would remind him of Nader once he became a king. When Nader was assassinated in 17…
  46. Buddhists and Jains both tell the story of King Ajatashatru, very differentlyAjatashatru seized the throne of Magadha from his father and jailed him, yet he met both the Buddha and Mahavira and appears in the scriptures of both faiths. Jains call him Kunik…
  47. Akbar never learned to read, yet built the Mughal EmpireAkbar, greatest of the Mughal emperors, could neither read nor write. Born to a refugee father in a desert fortress, he was crowned at 14 on a hastily built platform that still st…
  48. A secret movement's leader hid as a merchant, then founded a caliphateFor years the head of a clandestine religious network lived as an ordinary trader in Sijilmasa, on the edge of the Sahara, hiding from Abbasid agents. Then one of his missionaries…
  49. Before the presidency, Abraham Lincoln failed at shopkeeping and taught himself lawBy age 15, Abraham Lincoln had spent less than a year in any classroom. He wrestled a gang leader, ran a store that sank into debt, nearly fought a duel, and learned law from borr…
  50. Abu Bakr, the father of the camel's calf, became Islam's first caliphAs a boy in Mecca, Abd Allah ibn Abi Quhafa loved playing with young camels so much that he was nicknamed Abu Bakr, father of the camel's calf. He grew into a cloth merchant, Muha…
  51. How a rejected art student took power through Germany's own institutionsTwice turned away by Vienna's art academy, Adolf Hitler drifted through homeless shelters selling watercolours. Two decades later, conservative politicians persuaded President Hin…
  52. Adolphe Thiers wrote a history that helped topple a kingAdolphe Thiers arrived in Paris at 24 with 100 francs. His ten-volume history of the French Revolution, praising 1789 and damning the old order, helped undermine Charles X and bri…
  53. Portugal's first king began by defeating his own mother in battleAfonso Henriques was exiled by his mother at twelve. At about twenty he beat her army near Guimarães, sent her off to Galicia and took charge of the County of Portugal. Over the n…
  54. Ahmad al-Mansur, the Golden sultan, sent an army across the Sahara for goldAhmad al-Mansur came to Morocco's throne on a battlefield in 1578 and grew rich ransoming Portuguese nobles. Nicknamed the Golden, he built a dazzling palace, courted Elizabeth I …
  55. Firearms carried Imam Ahmad of Adal deep into the Ethiopian highlandsIn 1529 the Ethiopian emperor gathered troops from every corner of his realm to meet a much smaller army from the Sultanate of Adal. Its leader, Imam Ahmad, known as Grañ or Gurey…
  56. Shah Abbas survived a death order as a boy and remade IranIn 1577 an order arrived in Herat to kill the six-year-old prince Abbas. His guardian stalled, saying an execution during holy days would be improper, and within weeks the shah wh…
  57. Abd al-Malik gave the early Islamic state its own coins and languageFor decades after the Arab conquests, the caliphate still paid with Byzantine and Persian-style coins and kept its books in Greek and Persian. Abd al-Malik changed that, minting a…
  58. The last Umayyad prince fled across the known world and founded Córdoba's emirateWhen the Abbasids toppled his family in Damascus, the 20-year-old prince Abd al-Rahman swam the Euphrates to escape pursuing horsemen and spent five years on the run through Egypt…
  59. Abd al-Rahman III inherited a shrinking emirate and declared himself caliphWhen Abd al-Rahman III took the throne in Córdoba in 912, his authority barely reached past the city's outskirts. Within two decades he had crushed rebels across al-Andalus, and i…
  60. Walter Cronkite once read the news as Walter Wilcox and argued with a puppetBefore he became the most trusted man in America, Walter Cronkite called games on Kansas City radio under the name Walter Wilcox and once bantered with a lion puppet on morning te…

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