Install SoundCarrot
Add it to your home screen for quick access.
Parent info: Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More is recommended for ages 11 plus. It's an Episodic show that can be listened to in any order. Made in the USA, it's about History and Geography for kids. Launched in 2020, it has 1 season.
Oh no! This episode has gone missing! It might have been renamed or removed by the podcast maker. But don't worry - there are plenty more episodes to explore!
In June 1940, France suffered one of the most humiliating military defeats in its history.
In the late 14th century, England was recovering from the Black Death, fighting an expensive war, and struggling with a labor shortage that had upended the traditional social order.
In 1950, physicist Enrico Fermi asked a very simple yet important question: If the universe has intelligent civilizations, as so many people believe, where are they? This became known as the Fermi Paradox, and it has been one of the foremost philosophical and …
For thousands of years, a tale of war, wandering, monsters, and homecoming has traveled across oceans, languages, and civilizations.
The number 44 has great significance. It is the atomic number of ruthenium; the 44th Roman emperor was Claudius Gothicus, and the 44th pope was Sixtus III.
It began as a rare luxury, valued alongside precious stones and guarded by skilled craftsmen.
For centuries, the southern tip of Africa was a crossroads where oceans, empires, and peoples collided.
Ever since the dawn of human civilization, it has been shaped by the movement of people, goods, and ideas.
Michigan and Ohio are two states renowned for their intense rivalry.
In the late 14th century, a warrior emerged from Central Asia and built an empire through relentless campaigning, political calculation, and extraordinary brutality.
In the middle of the 19th century, thousands of adherents to a new religion abandoned their homes, crossed rivers, endured brutal winters, and traveled more than a thousand miles into an uncertain wilderness.
For centuries, political authority, religious doctrine, and inherited tradition shaped how most Europeans understood the world.
During the 1930s, a group of killers operated in the shadows of America’s growing organized crime networks.
In 1957, nine black teenagers attempted to attend a public high school in Little Rock, Arkansas.
In the early centuries of Christianity, some of the most important battles were fought not with swords, but with words.
Hidden among rugged desert mountains is a city carved into red and rose-colored cliffs.
The symbol on the national flag of Lebanon is the cedar tree. The problem is, there aren’t many cedar trees in Lebanon anymore.
From August 1942 to February 1943, the Germans and the Soviets engaged in what would become the most brutal and bloodiest battle in human history.
For centuries, the printed page was one of the most efficient ways to preserve and share information.
In the early years of the Cold War, fear of communism and nuclear war swept across the United States.
In the heart of California’s Sierra Nevada mountains lies a landscape of towering granite cliffs, ancient sequoias, cascading waterfalls, and deep valleys carved by ice.
In 1939, Detective Comics introduced a new superhero. He was just a man with no superpowers. He only had the mind of a detective and a whole lot of money.
The year 500 was a turning point between the ancient and medieval worlds.
In 1973, one of the most influential and frightening experiments in psychology took place.
In 1811, Britain’s aging king could no longer rule, and his extravagant son stepped in as Prince Regent.
In the summer of 2026, the United States caught World Cup fever, just as we do every four years.
One of the most popular foods around the world is the hamburger. If most people think of American foods, it is probably the first thing that comes to mind.
He ruled one of the largest empires in ancient history, conquered through war, and then became remembered for renouncing conquest itself.
For centuries, power in Europe was measured not by money or elections, but by land, loyalty, and the ability to command armed men.
For thousands of years, civilizations that rose along the Mediterranean or along the European shores of the Atlantic mostly stuck to the shore.
It is the deepest lake in the world, the oldest lake in the world, and it holds more freshwater than all five of the Great Lakes combined.
Florence Nightingale was far more than a compassionate nurse.
Few dates carry as much significance in the United States as July 4th, but the celebration of the date has evolved over time.
In 1776, a work was published that challenged an empire, questioned old systems of power, and helped reshape the modern world.
In the 1960s, a generation of young people rejected the world their parents had built.
Six years ago, in the midst of the worst pandemic the world had seen in generations, I sat down at my computer to record a new podcast.The new show was going to cover all the random topics I found interesting, and I figured if I did, other people would too.
Every July 1st, retired Major League Baseball player Bobby Bonilla receives a direct deposit from the New York Mets despite not having played for the franchise for a quarter of a century.
The human body was built for gravity. Take it away, and bones weaken, muscles shrink, fluids shift, and even vision can change.
In the early 20th century, the caves of Kentucky became the center of a bitter underground gold rush.
Tell me your favorite episode for the 6th anniversary show!
Tell me your favorite episode for the 6th anniversary show!
Tell me your favorite episode for the 6th anniversary show!In the early years of the United States, American ships faced a threat far from home along the North African coast.
Tell me your favorite episode for the 6th anniversary show!In 1986, the world’s biggest sporting event came to Mexico, producing one of the most memorable tournaments in soccer history.
Tell me your favorite episode for the 6th anniversary show!When Fidel Castro came to power in Cuba in 1959, the American government wanted to see him gone.
Tell me your favorite episode for the 6th anniversary show!
Tell me your favorite episode for the 6th anniversary show!In 1829, a British scientist who had never visited the United States left his fortune to a foreign country across the ocean.
Tell me your favorite episode for the 6th anniversary show!
Tell me your favorite episode for the 6th anniversary show!
Tell me your favorite episode for the 6th anniversary show!It is a metal that can explode in water, a part of a mineral that helped build empires, and an ion that allows your nerves to fire and your muscles to move.
Tell me your favorite episode for the 6th anniversary show!
Tell me your favorite episode for the 6th anniversary show!
Tell me your favorite episode for the 6th anniversary show!
Tell me your favorite episode for the 6th anniversary show!
Tell me your favorite episode for the 6th anniversary show!
Tell me your favorite episode for the 6th anniversary show!
Tell me your favorite episode for the 6th anniversary show!
Tell me your favorite episode for the 6th anniversary show!
Tell me your favorite episode for the 6th anniversary show!
Tell me your favorite episode for the 6th anniversary show!
Tell me your favorite episode for the 6th anniversary show!
Tell me your favorite episode for the 6th anniversary show!
Tell me your favorite episode for the 6th anniversary show!
Tell me your favorite episode for the 6th anniversary show!
Tell me your favorite episode for the 6th anniversary show!
Leave an audio message for the 6th anniversary show!
For thousands of years, Yemen has been one of the most important crossroads in the world.
In 1921, one of the most prosperous Black communities in America was attacked, burned, and nearly erased from public memory.
Before the United States entered the Second World War, it had a problem. The military was spread out all over Washington, D.C., and had difficulty functioning.
Following the collapse of the Toltec Civilization, the Aztecs rose to prominence in 14th-century Mexico.
For centuries, scientists imagined the universe as a giant clock, where every motion could, in theory, be predicted.
For most of human history, when a person’s heart stopped, that was considered the end.
In 1976, a mysterious and deadly illness appeared almost simultaneously in Sudan and Zaire.
Rum isn’t just a spirit that is used in cocktails. It is unique amongst beverages in how it has shaped history.
For more than a century, the Indianapolis 500 has been one of the greatest spectacles in all of sports.
From the oldest rocks on Earth to underground towns, vanished rivers, red deserts, cattle stations, opal fields, and skies filled with stars, the Australian Outback is one of the most iconic and misunderstood places on the planet.
P.T. Barnum was one of the most famous entertainers of the 19th century, a man who turned curiosity, spectacle, and promotion into an art form and money.
In 1967, the tiny Caribbean island of Anguilla launched one of the strangest revolutions in modern history.
Born into hardship on the Mongolian steppe, a boy named Temujin rose from exile, betrayal, and captivity to unite the fractured tribes of Mongolia under a single banner.
For over a century, companies have tried to invent the next great way to listen to music or watch movies.
For centuries, England was one of Europe's great Catholic kingdoms.
In 1918, as the world was nearing the end of the First World War, another disaster was already spreading across the globe.
One of the most talked-about topics in finance today is stablecoins.
If you ask anyone to name the athlete who broke the color line in baseball, they will immediately answer Jackie Robinson.
Over 1,400 miles, the Colorado River has carved some of the most dramatic landscapes on Earth and enabled life across the American Southwest.
In 1759, on a plateau outside Quebec City, two armies met in a battle that lasted less than an hour but changed the course of a continent.
In the early months of World War II, one aircraft seemed almost unstoppable.
In 1957, eight young engineers walked away from one of the most important laboratories in America and, in doing so, helped create the modern technology industry.
Few things in nature are as instantly recognizable as a rainbow.
In the late 1950s, the United States found itself trailing in the Space Race as the Soviet Union achieved one milestone after another.
For thousands of years, before Europeans crossed the Atlantic or steamships crossed the seas, the Indian Ocean connected the known world.
Our calendar and system of keeping time are rather unique.
Landlocked and often overlooked, Laos sits at the crossroads of Southeast Asia, shaped by empires, rivers, and war.
In 1960, a handful of oil-producing nations made a decision that would reshape the global economy.
In 1633, one of the greatest minds in Europe stood before a tribunal, not for a crime of violence or treason, but for an idea.
In 46 BC, after 12 years away, Julius Caesar finally returned home to Rome.
For thousands of years, humans have gathered to watch horses run.
You have questions, I have answers.
Few societies in history have inspired as much fascination as ancient Sparta.
In the early days of modern medicine, some of the most important scientific breakthroughs depended on a deeply disturbing underground trade.
When Americans tell the story of the Revolutionary War, the focus usually falls on Washington, Jefferson, and the battles fought in the thirteen colonies.
It is soft, common, and something most people wear almost every day. Yet behind this humble fabric lies one of the most dramatic stories in human history.
Most riots are born from serious grievances: politics, poverty, religion, or oppression.
When you think of the richest people in history, you usually imagine kings, emperors, or maybe modern tech billionaires.
Between the Black and the Caspian Seas lies one of the most complicated places on Earth.
Throughout history, people have believed in or told stories about fantastical creatures to teach lessons, explain the unknown, or entertain others.
On the night of July 21, 356 BC, the sky over the city of Ephesus glowed with the flames of one of the most famous fires in World History.
One of the most exciting areas of computing research right now is quantum computing.
Music is a very powerful thing. It can invoke a wide variety of emotions and moods.
In 1857, a rumor about rifle cartridges made with animal fat helped ignite one of the most important uprisings in the history of the British Empire.
All over the world, there are cities and towns. Some of those have become major urban areas that are culturally and economically important to their regions, countries, or even the world.
In the spring of 1989, thousands of people filled the heart of Beijing demanding reform, freedom, and an end to corruption.
Today, they’re worn on basketball courts, fashion runways, city streets, and in almost every home on Earth.
For over 2000 years, steel has been known and used by humans. It slowly became more important to humanity and eventually became the central material of modern society.
In 1933, deep in Siberia, thousands of people were dumped on a remote island with almost nothing to survive.
Long before Marvel turned them into superheroes, the Norse gods were something far more mysterious and far more human.
When Thomas Jefferson concluded the Louisiana Purchase, it was one of the greatest land deals in history. For a relatively small sum, the young country purchased a large part of the continent.
Of all the cities that experienced the Second World War, one of the most interesting stories is that of Paris.
The world has many amazing places, but not all are equal. Some are better than others.
In 1959, a small band of guerrilla fighters marched out of the mountains and toppled a government backed by one of the most powerful nations on Earth.
In the middle of one of the harshest deserts in North America sits a city that, by all rights, shouldn’t exist.
Every day, thousands of ships crisscross the oceans, carrying the goods that power the global economy.
A thousand years ago, the world was a radically different place. Europe was fragmented and struggling, while China and the Islamic world stood at the height of their power and innovation.
They are some of the largest bodies of freshwater on Earth, yet they weren’t carved by ice, but by a continent literally tearing itself apart.
Long before modern democracies, before constitutions or elections as we know them, a society of Viking settlers gathered in a windswept valley to create laws, settle disputes, and govern themselves without a monarch.
In the early 20th century, a glowing new element promised progress, prosperity, and even health.
Approximately 3,400 years ago, Egypt was at the height of its power during the 18th Dynasty.
April derives from the Latin Aprilis, traditionally linked to aperire, meaning “to open,” referring to the opening of buds and flowers in spring.
For thousands of years, farmers didn’t plant just one crop; they planted many together in the same field.
Iodine is far more important than you might think. It was discovered accidentally, yet it can be found almost everywhere.
In August 1945, a single decision changed the course of history and introduced a weapon unlike anything the world had ever seen.
In 480 BC, the most powerful empire on Earth set out to crush a collection of small, divided Greek city-states.
When the Internet was first launched, it was only available on a few computers at a few research institutions.
Few figures in American history embody resistance and resilience quite like Geronimo.
Walt Disney Animation Studios has crafted dozens of the most popular children’s movies ever made.
In the summer of 1858, London was brought to a standstill by something you couldn’t see but definitely couldn’t ignore: the overwhelming stench of the River Thames.
In 1993, a standoff between federal agents and a small religious sect outside Waco, Texas, ended in fire, death, and lasting controversy.
Every March, the United States experiences a period known as March Madness. It is the time when college basketball teams compete for a national championship.
In 1856, the United States passed a law allowing American citizens to claim islands in the country’s name, provided that no other country claimed them and that no one lived there.
For millions of years, the islands of New Zealand remained a pristine wilderness, untouched by human footsteps. That changed in the 13th century when the world’s most elite mariners executed one of history’s greatest feats of navigation.
Sometime around 66 million years ago, a meteor smashed into what is today the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico.
For thousands of years, a narrow body of water between Arabia and Persia has shaped the fate of empires, economies, and the modern world.
Few artists are as instantly recognizable as Vincent van Gogh.
Today, baseball is played at the highest levels on nearly every continent. Stars come from the United States, Japan, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Korea, and far beyond.
Every year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences hosts the biggest celebration of movies and moviemaking: The Oscars.
For thousands of years, one animal shaped the ecology, culture, and history of an entire continent.
In the Indian Ocean lies an island notorious for its extreme isolation from the outside world: North Sentinel Island.
Among all the decorations awarded by the United States military, one stands apart.
In the early decades of the twentieth century, a neighborhood in New York City became the center of an extraordinary cultural explosion.
In the early 1970s, after the triumph of landing on the Moon, NASA faced a question: what comes next?
At the turn of the 20th century, a Russian physiologist made a discovery that would fundamentally change how we understand learning and behavior.
After Mexico gained independence from Spain in 1821, hopes for democracy gradually gave way to decades of instability and dictatorship.
If you look at the Internet Movie Database, one of the most prolific directors over the last 70 years has been Alan Smithee.
Most people are familiar with the transatlantic slave trade, which enslaved over ten million people over a period of centuries.
The 1876 plot to steal the body of Abraham Lincoln is one of the strangest and most audacious crimes in American history.
The Inca Empire was the largest and most sophisticated state ever created in the pre-Columbian Americas, stretching along the Andes from present-day southern Colombia to central Chile and Argentina by the early 16th century.
When Christopher Columbus arrived in the Americas, members of his crew observed the Taíno people offering them dried leaves as gifts.
The 19th-century Ottoman Empire was in decline and was called the “sick man of Europe”.
March is upon us. Here in the northern hemisphere, the days are getting longer, temperatures are getting warmer, and people are about to go nuts over college basketball for several weeks.
Edgar Allan Poe was one of the most influential and haunting voices in American literature, a writer whose imagination reshaped horror, detective fiction, science fiction, and the modern short story
One of the most compelling stories in American professional sports is the rise of the American Basketball Association or the ABA.
Marvel Comics has been one of the most prolific comics publishers over the last century.
Almost everyone knows that the first people to climb Mount Everest were Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary, who reached the summit and returned in 1953.
As Germany conquered countries in WWII, in many nations, they found willing volunteers to help them identify Jews to send to concentration camps.
During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there was a problem that stumped even the best minds in physics.
Every four years, we are captivated by the remarkable athletes who compete at the Olympics.
Over 99.9% of the world’s population is a citizen of some country.However, approximately 0.06% lack citizenship in any country. The United Nations estimates that 4.4 million people worldwide are stateless. They have fallen through the cracks in the system, ei…
In the evening of October 4, 1997, a large cash haul of about $17.3 million was stolen from the Loomis Fargo & Co. vault in Charlotte, North Carolina.
In February 1943, the United States Army saw its first major battle of World War II.They confronted the German Afrika Korps in the mountains of Tunisia at Kasserine Pass.
During the 17th century, European nations dominated the world by aggressively establishing colonies across the globe.
During the American Civil War, numerous camps were established to hold prisoners of war from both sides.
One of the most dramatic events in sports is the home run. In a single instant, leads can change hands and games can be won or lost.
From the outside, the Chinese Communist Party appears to be a unified entity, devoid of external dissent.
When you think of animals that have impacted history, your first thought may be of dogs, cows, pigs, or horses. Yet another animal has played an oversized role in history, and it was never domesticated: beavers.
was born.
The Great Depression inflicted an apocalyptic financial struggle on American cities, driving unemployment to a staggering 25%.
Chinese civilization has endured for more than 3,500 years, driven by a succession of kings, emperors, and sophisticated bureaucracies.
Ice cream is a delicious, popular treat served around the world. Yet it hasn’t been around forever.
One of the most popular genres of literature, film, and television is science fiction.
Approximately 3,200 years ago, one of the most momentous events in human history took place.
Ranking the “greatest soccer players of all time” often leads to a top three dominated by South Americans: Lionel Messi, Pelé, and Diego Maradona.
In 1848, a series of Revolutions occurred against European Monarchies across the continent.
In 1922, archeologist Howard Carter stunned the world by discovering King Tut’s tomb in Egypt.
The story of modern Iran is a collision between a monarchy with a history dating back to the Persian Empire and a frustrated nation with massive oil reserves historically coveted by Western powers.
Every February 2nd, a small ceremony takes place in the town of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania.
Swimming was one of only four sports to have appeared at every Summer Olympic Games, beginning in 1896.
February is upon us. It is a time when we in the United States predict the weather on the basis of a rodent seeing its shadow, and we celebrate American presidents by buying linen and mattresses.
In 1805, an epic confrontation occurred off the southwest coast of Spain, resulting in one of the greatest naval battles in history.
After decades of Belgian rule, Congo gained independence in June 1960 under the leadership of the nation’s first Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba.
The Roman Empire, at its height, was a juggernaut.
Disney is one of the most popular and well-known brands in the world. They are a massive conglomerate of movie studios, television networks, cruise lines, and theme parks.
In 1983, the Nobel Peace Prize honored Polish electrician Lech Walesa for leading the nonviolent revolution of "Solidarity."
In the 1930s, the United States was in the grip of the Great Depression, and baseball was approaching its 100th anniversary.
If you know anything about the field of psychology, you’ve probably heard of Sigmund Freud.
In 1932, archaeologist Edgar B. Howard made a major discovery near the town of Clovis, New Mexico.
The Mali Empire was one of the largest and most influential states in African history, rising in West Africa during the thirteenth century and reaching its height in the fourteenth.
Few dates in China are as significant as May Fourth, which marks two distinct revolutionary periods in modern Chinese history.
525 days ago, I began looking at the state of the world every century, then every fifty years, and finally every twenty-five years as the pace of change accelerated.
The Roman Empire was ruled by a single family for its first century. The family was actually a merger of two of the most distinguished clans in Roman history.
From September 2 to September 5, 1666, one of the largest urban fires in history took place.
One of the most popular music groups over the last half-century is also one of the most unlikely.
Following the conclusion of World War II, decisions needed to be made about how to handle the defeated Axis Powers.
One of the first mathematical concepts that most of us grasp when we are children is that there is no such thing as the biggest number. No matter what number you pick, you can always add one to it.You might think that such a simple idea wouldn’t have any profo…
The Abbasid Caliphate stood as a vibrant center of commerce, technology, and learning from the 8th to the 13th centuries.
Sandwiched between Romania and Ukraine is the nation of Moldova.
Communism is an ideology that millions of people had to live under during the 20th century.
The Sundarbans is the world’s largest mangrove forest and a UNESCO World Heritage site spanning the border of India and Bangladesh.
Area 51 is a place where secrecy became legend and speculation turned into modern mythology.
In 1908, a two-year-old boy named Puyi was installed as the 11th Emperor of the Qing Dynasty in China.His life would prove to be radically different from that of any other Chinese emperor who came before him. He would see the end of Imperial China, become a pu…
In the dark skies over the Eastern Front of World War II, the Soviet Union deployed one of the most unusual and effective combat units of the war: the Night Witches.
Approximately 55 times a day, or 20,000 times a year, an earthquake occurs somewhere on Earth.
When you think of countries in Africa, it is unlikely that Gabon will be one of the first to cross your mind.
Modern fairy tales often conclude with a protagonist achieving their dreams and a simple "happily ever after."
Alphonse Gabriel Capone, aka Al Capone, aka Scarface, is one of the most notorious gangsters in American history.
One of the most significant and long-lasting outcomes of World War I didn’t take place in Europe.
In 1943, one of the most notable acts of Jewish resistance during World War II took place.
Prague is one of the truly great cities of Central Europe.
January is upon us, the month that honors the Roman god Janus, the god of two faces.
From 1899 to 1900, China underwent a widespread and violent uprising. The revolt, a reaction against China’s exploitation by foreign powers, was decades in the making.
You may have heard of many of the largest empires in world history. The Romans, the Mongols, the British, the Persians, the Ottomans, the Incas, and the Byzantines.
In 1890, an obscure professor at the US Naval War College published a book that at first seemed fairly innocuous.
Episode 2001!
The year 2000 was a milestone year. It was the end of a century and of a millennium.
In the winter of 1776, things did not look good for the Continental Army.
Perhaps the preeminent symbol of Christmas is the Christmas tree.
Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is one of the best-known theories in psychology.
On January 13, 1888, a group of thirty-three prominent citizens, including geographers, explorers, teachers, lawyers, cartographers, military officers, and financiers, gathered at the Cosmos Club in Washington, DC, to establish "a society for the increase and …
The mid-19th century saw the rise of the first mass working-class political movement in British history.
Sometime around 5,500 years ago, an event took place on the Eurasian steppes that fundamentally changed the world.
Located around the orbit of Jupiter is the moon Europa.
In 1994, the nation of Rwanda endured a brutal 100-day spasm of violence that tore families apart and claimed the lives of over one million people.
For thousands of years, diamonds have been among the most valuable substances on Earth.
Perhaps the most well-known brand in the world is Coca-Cola.
Before the United States entered the Second World War in late 1941, the US wasn’t an active combatant, but it wasn't entirely neutral.
In 1188, a historic gathering took place in the city of Leon in the Kingdom of Castile.
One of the most important inventions in human history was the bow and arrow.
Assuming everything goes well, sometime in late 2026, NASA’s next major space observatory will launch: The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.
One of the most notable figures in early American history is Pocahontas.
Sitting at the far top right of the periodic table is the element helium.
Almost a billion people in the world today speak a language that originated from Latin, aka a Romance Language.
At some point, you might have been called, or might have called someone else a Luddite, due to a refusal to adopt a new technology.
When looking at your neighbor's dachshund and your great dane, it is hard to believe that these dogs trace back to the same ancestors. Yet, this is true!
During the Second World War, the United States embarked on one of the greatest science and engineering projects the world had ever seen.
Wars can be fought in many different ways. Ultimately, they are resolved on the battlefield.
One of the most ubiquitous items of clothing in formal and business attire is the necktie.
The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, better known as NASCAR, has become one of the most recognizable and uniquely American forms of motorsport.
Nintendo is one of the most legendary video game companies in the world.
By 1975, the world had seen 25 years of radical change. The changes seen in the first half of the 20th century accelerated even faster. Empires ended, there were social and technical revolutions, new nations were created, humans landed on the moon, and the wor…
In the north, things are getting colder, snow is starting to fall, and the days are getting shorter.It is also the season for gift-giving.
Panama is best known as the location of the Panama Canal, the waterway that revolutionized international sea transportation.
Fascism is one of the most notorious political ideologies that shaped the 20th century.
The French Revolution was one of the most significant events in history.
In the early 1960s, the United States was always a step behind the Soviet Union in the space race.
Almost every country in the world uses the metric system…..almost.
For over a century, people have enjoyed the thrill of visiting an amusement park and riding roller coasters.
In the 1860s, one of the bloodiest wars in the Western Hemisphere took place….and it wasn’t the US Civil War.
One of the most important empires in history was the Ottoman Empire.
In July 1942, Japanese forces landed on the north shore of the island of New Guinea
Companies that sell products to the public have to follow a fine line.
At the end of the Second World War, Europe was a mess. The economies of most countries were in shambles and the threat of communism loomed over the continent.
There are several rules that should be followed when going to war:
In 1953, a newspaper delivery boy in Brooklyn, New York, made an odd discovery. One of his customers gave him a nickel that seemed lighter than the others.
The Second World War saw the development of many new weapons. Perhaps none was more terrifying than the development of long-range strategic rockets.
Alexander Hamilton was a U.S founding father who has been growing in popularity due to the popular musical Hamilton, by Lin-Manuel Miranda.
Sometime around the year 1450, a monk living just outside of Venice created one of the greatest maps of the medieval world.
Located in Central Java, outside of the modern city of Yogyakarta, lies the world’s largest Buddhist temple, Borobudur.
Lego is one of the best-known toy brands in the world.
Just 60 years ago, Dubai was a sandy, underpopulated port on a minor creek emptying into the Persian Gulf.
For thousands of years, human beings have created works of art. Many of these works are commissioned by rulers, merchants, or religious leaders.
In the mid-19th century, China experienced its greatest civil war.
During the Second World War, the Germans used what they thought was an uncrackable encryption system.
Located on the Baltic Sea, sandwiched between the nations of Lithuania and Poland, is the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.
In the year 1950, the world was halfway through the 20th century.
One of the most powerful forces in economics and finance is compound interest.
On May 7, 1915, nearly a year into the First World War, the British steamship RMS Lusitania was sunk by a German U-boat off the southern coast of Ireland.
Many people think that the closest the world ever came to nuclear war was during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
In 1913, the United States created its third national bank.
Known for its beautiful beaches, vast history, and unique culture, the Dominican Republic is one of the Caribbean's crown jewels.
November, the 9th month of the Roman calendar and the 11th month in our calendar, is upon us.
Pumpkins are a staple of the autumn season, used in events like Halloween and Thanksgiving as symbols of the holidays and in various culinary dishes.
During the First World War, most of the attention, at least in the West, was focused on the Western Front.
One of the most popular forms of fiction today involves zombies. There are TV shows, movies, and books that all envision life during a zombie apocalypse.
On October 28, 1929, a day known as Black Monday, the New York Stock Exchange suffered its greatest one-day loss in history.
Located in an arch sweeping to the east and south of the Marina Islands and Guam is the deepest part of the ocean, the Mariana Trench.
In the 13th century, a French knight came forward and displayed what he claimed was the burial cloth of Jesus Christ.
On November 30, 1939, the Soviet Union invaded Finland.
In the years following the end of the Second World War, the post-war world that many in the West hoped for never materialized.
In November 1989, the world changed when the Berlin Wall came down, marking the beginning of the unraveling of the Iron Curtain.
Around 12,900 years ago, the last ice age was ending. Things were warming up, and the glaciers were starting to recede. …and then something happened.
Almost everyone has had popcorn and some of you have even probably had some recently.
One of the biggest advances in space flight right now is happening with the development of Starship.
After years of war throughout the continent of Europe, in 1814, Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte abdicated and was exiled to the small island of Elba off the coast of Italy.
In 1966, the People’s Republic of China entered what became one of the most tumultuous periods in its history.
In the mid-19th century, the French Emperor Napoleon III requested the creation of a product similar to butter but cheaper.
1968 marked the beginning of one of the most infamous killing sprees in American history.
On September 2, 31 BC, one of the most important battles in history took place off the coast of Greece.
Every year, the Nobel Prize committee awards the Nobel Prize in accordance with the will of Alfred Nobel.
If you look at the grand sweep of human history, there are centuries where seemingly little happens, and there are decades where centuries take place.
On January 16, 1919, the 18th Amendment to the US Constitution was passed. It banned the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcohol.
The FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit is one of the best-known and most important units within the bureau.
Many filmmakers are known for small signatures that they always put inside their films. Alfred Hitchcock always used himself in a cameo. George Lucas always found a way to integrate the number 1138. Quentin Tarrentio almost always mentions the fictional "Big K…
When computers were first created, they were enormous.They would often take up the better part of a building, and they consumed large amounts of energy.
In the midst of the Great Depression, the City of St. Louis wanted to create a monument to the city’s role in the westward expansion of the United States and general waterfront improvement.
Bhutan is a small country sitting in the heart of the Himalayas.
Every day, everyone who uses the internet uses the Domain Name System.
For thousands of years, humans all around the world have coveted gemstones.
The rise of civilization is one of the most remarkable and important moments in human history.
In 1803, one of the most significant real estate transactions in world history occurred.
On January 20, 1942, one of the most infamous meetings in human history took place.
October is here. Up here in the northern hemisphere, the leaves are changing color, the air is cooler, and suddenly, pumpkin spice is appearing in everything.
Even if you are not a fan, you are likely familiar with classical music to some extent.
Over the last several centuries, one of the weapons that has defined warfare has been artillery.
In the decades prior to the outbreak of the US Civil War, abolitionists had been ratcheting up their efforts to end the institution of slavery.
The world as we know it is made up of 193 countries, Antarctica, and a host of territories.However, between all of those places are the high seas or international waters, which are not controlled by anyone.
Sometime in the last 24 hours, most of you have used soap or detergent, either directly or indirectly.
In the late 19th century, during the scramble for Africa, King Leopold II of Belgium seized a large landmass in Central Africa.
Almost immediately after the death of George Washington in 1799, the United States began to think of ways to commemorate and honor the father of the country.
The country of Czechoslovakia was born and died in the 20th century.
Prisoners of war or POWs during the 20th century were a part of war.
On May 31, 1970, one of the most devastating disasters in Peruvian history occurred.
Sometime around 11,000 years ago, somewhere in the Middle East or Central Asia, someone figured out how they could keep wild sheep and breed them.
The Vietnam War was perhaps the most significant event that took place in the last half of the 20th century.
The year 1900 was a pivotal year in world history. It was the end of the 19th century and on the cusp of the 20th century.
On January 15, 1947, a young woman was found dead in Los Angeles, California.
One of the most essential aspects of archeology is dating objects found in the past, and one of the most critical tools in dating historic objects is dendochronology.
A long time ago in a city far, far away….
Located above 66°33? Latitude North is the region we call the Arctic.
In the third century BC, Rome faced its greatest enemy.
In 1977, NASA took advantage of a once-in-a-lifetime alignment of the planets to send two probes to the outermost reaches of the solar system.
On April 15, 1452, a child was born, the illegitimate son of a peasant woman and a local notary in the village of Vinci, which was then part of the Republic of Florence.
On October 13, 1972, a fight transporting a Uruguayan rugby club crashed into the Andes Mountains.
On February 22, 1946, George F. Kennan, a career diplomat working in the American embassy in Moscow, sent an 8,000-word cable to the State Department in Washington.In it, he explained why the Soviet Union behaved as it did, outlining its unique combination of …
You may have noticed, on occasion, that friends you have from totally different parts of your life sometimes know each other.
In the early 20th century, David Freeman-Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale, and his wife Sydney Bowles had seven children, six girls and one boy.
For thousands of years, many theories have been put forward as to the cause of communicable diseases.
In 1970, one of the world’s largest infrastructure projects opened in Aswan, Egypt.
In 1968, the colony of Spanish Guinea was granted independence and became the Republic of Equatorial Guinea.
In 1585, Sir Walter Raleigh established an English colony on an island in what is today the state of North Carolina.
Adolf Hitler was unquestionably one of the evil people, not just of the 20th century, but in all of history.
The Ivory Coast, or as it is officially known, the Republic of Côte d'Ivoire, is a country located on West Africa’s southern coast. It is a small nation known for its agricultural production.
The English language is weird.
Everything we know in the world is ultimately dependent on energy. Energy fuels our bodies as well as our civilization. Energy is literally everywhere and all around us.
September is upon us. It means going back to school and the autumnal equinox.
In the first century, Rome underwent a major political transition when the Emperor Nero died after being declared an enemy of Rome by the senate.
Between 1706 and 1718, a group of pirates established a haven in the Bahamas.
In 1972, the Olympics returned to Germany for the first time since being hosted in Berlin in 1936.
In the 1980s, an Englishman by the name of Maurice Ward developed a material which he claimed could withstand temperatures of thousands of degrees Celsius. Not only could the material withstand high temperatures, but it could also protect anything in proximit…
Starting in the late 1970s and lasting for seventeen years, a series of bombings terrorized the American public.
In the year 54, the Roman Emperor Claudius died, and his adopted son Nero became the Emperor of Rome at the age of 16.
We have all looked at a map and seen all of the different countries represented by different colors. A country has some sort of border, and everything inside that border is what makes up the country.
At the end of the 15th century, Spain had almost completed the Reconquista and the removal of the Caliphate in the Iberian Peninsula, ending centuries of Islamic rule.
Strategically located in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea, with access to Europe, Asia, and Africa, is the island of Cyprus.
The 19th century was one of rapid technological advancement.
In the early 20th century, the Russian Tsar Nicholas II and his wife, the Tsarina Alexandra, welcomed a homeless monk into their home.
One of the most important and least understood sources of energy in the world today is nuclear power.
In 1956, one of the most important geopolitical events of the post-war period took place in Egypt.
Between 1830 and 1850, the United States forcibly displaced 60,000 Native Americans living in the Southern United States under the ‘Indian Removal Act.’
In 1428, a young girl from the village of Domrémy, France, audaciously set out to meet the heir apparent to the French throne, the Dauphin, and told him what he had to do to defeat the English occupying her country.
In the late 18th century, the newly independent United States of America faced its first major domestic crisis.
One of the things that almost every airline has in common is frequent flyer programs.
Two of the most important concepts in the world of mathematics and nature are the Fibonacci Sequence and the Golden Ratio.
The early days of radio were like the wild west. There were no rules, and that lack of rules often led to problems.
In the late 17th century, King William III of England was facing a problem.
Located in the state of Wyoming and a little bit of Montana and Idaho lies one of the greatest national parks on Earth: Yellowstone.
On August 29, 1949, the Soviet Union successfully tested its first atomic bomb.
In 1958, the People’s Republic of China instituted its second five-year plan since the revolution.
When you think of evil, characters like Hannibal Lecter, the Joker, and Michael Myers probably come to mind.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, France was shaken by a crisis that shook French society.
Today, cookbooks are ubiquitous. Go to any bookstore and you can find dozens, if not hundreds, of different cookbooks.
One of the most legendary legions in the history of the Roman military was the Legio IX (nonam) Hispana, or the Ninth Spanish Legion.
After the American War of Independence, Britain recognized the United States, but it didn’t necessarily make them close allies.
The month of August was named in honor of the emperor Augustus Caesar by the Roman Senate.
In 1970, the United States passed the Organized Crime Control Act, which established the Witness Security Program or WITSEC.
For centuries, food preservation was a significant challenge for humanity.
The year 1850 was the mid-point of the 19th century, one of the most transformative centuries in human history.
Captain James Cook was a British explorer, navigator, cartographer, and captain in the Royal Navy whose three major voyages of exploration between 1768 and 1779 greatly expanded European knowledge of the Pacific region.
Sometime between the 7th century and 13th century BC, a man was born in Eastern Persia who had a revolutionary idea.
In 259 BC, a boy named Ying Zheng was born in the state of Qin in modern-day China.
Located off the Southeastern coast of Africa is the island nation of Madagascar. It is a massive island nation known for its beautiful and diverse wildlife.
Like many ancient civilizations, the Romans had a vast pantheon of gods.
On March 13, 1964, at 2:30 am, a woman named Kitty Genovese was returning home from work. As she arrived outside her apartment, a man approached her with a knife. Genovese ran towards her apartment but was stabbed and killed.
In 1946, a former Soviet tank mechanic who had formal training in engineering or manufacturing submitted a design for a new gun in a competition.
On February 1, 1908, the political fortunes of Portugal changed forever.
Some of the most venerated objects in many different religions are holy relics.
One of the biggest problems that humanity has faced for thousands of years is heat.
On May 19, 1884, a small yacht containing four men set sail from England to Australia.
Some of the most important battles in history, the ones that changed the course of civilizations, are often very small battles.
Australia is unique among the countries in the world.
Located in the heart of Central America is the Republic of Costa Rica.
Throughout World War II, Nazi Germany was a formidable force due to its military strength and success.
On July 14, 1789, in Paris, France, one of the most iconic events of the French Revolution took place.
More often than not, in competitive sports, when a team or player has a significant lead, the outcome is often just a formality.
Everything in the universe, from galaxies to the atoms in your body, is driven by just a few fundamental forces.
The United States Military Academy in West Point, New York, is one of the most prestigious academic institutions in the United States.
In August of 1964, an event occurred off the waters of North Vietnam that would have repercussions that would echo in US foreign policy for decades.
Between 1791 and 1804, the only successful slave rebellion in human history occurred.
In 1885, the Russian Tsar Alexander III commissioned an Easter gift for his wife.
One of the most important inventions of the 20th century was the transistor.
In the 5th century BC, the Greek world found itself in the middle of one of its greatest wars. This wasn’t one of their existential conflicts against the Persians; this was a war of Greeks against Greeks.
The Guillotine has become infamous for being the main weapon utilized during the Reign of Terror and a modern symbol of the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror.
One of the most important inventions in human history was artificial lighting.With the electric lightbulb, the night could be illuminated, allowing people to extend the productive hours in a day and to work in places that were otherwise difficult or impossible…
The 19th Century wasn’t a good one for China. It was marked by the nation being taken advantage of by foreign powers and the signing of lopsided treaties.
Michigan and Ohio are two states renowned for their intense rivalry.
The months of the year are named after Roman god, and some are named after their placement in the year. However, the first month to be named after an actual person was the month of July, which was named after Julius Caesar.
Five years ago today, I published the first episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
Marcus Licinius Crassus was the richest man in the Roman Republic.
In the 19th century, New York City was one of the fastest-growing cities in the world.
On the evening of January 30, 1945, the deadliest shipwreck in human history occurred.
For many of you listening to the sound of my voice right now, the audio originated from a digital file that was transported across the globe at the speed of light on fiber-optic cables.
Located in the heart of West Africa is the nation of Ghana.
There are many lessons we are supposed to know in life: pick up after yourself, never bet against a Sicilian when death is on the line, and most importantly, don’t invade Russia in the winter.
All sports are governed by a body of rules. Within those rules, there is usually a set of norms for how the game should be played. Most coaches will instruct their players to use similar techniques.
In late May and early June of 1917, the French Army faced what could have been an extensive crisis.
In the Pacific Theater in World War II, the leader of the combined Japanese fleet was Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto.
On April 12, 1862, one of the most daring and audacious events of the American Civil War took place.
One of the most common types of plants in the world is grass.
One of the most transformative events of the 20th century was the Russian Revolution.
One of the most popular fruits in the world are apples.
Seventy percent of the Earth’s surface is covered with water… and the vast majority of it is useless for consumption or agriculture.
We are all familiar with things that fly in the air. Hot air balloons, dirigibles, blimps, airplanes, and helicopters.
If you take a look at the periodic table of elements, you will notice something interesting.
In 1818, the man who would go on to become one of the greatest leaders in the cause against American slavery was himself born into slavery.
Colors are something that we are all familiar with. The colors are among the first things we teach children.
In the summer of 1944, the Allied forces planned an audacious amphibious landing on the beaches of France.
If you are listening to me speak these words and can understand what I’m saying, then you are a human being.If you are a human being, you are also a mammal, and if you are a mammal, you have hair….or at least the biological capability to produce hair.
In the year 1800, the last year of the 18th century, the world was on the precipice of radical change.
One of the most critical developments in the course of human history was the control of fire.
One of the most popular sports in North America and Northern Europe is ice hockey.
On the morning of August 27, 1883, one of the most destructive natural disasters of the 19th century occurred between the islands of Java and Sumatra, in what is today the nation of Indonesia.
Over the years, human life expectancy has increased dramatically.
Located in the Pearl River Delta, off the coast of the mainland of the People’s Republic of China, is Macau.
Catherine the Great was one of the most influential rulers in Russian history, transforming the Russian Empire into a major European power through territorial expansion, internal reforms, and cultural patronage.
One of the most significant developments in the history of naval warfare was the submarine.
Every single rocket that has ever been launched into space has been a rocket that burned some sort of fuel.
You have questions, and I have answers
One of the most popular foods around the world is the hamburger. If most people think of American foods, it is probably the first thing that they might think of.
In April 1945, in the last days of the war in Europe, everything was falling apart for the Third Reich.
In the 13th century, the Republic of Venice was one of the leading merchant empires in Europe.
On December 8, 1941, as the Japanese were bombing Pearl Harbor, they were simultaneously attacking other Allied positions around Asia.
One of the most important markets in the global economy is the bond market.
Every year, on the last Monday in May, the United States honors its war dead. It is often celebrated with parades, cookouts, and ceremonies at military cemeteries.
In 1610, a European astronomer used a new invention called the telescope to observe the planet Jupiter. What he found revolutionized the science of astronomy and our entire understanding of the universe.
After the American Revolution, the United States economy was in trouble. One solution proposed to solve the crisis was the establishment of a national bank.
The Romans were familiar with Africa. At one point, they controlled everything on the north coast of Africa from Morocco to Egypt.
For centuries, the English Channel served as a moat that kept the conflicts of Continental Europe away from the island of Great Britain.
One of the most important substances throughout world history has been salt.
In early 18th-century London, a petty criminal became one of the most celebrated people in England.
In the middle of the Third Century, things were looking really bad for the Roman Empire.
For thousands of years, people have looked into the night sky and seen something unusual.
Aircraft carriers are some of the most fearsome weapons in the world. They are enormous platforms that can travel around the globe, projecting power over an enormous part of it.
If you were to ask most people what year they associate with the American Revolution, it would be 1776. That was the year that the Continental Congress declared Independence.
On October 14, 1066, England changed forever.
Located in the middle of San Francisco Bay is one of the Bay Area’s most iconic landmarks: Alcatraz. It is one of the most popular tourist attractions in the country, with over a million visitors every year.
On April 15, 1912, one of the greatest disasters in modern nautical history took place.
In the early 17th century, Japan was witness to a samurai who was arguably its greatest warrior ever.
Almost 3000 years ago, the Ancient Greeks established what was a unique method of honoring their gods: an athletic competition.
Located on the Adriatic Sea in the southernmost part of Croatia is the city of Dubrovnik.
The Bill of Rights to the United States Constitution holds some of the most treasured rights held by Americans.
Whether or not you are aware of it, in the last day, if you are anywhere near average, there is a very good chance that you have consumed seed oils.
In the year 732, one of the most important battles in world history took place between the cities of Tours and Portier in France.
No matter where you are on Earth right now, there is approximately 6,400 kilometers or 4,000 miles of rock beneath your feet.
Many different sports have a concept of a triple crown or a grand slam.
Australia is a unique country.
The Roman Empire was one of the greatest empires in the ancient world.
Located off the tip of Cornwall, England, lies a small group of islands known as the Isles of Scilly.
You have questions and I have answers.
Located just 50 miles off the coast of Miami, Florida, is the nation of the Bahamas. It is a large archipelago of islands covering over 5000 square miles in the Atlantic Ocean.
If you ever stay up at night scanning through frequencies on shortwave radio, there is a good chance you might come across something very odd and kind of creepy.
If you are listening to my words right now, then you are obviously an internet user.
The most famous battles of the US Civil War all occurred in the eastern theater, such as Gettysburg, Antietam, Shiloh, and Bull Run.
One of the biggest and most important industries in the world is banking.
Our calendar and system of keeping time are rather unique.
Just one week after President Abraham Lincoln was re-elected in November 1864, Union General William Tecumseh Sherman set out to execute one of the most audacious plans of the US Civil War.
After the death or resignation of a pope, but before the election of a new pope, there is a period of time at the Vatican known as Sede Vacante.
One of the greatest periods of social and technological change in world history was the Renaissance.
In the year 490 BC, one of the most pivotal battles in world history took place.
Today, approximately 160 currencies are used worldwide. Some countries share the same currency, while others use the currency of another country.
All living things on the planet Earth, from microbes to whales, can be categorized into a single hierarchical system.
In 1995, the first planet outside our solar system was discovered.
Modern society is completely dependent on a set of technologies that include computer chips, fiber optic cables, lasers, video screens, electric motors, and batteries.
The modern world runs on metal wires.
Of all the cities that experienced the Second World War, one of the most interesting stories is that of Paris.
When I say precious metals, most of you probably immediately think of gold and silver.
On June 22, 1941, German forces crossed into the Soviet Union. It was, and remains, the largest military operation in human history. The force that the Germans assembled for the invasion was staggering, consisting of over 3 million men.
Located in the South Pacific is the nation of Fiji.
This episode was recorded in front of a live audience.
As of the recording of this episode, 1,012 people have been awarded Nobel Prizes across every category.
Sometime around eight to nine thousand years ago, ancient people in Asia Minor found a very dull grey metal that turned out to be easy to manipulate when it was heated.
The Solar System is a pretty big place. When most people think of our Solar System, they probably think of the Sun, the planets, and all their moons.
One of the most popular instruments in the world is the guitar.
For a 10-month period from September 1793 to July 1794, the nation of France went through a period which could only be called insanity.
Computer software seems to be everywhere. No matter what kind of computer you use or where you use it, all computers use software.
There is a very good chance that many of you listening have had pasta, maybe within the last week.
We like to think of the Earth as a very stable place. While there might be seasonal variation in the weather, things don’t really change that much within our lifetimes.
If you happen to live in the Northern Hemisphere, April is a time when days get longer, the temperature gets warmer, and things start to become green again.
In the mid-19th century, Europe saw what was perhaps its largest war since the end of the Napoleonic Wars.
During the 5th century, one name struck fear into the hearts of almost every European: Attila, leader of the Huns.
In the game of baseball, it might not seem at first glance that there is much strategy involved in the game.
The modern world is built on science. Today, millions of scientists all over the world are doing research in thousands of different fields and specializations.
Located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea is its largest island: Sicily.
Every military in the world is a hierarchical organization. There are people at the top who make decisions, people down below who follow those orders, and people in between who make it happen.
On July 31, 1944, one of the greatest naval exploits in history took place in the Western Pacific Ocean.
Over a thousand years ago, a wealthy family in Germany gave birth to their tenth child, a daughter.
Sponsors
One of the most common food items consumed today are cruciferous vegetables. Even if you aren’t familiar with the term, you almost certainly have consumed some before, and there is a good chance you do so on a regular basis.
Whaling is something that humans have engaged in for thousands of years.
Once every 450,000 years or so, the Earth undergoes a radical transformation.
Every March, the United States experiences a period known as March Madness. It is the time when college basketball teams compete for a national championship.
All of you are familiar with the ABCs. It is one of the very first things that children are taught.
In the summer of 1863, after two years of war, Confederate General Robert E. Lee felt it was possible to swiftly end the conflict by taking the fight to the Union.
The 19th century was one of rapid technological advancement.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, a war erupted in the world of video technology.
In 1869, the world was shocked by a discovery that was made outside of the town of Cardiff, New York.
For as long as humans have been watching the night sky, they noticed that every so often, during a full moon, the moon would briefly go dark, or at least change color.
One of the most devastating weapons in the medieval world was the crossbow.
Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, known to history as Claudius, was the fourth Emperor of Rome.
In the 18th century, a French astronomer who was a regular comet hunter kept finding things in the sky that weren’t comets, but they also weren’t stars or planets.
Sponsors
In 1965, the world’s first full enclosed sports facility, the Houston Astrodome, was opened to the public.
For thousands of years, humans have used the power of water to do work for them.
After the First World War in France, many generals thought that the end of the war was really just a pause before another war began. They wanted to make sure that the next time war broke out with Germany, they were ready and could never be invaded again.
Before the US Civil War, a group of abolitionists didn’t just sit around passively to wait for the end of slavery to arrive.
Located in the Indonesian Archipelago, it is one of the newest countries in the world, Timor-Leste, or, as it's sometimes known in English, East Timor.
On May 16, 1929, 270 people assembled in the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel's Blossom Room.
Over 300 years ago, humanity was in the early stages of what would be its greatest transformation in history.
You have questions. I have answers.
In 1864, Elizabeth Jane Cochran was born in Cochran Mills, Pennsylvania.
Every month, or sometimes every quarter, governments around the world release economic statistics.
Located at the southern end of the Iberian peninsula is the largest autonomous community in Spain by population and the second largest by area: Andalusia.
After several years of rising tensions, on May 13, 1846, the United States Congress declared war on the nation of Mexico.
The Netherlands is unlike any other country on Earth.
In 1582, a Japanese nobleman by the name of Lord Otomo Sorin sent a group of envoys to Europe.
The ancient Greeks had a polytheistic religion and a pantheon of gods.
The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration awarded by the United States government.
In the year 331 BC, one of the most important battles in world history took place.
It is the most expensive substance in the world by a wide margin.
One of the most popular card games in the world is poker.
Perhaps the most respected and feared soldiers in the world are those who belong to Special Forces.
On the morning of February 14, 1929, a horrific crime took place on the north side of Chicago.
A reconnaissance satellite, otherwise known as a spy satellite, is somewhere above your head right now, collecting images and gathering intelligence on whatever it sees below it.
In the 1960s, a New York clinical psychiatrist and an adoption agency conducted an experiment. They separated multiple sets of identical twins and one set of identical triplets into different families to test how much of personality is due to genetics or the e…
Located off the coast of South America and in the Southern Atlantic Ocean is the Falkland Islands.
Sometime about 3,200 years ago, one of the most famous wars in ancient history took place.
One of the most common and versatile forms of energy in the world is natural gas.
Depending on how you define it, there are about 193 to 200 countries in the world today.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the British Intelligence community was shocked by a series of high-profile defections to the Soviet Union.
In the early 20th century, as automobiles became more and more popular, the need for a national system of roads in the United States became more evident.
Located in East London is the Royal Greenwich Observatory.
From August 1942 to February 1943, the Germans and the Soviets engaged in what would become the most brutal and bloodiest battle in human history.
The most significant event in American history was undoubtedly the Civil War.
The United States consists of 50 states, each of which is represented by a star on the American flag.
Sponsors
Organized crime wasn’t always so organized.
On October 15, 1991, a cosmic ray detector in Utah observed something that had never been seen before or since.
One of the most popular categories of beverage in the world today is soft drinks.
On November 4, 1979, a group of Iranian Revolutionaries stormed the American Embassy in Tehran, Iran, and took 66 American diplomats and citizens hostage.
Since its creation, the Central Intelligence Agency has been tasked with gathering intelligence on foreign adversarial governments.
In the early 12th century, a military monastic order developed in the Middle East with the express intent of protecting Christian pilgrims traveling to the Holy Land.
Airplanes are wonderful things. They fly through the air and move people and goods at rapid speeds around the world.
Malaria is one of the oldest known infectious diseases, with a history spanning thousands of years. It has shaped human civilization, influenced wars, and driven scientific advancements in medicine and public health.
Every twelve years, one of the greatest gatherings of people on Earth takes place in India.
One of the biggest controversies in the world of sports over the last several decades has been the use of performance-enhancing drugs and substances, or PEDs.
Humanity has seen a lot of bad things throughout history. There have been horrific wars, natural disasters, and pandemics that have killed millions of people.
Located in Northern China is not only one of the largest cities in the world but also the capital of the largest country in the world, Beijing.
Every four years on January 20th, the United States holds a ceremony for the inauguration of the President of the United States. There are traditions for the inauguration, some of which have been passed down since the very first.
After the Allied landing in Normandy in World War II, the Allies made progress pushing back the Germans.
In 1880, the Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was commissioned to compose a work in honor of the completion of a new cathedral.
In the year 60 BC, a very unlikely alliance was formed between three of Rome’s most powerful men.
Imagine a device that could supply an unlimited amount of energy. It would solve many of the world’s problems in one fell swoop.
One of the most devastating disasters that has afflicted humanity are famines.
In the early 20th century, the Schlitz Brewing Company of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was the largest brewery in the world.
One of the most popular foods in the world is tomatoes.
In the first and second centuries, a Christian sect found a wide following throughout the Roman world.
During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there was a problem that stumped even the best minds in physics.
Some of the most beautiful things in the world of mathematics are fractals.
In July 2017, the International Olympic Committee did something unprecedented. It awarded not one, but two cities Olympic games at the same time.
Every country has its own system of government. Even when systems are quite similar, there are usually idiosyncrasies about each system, making them different.
During the 14th century, the world saw one of its most traumatic episodes.
In 1908, the United States did something unprecedented in its history: It created a general-purpose investigative police branch for the Department of Justice.
One of the most feared groups of people from the 8th to the 11th centuries was the Vikings.
Lions are one of the most respected animals in the animal kingdom.
You’ve seen it in your science classroom, and there was probably a copy of it on the inside cover of your chemistry book. Maybe if you are a real nerd, you might even have your own personal copy.
January is the first month of the year in the Gregorian calendar. Its name derives from Janus, the Roman god of beginnings and transitions. Janus symbolizes new opportunities and looks both forward and backward.
Every year, people around the world ring in the New Year.
Tokyo, Japan, is currently the largest city in the world, with a total metropolitan population of over 37 million people.
Ever since the advent of broadcast television, one of the staples of television programming has been game shows.
In 1941, in the midst of the North Africa Campaign, the British found themselves on the ropes.
Canada is a really big country—the second largest in the world, in fact.
Every year, primarily in Commonwealth countries, the day after Christmas is a legal holiday.
In the winter of 1776, things did not look good for the Continental Army.
Christmas is the time of year for getting together with loved ones, celebrating, and giving gifts.
In the 19th century, the British and the Chinese went to war on two separate occasions—the reasons why they went to war are both simple and complicated.
Ever since the beginning of the Space Age, some have envisioned landing humans on Mars.
Approximately 3,200 years ago, one of the most momentous events in human history took place.
One of the most common things in the world are superstitions.
The First World War was one of the most devastating conflicts in human history.
Situated on a rocky hill overlooking the city of Athens is a former religious center, military fortress, and cultural hub known as the Acropolis.
One of the world’s most popular snack foods is peanuts.
One of the most common substances on Earth is sand.
Located on the island of Java in Indonesia, just 100 kilometers from the capital of Jakarta, lies what might be one of the most important archeology sites in the world.
The earliest forms of democracy go back over 2000 years to Ancient Greece. While this early system did have voting, not everyone could vote.
If you ever watch a war movie, you might see a scene where a prisoner of war evokes the Geneva convention to their captors.
In the aftermath of the Second World War, everyone had hoped that major military conflicts would be a thing of the past.
Despite having very different cultures and being separated by thousands of kilometers, Asia and Europe have been connected for thousands of years.
In 1982, the Phillips and Sony Corporations jointly released the compact audio disc to the world.
The United States and Canada share the world's longest undefended border. The United States and the United Kingdom have shared what has been called a “special relationship” since the Second World War.
The Roman Empire was ruled by a single family for its first century. The family was actually a merger of two of the most distinguished clans in Roman history.
Gravity is the weakest of the fundamental forces of nature, yet, if you have enough of it, it can create the most powerful thing in the known universe: a black hole.
Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington DC, is the home of the president of the United States.
The modern world runs on electricity. That isn’t a throwaway statement. If we take away electricity, our modern civilization will quickly fall apart.
For thirty years between 1455 and 1485, England suffered its greatest civil war at that point.
Sometimes over 3000 years ago, somewhere in Southwestern China, a leaf from the Camellia sinensis plant may have accidentally found its way into a pot of boiling water.
December is upon us, and we should be cognizant of the fact that December is based on the Latin word Decem, meaning tenth, which is why December is the 10th month of the year……except that it is actually the 12th month.
Music is a very powerful thing. It can invoke a wide variety of emotions and moods.
In 1897, the visionary Russian rocket scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky discovered an equation that governed how rockets worked.
For about a month, from the end of November to the end of December every year, one of the most popular animals in North America is the turkey.
After the Prophet Mohammed's death in 632, his followers faced a dilemma. Mohammed was not only their spiritual leader but also their political leader.
For more than 350 years, a single problem stumped the world of mathematics.
There are many things in our world that have surprisingly ancient origins.
It was the worst economic depression that the United States had ever seen.
Since the ratification of the United States Constitution in 1788, there have been 60 presidential elections, which have been run every four years.
A little over 400 years ago, the world was undergoing a revolution, although most people who lived at that time probably didn’t know it.
There is an excellent chance that you know someone who has a twin sibling. In fact, there are some of you listening who have a twin brother or sister.
California isn’t just another US state. It is the most populous state in the union, and it has an economy which, if it were an independent country, would be the 5th largest in the world.
One of the most important inventions in human history was the bow and arrow.
From September 1940 until May 1941, the people of the United Kingdom experienced the horrors of war firsthand.
Every day, hundreds of billions of dollars worth of investments are bought and sold around the world. Most of these transactions are conducted by investment banks and other large institutions.
Almost everyone listening to the sound of my voice is a citizen of some country.
In the early 13th century, England suffered through the worst monarch it would have in its history: King John.
There is an old saying that da Nile isn’t just a river in Egypt. That is true. It is also a river in Sudan, South Sudan, Ethiopia, and Uganda.
The 19th century was a period of rapid advancement. New technologies such as the railroad and the telegraph radically changed civilization.
Ever since humans domesticated animals and realized they could extract milk from them, they have been making and consuming butter.
In 1938, writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster released what would become one of the most well-known fictional characters of the 20th century.
When European explorers set off from Europe, many of them chased things that didn’t exist. The Fountain of Youth, the City of El Dorado, and Prester John were all things they pursued but came up empty-handed.
This is the first episode of Everything Everywhere Daily to be recorded in front of a live audience.
If you happen to be feeling blue because you feel like a loose cannon, fear not, because I happen to like the cut of your jib.
One of the most famous battles in the history of the American West took place in June 1876.
The election of 1860 was unquestionably the most important election in American history.
During the Second World War, the Allies were desperate to develop ideas to help them win the war.
One of the most popular board games in the world is Monopoly.
Ancient mathematics was very different than the mathematics you are used to today.
Right now in the Northern Hemisphere, the days are getting shorter, and things are getting colder.
Today, there is a giant rift that is tearing the continent of Africa apart.
The myth of the werewolf, a human who transforms into a wolf, is one of the most enduring and pervasive tales in folklore.
Some of the most frightening and iconic monsters in the history of the horror genre are vampires.
In 1816, a group of friends who were writers were stuck indoors in Geneva, Switzerland, and were bored. So, they created a challenge for themselves. They were to each come up with a unique ghost story.
One of the primary religious practices of the Ancient Egyptians was preparing physical bodies for the journey to the afterlife. This highly developed process, perfected over centuries, preserved bodies for thousands of years.
One of the most popular forms of fiction today involves zombies. There are TV shows, movies, and books that all envision life during a zombie apocalypse.
If you are listening to me speak these words, regardless of where in the world you live, you are part of a global network we call human civilization. You share in the ideas, technology, and goods created worldwide and by people in your community.
On August 4, 1892, in Fall River, Massachusetts, an incredibly grizzly event took place.
From the end of the Second World War through 1991, the city of Berlin, the former capital of Germany and its largest city, was split in two.
Ever since the dawn of the space age, there have been some who have dreamed of establishing a human presence on Mars.
In the late 13th century, the Mongol Empire was at the peak of its power.
After the founding of Rome as a city in the 8th century BC, it created a social system based on an elite few and a majority of commoners.
Approximately every eleven years, our sun experiences a cycle in which its magnetic poles flip. During this cycle, solar flares and sunspot activity increase, and then the sun returns to a state of relative calm.
One of the most powerful forces in economics and finance is compound interest.
Every day, billions of people around the world wake up and have breakfast.
In 1475, Michelangelo Buonarroti was born in Caprese, Italy.
Two of the United States's most distant territories are located in the Western Pacific Ocean: Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.
On December 25, 2021, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope was launched from the European Space Agency launch center in French Guyana.
Insurance seems like a pretty modern concept. There are insurance commercials on television, and insurance companies sponsor major sports teams.
From 1899 to 1900, China underwent a widespread and violent uprising. The revolt, a reaction against China’s exploitation by foreign powers, was decades in the making.
In late 1944, the Allies were on a roll, and Germany was on the ropes. Some Allies, considering how fast they were advancing, thought the war might be over by Christmas.
For centuries, sailors told tales of gigantic waves that they encountered at sea, and for centuries, scientists didn’t believe them.
Humans have probably had the desire to fly ever since they saw the first bird fly in the air.
In the 1860s, one of the bloodiest wars in the Western Hemisphere took place….and it wasn’t the US Civil War.
At the end of the Second World War, Europe was a mess. The economies of most countries were in shambles and the threat of communism loomed over the continent.
Every year, hundreds of millions of birds around the world migrate.
Sitting in most homes is a deck of playing cards.
One of the defining events of the Middle Ages took place in Constantinople on April 12, 1204.
For over 600 years, the empire that dominated the region of Southeast Asia was the Khmer Empire.
All around you, in the air and the ground, is the most common element on Earth: Oxygen.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, several major Americans were the battleground for a conflict between two great powers.
Every October in the Northern Hemisphere, leaves on the trees turn color and fall to the ground.
When we look at history, we tend to focus on grand things like great leaders and great battles.
Many places on Earth have extreme climates. However, there is one place on Earth that has a climate so extreme that it is the closest thing to it might be on another planet.
Many people have one or more favorite sports teams. Most people support these teams because they happen to be the team close to where they live.
Located in Vatican City, just off St. Peter’s Square lies one of the plainest and most uninteresting buildings you might ever find. It has no adornments and it is just a solid beige color.
The United States Constitution identifies three separate branches of government: the executive, the legislative, and the judicial. Each branch has a set of checks and balances, which, in theory, limits the power of the others.
After years of war throughout the continent of Europe, in 1814, Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte abdicated and was exiled to the small island of Elba off the coast of Italy.
In 1972, one of the greatest movies ever made was released: The Godfather.
In 1922, British archaeologist Howard Carter stumbled upon one of the most pristine tombs of an Egyptian Pharaoh ever found: the tomb of King Tutankhamun. That discovery became a pop culture sensation and revolutionized our understanding of Ancient Egypt. Lear…
On December 11, 1978, one of the most audacious heists in history took place at JFK Airport in New York City.
For decades, the nation of Ethiopia has dreamed of creating a damn on the Blue Nile River.
A popular activity that millions of people around the world engage in every week is bowling.
As early as 2400 years ago, Greek philosophers were coming up with paradoxes that seemingly had no solution.
On October 28, 1929, a day known as Black Monday, the New York Stock Exchange suffered its greatest one-day loss in history.
The English language is….different.
After the Nazi invasion of France in 1940, the French were forced to sign a lopsided armistice that gave control over most of the country to Germany.
In 1961, Michael Rockefeller, an heir to one of the greatest fortunes in the world, disappeared on an art-collecting trip off the coast of the island of New Guinea.
People in the entertainment industry often say that show business is “show business.”
Located between Canada and the United States is one of the largest bodies of freshwater in the world, Lake Superior.
As soon as money was invented, counterfeiting was invented soon after.
Almost every country in the world uses the metric system…..almost.
In 1908, a two-year-old boy named Puyi was installed as the 11th Emperor of the Qing Dynasty in China.
Located on the island of La Gomera in the Spanish Canary Islands is one of the most unusual languages on Earth.
Every country in Africa is unique and has its own history. However, many African countries share a similar story over the last 150 years, having gone through European colonization and decolonization.
Whenever there is a lottery, the odds of winning are given.
In 19th century America, a movement began to take areas of exceptional natural beauty and preserve them.
There is a good chance that sometime in the last few days, weeks, or months, you might have enjoyed a slice or two of pizza.
In the Spring of 1846, a group of intrepid pioneers set out from Independence, Missouri, to cross the Oregon Trail to seek a better life in the fertile Oregon Territory.
The cold war was the defining event of the second half of the 20th century.
If you think of the First World War, your mind probably turns to images of trench warfare and thousands of men losing their lives to try and gain just a few meters of land.
Thirty days hath September, and on 29 of those days, I’ll run normal episodes.
Located in the middle of the Old City of Jerusalem lies one of the most famous structures in the world.
In 2015, the hip-hop group Wu-Tang Clan released an album that was unlike any other in the history of recorded music.
On August 20, 1672, one of the most shocking moments in Dutch political history took place.
The Roman Empire, at its height, was a juggernaut.
The Allied invasion of Normandy was one of the most complex military operations ever conducted. Thousands of ships and planes had to work in conjunction with tens of thousands of soldiers who had to do one of the most difficult things in warfare: an amphibious…
Ever since astronomers figured out that the stars in the sky are just like our sun, they began wondering if those stars had planets just like our sun.
Every day, whether or not you even realize it, you are subject to a host of unwritten rules. These are rules that are not written down and are not part of any formal law, but they are fundamental to the functioning of any society.
Italy as we know it today is a relatively recent invention.
Each of the fifty US states is like a separate country. Its area, population, and economy are comparable to those of other independent nations.
When Alexander the Great died, one of his generals and best friends, Ptolemy, took Alexander’s corpse and went to Egypt to establish a new Pharaonic dynasty.
If you’ve been around long enough, and by that, I only mean a couple of years, you have probably observed the one fundamental truth about computers: they always get faster.
For over two thousand years, China lived under imperial rule. A series of dynasties and emperors were the defining feature of Chinese governance.
In November 1884, representatives from a dozen European countries met in Berlin.
Located north of 66°33′ North latitude is the region we call the Arctic.
For generations, families have attended circuses.
The universe is billions of years old.
We all eat every day. We use English words for the foods and meals we eat without even thinking about it.
A little over 500 years ago, the world underwent massive change.
In the mid-12th century, England was in chaos.
The Vietnam War was perhaps the most significant event that took place in the last half of the 20th century.
One of the most significant figures in 16th-century Britain was Mary Stuart, aka Mary, Queen of Scots.
For thousands of years, humans all around the world have coveted gemstones.
Located on the tips of our fingers are features known as friction ridges. We evolved them to get a better grip on objects.
On April 12, 1861, the United States Civil War began when Confederate forces began a bombardment of the Union held Fort Sumter at the mouth of the harbor in Charleston, South Carolina.
In any sport, there is always one debate that comes up. It comes up year after year, and it has been around for as long as sport has existed.
During the Second World War, the United States embarked on one of the greatest science and engineering projects the world had ever seen.
After the end of the second world war, Berlin was a divided city controlled by the four major allied powers. Despite the different zones of control, people could move freely between them.
If you have used a computer, which I’m assuming is almost everyone listening to this, you have probably had to store your data somewhere.
In 8 BC, the Roman senate passed a resolution renaming the month of Sextillis to August to honor the emperor Augustus.
In almost all sports, people will refer to what is known as having a home-field advantage.
During the height of the Second World War, American shipping to Europe was constantly being attacked by German U-boats.
According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the largest library in the world is the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.
On December 29, 1170, the Archbishop of Canterbury was brutally murdered on the floor of the Canterbury Cathedral by four armed knights while preparing for his evening prayers.
Located in the state of Wyoming and a little bit of Montana and Idaho lies one of the world’s greatest national parks on Earth: Yellowstone.
You have probably heard the expression, “The house always wins.”
For over 1000 years, Rome, either in its Republican or Imperial form, was the dominant power in the Mediterranean.
On April 24, 1990, the Space Shuttle Discovery launched the Hubble Space Telescope into low Earth orbit.
Cleopatra VII Philopator was the last ruler of an independent Egypt and one of the most important women of the ancient world.
Perhaps the greatest advancement in the arts in the 20th century was the creation of motion pictures.
Located in the South Atlantic Ocean, situated between South America and Africa, lies the most remote human settlement on Earth.
One of the most difficult concepts for early thinkers to get their heads around was the idea of nothing.
Just south of the United States and north of Guatemala is Mexico, a fact which I’m sure all of you know.
For thousands of years, many theories have been put forward as to the cause of communicable diseases.
In October 1919, the champions of the National League, the Cincinnati Reds, faced the champions of the American League, the Chicago White Sox, in the World Series.
I would say that there is a very good chance that almost everyone listening to the sound of my voice right now is wearing something made of cloth.
In the year 53 BC, Rome suffered one of the greatest military defeats in its history. A Roman army led by Marcus Lucinisu Crassus was led into the desert in present-day Southern Turkey and was systematically destroy by an army from the Kingdom of Parthia.
Located between China and India, Pakistan, Buthan, and Nepal is the world’s highest chain of mountains, The Himalayas.
In September 1944, despite over half a year still remaining in World War II, the Allies began preparing for an eventual post-war world.
In the early 1960s, the United States was always a step behind the Soviet Union in the space race.
In the mid-18th century, excavations in the ancient town of Herculaneum, just outside the city of Pompeii and destroyed by the same volcano, discovered something….interesting.
In the early 19th century, the most abundant bird in North America, and perhaps the entire world, was the passenger pigeon. An estimated three billion of them would fly in flocks so large that they could blot out the sun.
Depending on how you define it, there were somewhere between 70 to 100 Roman emperors between the ascension of Augustus to the fall of the western empire in 476. A period of about 500 years.
Let me cut right to the chase. This episode is going to be a deep dive into the origin of some common idioms. I don’t want to dance around the subject or have to walk on eggshells, so I’m using this introduction to break the ice.
One of the most famous lines in poetry comes from the poet Robert Burns, who spoke of ‘The best-laid schemes of mice and men.’
The most popular sports league in the world in terms of the number of people who follow and watch is the English Premier League.
In February 1904, the Russian Empire found itself at war with the Empire of Japan over what was territory in the current nation of China.
Mark Twain once said, 'There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.'
The month of July is named after Julius Caesar. In 44 BC, after his assassination, the Roman Senate renamed the month of Quintilis after him in honor of the month he was born.
On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress of the 13 British colonies in North America issued a document addressing their grievances with the British Crown and stated to the world why they considered themselves to be a free and independent country.
One of the leading destinations for live stage performances is Broadway.
Located in the 90th place on the periodic table is the element Thorium.
In December 1936, the United Kingdom underwent its greatest constitutional crisis of the 20th century.
In 1961, at the Green Bank observatory in West Virginia, a small conference was held for astrophysicists. The meeting was organized by Cornell University professor and astronomer Frank Drake.
Before the Allied invasions of Normandy or Sicily in World War II, the ground war against Germany and Italy was first fought in North Africa.
The biggest agricultural crop in the world today, by total weight, is corn.
One of the most audacious scams in history took place in the early 19th century in Britain.
The death of a British monarch is a very big event. Thousands of people may take part in the funeral and procession, with millions more lining up to pay their respects and billions more watching on television.
One of the biggest problems that humanity has faced for thousands of years is heat.
In the midst of the Second World War, the Allied powers began planning ahead for what the post-war world was going to look like.
Dogs and cats are both domesticated, four-legged, fur-bearing mammals.
In most academic disciplines, there is often a single idea or discovery which makes everything fall into place.
A popular topic of films has been the French Foreign Legion.
If you were to pick a single visible icon to represent the 20th century, it would probably be the skyscraper.
About 384,400 km or 238,900 miles above the surface of the Earth is our planet's only natural satellite, The Moon.
Alexander the Great was one of the most famous people from the ancient world.
In January 1920, an Italian American businessman in Boston started a new company. In order to raise money, he took $100 investments from 18 people and offered them a fabulous return on their money in only 45 days, and he delivered on his promise.
Located in Central and Eastern Europe is one of the continent's longest and most rivers: the Danube.
It is one of the most important inventions in history. Almost everyone listening to this has one. You use one almost every day, and if we didn’t have them, the world would be a very different place.
In the very long history of China, it has had exactly one female ruler.
The Philippines is one of the largest countries in the world. With a population of 115 million people, it is the 14th largest country in the world in terms of population.
For thousands of years, wine has been one of the most important beverages in the world.
After the American War of Independence, Britain recognized the United States, but it didn’t necessarily make them close allies.
Books are one of the foundational tools of civilization. They allow us to pass knowledge and information between people who don’t know each other, and their compact form allows knowledge to be transported across vast distances.
In the 19th century, several American universities began to compete with each other in several sporting events in friendly intercollegiate competitions.
Ninjas are awesome. They’re silent, they can turn invisible, and they can totally flip out and kill people, especially their mortal enemies…pirates.
Depending on how you define it, there were approximately 70 Roman Emperors.
On June 6, 1944, the largest amphibious landing in world history took place on the shore of Normandy, France. The allied forces called it D-Day.
When President John F. Kennedy set the objective of landing on the moon before the end of the 1960s, no one really knew what it entailed.
Located between Mexico and Columbia, in a strategic area connecting the Atlantic and the Pacific, is the region we call Central America.
Money is a very strange thing. All of us use it. We spend it, earn it, and save it. We know it when we see it.
A common occurrence at many universities is that they have contentious relationships with their local community.
The month of June was originally called Iunius by the Romans. It originally had 29 days and was the fourth month of the year.
One of the most iconic images of America is the cowboy. Cowboys have defined entire genres of literature and movies and are the basis for entire styles of fashion.
In the year 79, Mount Vesuvius, a volcano located east of the modern-day city of Naples, erupted.
There are millions of different insect species in the world. All of them fill some niche in the ecosystem in which they live.
The world as we know it is made up of 193 countries, Antarctica, and a host of territories.
On December 8, 1941, as the Japanese were bombing Pearl Harbor, they were simultaneously attacking other Allied positions around Asia.
When Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act of 1862, there was a rush of people who moved west to claim the free land that was offered.
In 1428, a young girl from the village of Domrémy, France, audaciously set out to meet the heir apparent to the French throne, the Dauphin, and told him what he had to do to defeat the English occupying her country.
On May 11, 1960, an auto worker who went by Ricardo Klement stepped off the bus after his shift at a Mercedes-Benz automotive plant in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
From 1929 to 1992, several governments ruled over the Balkans, all of whom used the name “Yugoslavia.”
Most of our major divisions of time are based on some sort of natural event.
Inside you right now are most probably millions of, possibly even trillions of viruses.
On August 9, 378, one of the most important battles in history took place.
There was no product more important to the economy of the ancient world than silk.
When the United States entered the Civil War, the Union needed a plan for conducting the war.
Psychologists have identified hundreds of different psychological disorders and conditions.
Sometime around 3,200 years ago, a new civilization became ascendent on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea.
During the Second World War, the United States established the highly secret Manhattan Project to develop an atomic bomb based on nuclear fission.
In 1788, the son of the leader of the Confederation of Futa Jallon in West Africa was commanding his 2,000 troops against a neighboring military force and was captured.
If you are listening to me speak these words and can understand what I’m saying, then you are a human being.
In the last year of the Second World War, things were not going well for the Imperial Japanese military.
In 1956, one of the most important geopolitical events of the post-war period took place in Egypt.
We are all familiar with camping, and many of us go camping or camp regularly. Enjoying the great outdoors with friends and family can be an enjoyable experience.
At the 1862 London International Exhibition, an inventor by the name of Andrew Parkes introduced a new product based on cellulose that he called Parkesine.
In June of 1314, Scottish forces under the command of Robert the Bruce squared off against an English army led by King Edward II.
In 1940, much of the world was at war, but the United States wasn’t. A strong isolationist sentiment kept the US on the sidelines while Germany and Japan ran roughshod over their neighbors.
In 1903, the Ontario Rugby Football Union adopted a set of rules for their sport which were codified by Thrift Burnside, the captain of the University of Toronto football team.
In 1912, a discovery was announced that shocked the world. A British paleontologist announced what was perhaps the most important find in the history of paleontology.
Listen to the Respecting the Beer Podcast!
In the year 73 BC, Rome faced one of its greatest threats to its existence. An army of over 100,000 liberated slaves rose up in revolt and threatened the very fabric of the Roman Republic.
Our solar system is made up of a lot of things.
Starting in the year 1096, the Christian kingdoms of the Latin Church united to retake religious sites in the Holy Land. This war was known as a crusade.
The First World War wasn’t just fought on the fields of France and Belgium. There were lesser battles fought on the homefronts of the nations which were fighting.
Adolf Hitler single-handedly started the Second World War in Europe.
By the early 19th century, the United States and Great Britain had already fought two wars with each other.
In 1854 an unusually severe outbreak of cholera occurred in London.
In 259 BC, a boy named Ying Zheng was born in the state of Qin in modern-day China.
In the 19th century, New York City was one of the fastest-growing cities in the world.
Almost as soon as Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in 1947, people began thinking of ways to transport passengers at supersonic speeds.
The English language has evolved organically, gathering words and phrases from different languages, countries, and communities.
Today in Western Europe, there is a line that divides speakers of Germanic languages and speakers of Romance languages. While that line has shifted over time, its existence can be traced back to a battle that took place over 2000 years ago.
The universe is big. Really, really big. So big that it is hard to intuitively grasp its size because we have nothing in our lives that we could compare it to.
The odds are quite good that somewhere around you right now as you listen to me speak these words, is a battery.
Located in Northern Europe, along the Atlantic coast, is the relatively small nation of Belgium.
Money is a very strange thing. All of us use it. We spend it, earn it, and save it. We know it when we see it.
It is one of the longest and largest structures ever built. It was designed to defend one of the oldest and greatest civilizations on the planet.
Aircraft carriers are some of the most fearsome weapons in the world. They are enormous platforms that can travel around the globe, projecting power over an enormous part of it.
In 1760, George III succeeded to the throne of the United Kingdom at the age of 22, becoming the third king in the House of Hannover.
In October 1918, just weeks before the end of the First World War, one of the most incredible feats of military valor took place in the Meuse–Argonne offensive, one of the last great battles of the war.
Sandwiches are one of the most popular types of food in the world. They are incredibly easy to make, can be incredibly cheap, and they come in numerous varieties.
In 1914, the British Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition set out to become the first to cross the continent of Antarctica by land.
Sometime in the 15th century, a drink became popularized in the Arabian peninsula. It was dark, bitter, and people couldn’t get enough of it.
Songkran is a traditional festival celebrated in Thailand that marks the start of the Thai New Year. It is also known as the Water Festival, as it involves splashing water on one another as a symbolic gesture of cleansing and washing away the sins and bad luck…
During World War II, one of the biggest concerns of the Allies was the development of a German atomic bomb.
Most children growing up are admonished not to take candy from strangers.
Every few years, somewhere on Earth, is witness to one of the planet's greatest sights: a total eclipse.
You have questions and I have answers
On April 15, 1947, a young, promising second baseman took the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Long before Europeans arrived in North America, native people told stories of large hairy men who lived in the woods.
Ever since the discovery of the planet Neptune in 1846, astronomers have noticed that something was not right. The orbit of Neptune was being gravitationally influenced by some other, unknown body that was dubbed Planet X.
One of the most important gods in the Roman pantheon was the goddess Vesta.
One of the most popular fruits in the world is apples.
Every year, Christians around the world celebrate Easter.
When humans first managed to harness heavier-than-air flight, they did so by using piston engines and propellers.
He was one of the greatest thinkers of the ancient world. He was a philosopher, a mathematician, and had some unique views on diet and religion.
Throughout history, there have been some truly remarkable people who have done some truly remarkable things.
In the late 19th century, several of the world’s foremost investors engaged in a public battle for the future of electricity. The battle was fought in boardrooms and newspapers, and there was seemingly nothing that was off-limits.
Over the last 200 years, railroads have been one of the most important methods of transportation. Railroads helped make the modern world. They are capable of transporting people and goods quickly over long distances at a low cost.
Located on a peninsula and series of islands off the southeastern coast of China lies what is today called the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong.
In the early 17th century, Japan was witness to a samurai who was arguably its greatest warrior.
For thousands of years, rice has been one of the most important agricultural crops in the world.
It is one of the most simple machines that most people use, yet incredible amounts of engineering go into their design.
Available Nationally, look for a bottle of Heaven Hill Bottled-in-Bond at your local store. Find out more at heavenhilldistillery.com/hh-bottled-in-bond.php
On the morning of August 27, 1883, one of the most destructive natural disasters of the 19th century occurred on the island of Java, in what is today the nation of Indonesia.
Cutting across the state of Arizona is one of the wonders of the national world: The Grand Canyon.
In 1860, the United States was as divided as it ever had been. The issue of slavery had been growing more and more contentious over the decades and by 1860, things were nearing a breaking point.
A little over 400 years ago, a group of Dutch investors had a revolutionary idea.
Before the Ideas of March, before he crossed the Rubicon, and before he became Rome’s dictator for life, Julius Caesar had led a very interesting life.
Every year on March 14, the world celebrates one of the most important mathematical constants: pi.
Before the development of electricity and electrical communications, the fastest information could travel was the speed of a horse. Maybe a ship might have been a bit faster depending on the route, but for the most part, the speed of information was limited to…
The United States federal agency charged with gathering foreign intelligence is the Central Intelligence Agency or the CIA.
Behind almost every web page, email, and podcast is a system that translates addresses understandable to humans to something which can be understood by computers.
Every military in the world is a hierarchal organization. There are people at the top who make decisions, people down below who follow those orders, and people in between who make it happen.
Every year, around this time, people who live in northern latitude countries turn their clocks ahead one hour. Then, months later, we do the exact same thing in reverse, setting all of our clocks back.
In the late 19th century, the American frontier became famous for its outlaws and gangsters. Men like Billy the Kid and Jesse James became notorious for their criminal exploits.
Nestled in the heart of West Africa lie two nations with distinct identities yet tied together by a common geography and history: Senegal and The Gambia.
One of the most important advancements in the 20th century was the identification of the structure of the DNA molecule.
Since humans began to adopt writing systems, they also created systems for passing along written messages.
In 1804, one of the most significant individuals of the 19th century placed a crown upon his head in the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris and declared himself Emperor of the French.
Approximately 700 years ago, something happened to the Earth’s climate.
Several centuries ago, many places celebrated the start of the new year in March, not January.
Some of the most important battles in history, the ones that changed the course of civilizations, are often very small battles.
Once every 1461 days, sometimes, we have a day on the calendar that we don’t normally have.
When Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, he declared his new regime to be The Third Reich and that it would last 1,000 years.
Most people in the world are required to have a passport when they travel internationally.
The history of warfare has been a history of measures and countermeasures.
One of the most common food items consumed today is cruciferous vegetables. Even if you aren’t familiar with the term, you almost certainly have consumed some before, and there is a good chance you do so on a regular basis.
During the Second World War, one of the most distinguished American aviation units was one that no one thought would even have existed when the war began.
The American Civil War wasn’t just a military conflict. There was also a major political and legal struggle that took place alongside the military campaigns.
Centuries ago, the most expensive jewelry in the world wasn’t made of diamonds, rubies, or emeralds.
Wars are often notable points that punctuate the historical timeline. It is a period of tragedy, drama, and often geopolitical changes.
In August of 1964, an event occurred off the waters of North Vietnam that would have repercussions that would echo in US foreign policy for decades.
The United States Constitution lays out a set procedure for the election of a president and how a winner is determined from various candidates.
If you ever stay up at night scanning through frequencies on shortwave radio, there is a good chance you might come across something very odd and kind of creepy.
You are probably well aware that Mount Everest is the tallest mountain on Earth.
In the Pacific Theater in World War II, the leader of the combined Japanese fleet was Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto.
In the year 732, one of the most important battles in world history took place between the cities of Tours and Portier in France.
In the 19th century, a new discipline swept over the medical and legal professions.
After World War II, the American forces in Germany implemented a program of de-Nazification in the parts of the country which they administered. The goal was to remove anyone who was a member of the Nazi party from any position of authority.
If you take a look at the periodic table of elements, you will notice something interesting.
One of the central figures in the drama of the collapse of the Roman Republic and the rise of the Roman Empire was Marc Antony.
One day every year, the United States celebrates its biggest non-official holiday: Super Bowl Sunday.
On April 11, 1970, Apollo 13 was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, as the third mission to land on the moon.
Every day around the world, over a billion eggs are consumed.
In the late 18th century, the newly independent United States of America faced its first major domestic crisis.
The French Revolution was one of the most significant events in history.
During the Roman Republic, two brothers took it upon themselves to seek to change Rome to benefit the poor and underclass.
Located in the area between philosophy and mathematics is the realm of logic.
The First World War saw many innovations in warfare. Probably the most significant was the introduction of aircraft.
You have questions, and I have answers.
On June 22, 1941, German forces crossed into the Soviet Union. It was, and remains, the largest military operation in human history. The force that the Germans assembled for the invasion was staggering, consisting of over 3 million men.
Located in Central Cambodia, north of the great Tonle Sap Lake, lies one of the largest cities of the pre-industrial world.
Spain, like most countries, has a unitary national government but also has a series of subnational jurisdictions.
Sometime around 5,500 years ago, an event took place on the Eurasian steppes that fundamentally changed the world.
On January 16, 1919, the 18th Amendment to the US Constitution was passed. It banned the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcohol.
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to create a utopia? A place where all your wants and needs were taken care of and there was never any fear of harm?
In 1967, the very first Saturn V rocket was launched. It was the largest rocket ever built.
Sometime within the next week of my recording this episode, hopefully, a rocket will be launched from the European Space Agency’s launch facility in French Guyana.
Eliud Kipchoge is unquestionably the greatest marathon runner in history. He’s won an Olympic Gold Medal, holds the world’s record, and has won 12 of the 13 marathons he has ever entered.
President John Tyler was the 10th president of the United States. He was born in 1790 and is widely considered one of the lesser presidents in American history. If you’ve never heard of him before, don’t worry, as you aren’t missing much.
Question: Who is the most dominant athlete of all time?
If you look at the list of officer ranks in the United States armed forces, there are ten ranks listed that are held today. They go from Second Lieutenant all the way up to the rank of General, which is the four-star variant of the rank.
In the 1960s, billions of dollars were spent, and 100,000s of people worked to land a human on the moon.
Sometime around eight to nine thousand years ago, ancient people in Asia Minor found a very dull grey metal that turned out to be easy to manipulate when it was heated.
In the year 54, the Roman Emperor Claudius died, and his adopted son Nero became the Emperor of Rome at the age of 16.
You are probably familiar with several of the great pre-Columbian cities in the Americas. Places like Tikal in Guatemala, Copan in Honduras, and Tenochtitlan in Mexico are some of the great legacies of the civilizations that came before.
In 1845, farmers around Europe suffered from a blight that devastated the potato crop.
The 19th century saw an explosion in population in London. The city grew severalfold and became the largest city in the world.
There is a very good chance that many of you listening have had pasta, maybe within the last week.
When most people think of Switzerland, they think of a small country embedded in the Alps that makes fine chocolates and is the home of the cuckoo clock.
Every single rocket that has ever been launched into space has been a rocket that burned some sort of fuel.
Everyone, I have some good news and some bad news.
For over 300 years, the Romanov family ruled over the Russian Empire.
One of the most important inventions in human history was artificial lighting.
After the First World War in France, many generals thought that the end of the war was really just a pause before another war began. They wanted to make sure that the next time war broke out with Germany, they were ready and could never be invaded again.
Thousands of years ago, humans discovered a black-yellowish liquid that come out from the ground and could burn when it was set on fire.
In the TV series Game of Thrones, there were four different seasons where disputes were determined with trial by combat.
The month of January was named after the Roman god Janus who had two faces, one on each side of his head.
Located off the coast of Southeast Asia lies an archipelago of 7,641 islands that constitute the nation of the Philippines.
In 1914, a minor league baseball team in Baltimore, Maryland, signed a young player from the St. Mary's Industrial School for Boys—a school for delinquent boys and orphans.
In the 1920s and 1930s, one of the most cutting-edge and exciting forms of transportation was the zeppelin.
There are an infinite number of numbers, but some numbers are more important than others.
Thousands of years ago, the first humans accidentally created the first beer and wine. This occurred naturally when yeast in the air converted sugars into alcohol.
One of the most important substances throughout world history has been salt.
During the 14th century, the world saw one of its most traumatic episodes.
From the years 59 to 53 BC, three high-ranking Romans conspired to control the Roman political system for their own benefit. They called this system a triumvirate.
In 1957, two chemists at the Clinton Corn Processing Company of Clinton, Iowa, developed a system for converting the glucose found in corn starch into fructose.
By the age of 32, Alexander the Great had conquered most of the world, which was known to him.
On Christmas Eve, 1914, something remarkable happened on the western front during the First World War.
Every year, people around the world celebrate Christmas on December 25. In many countries, it is the biggest single holiday of the year.
On December 21, 1968, a Saturn V rocket was launched from Florida that did something that had never been done before. It took three men outside of the orbit of the Earth.
In the 1920s, Christmas was becoming a big deal. Christmas was becoming highly commercialized, and the Santa Claus that we know today was being established.
If you live anywhere away from tropical latitudes, you might have experienced snow. In fact, depending on where you live, you might have experienced a whole lot of snow at various points in your life.
If anyone has taken some basic mathematics, you are probably familiar with Euclidian Geometry. Euclidean geometry is what most people just call geometry.
Every major city in the world has its own unique story. Some cities have an ancient history, and others have a more recent founding.
When Europeans began sailing the high seas on extended voyages, the most deadly thing they encountered wasn’t enemy navies, starvation, or even shipwrecks.
On the evening of April 14, 1865, the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, was shot while attending a play in Washington DC.
Beginning in the 16th century, French settlers crossed the Atlantic to settle in a French colony located in the New World. That colony wasn’t modern-day Quebec, however. The colony was known as Acadia.
Ever since humans began writing down information, there has been a desire to compile all known information into one single source.
The dictionary defines a coincidence as “A sequence of events that, although accidental, seems to have been planned or arranged.”
When humans first learned how to work with metal, the very first metal they used was copper.
In the year 356 BC, a son was born to the King of Macedon, Philip II, and his wife, Queen Olympias.
There was a time when languages had no punctuation. Not only did they not have punctuation, but they also didn’t even have spaces between words, and in some cases, they didn’t even use vowels.
During the Second World War, the Germans used what they thought to be an uncrackable encryption system.
In the big scheme of things, the United States is a rather young country. Yet, during its history, it has managed to declare war on a shockingly large number of European countries, including Britain, Spain, Germany, Italy, Austria, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgar…
English is a very strange language. It is a Germanic language where half of the words come from a Romance language.
Every December, members of the Jewish faith celebrate the festival of Hanukkah.
On December 7, 1941, the United States and the rest of the world were shocked by a surprise attack by the Japanese Empire on the American Navy stationed in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
Formerly located in the territory of Hong Kong was arguably the most densely populated place on Earth. In fact, it might have been the most densely populated place in human history.
The woman the world would know as Josephine Baker was born into abject poverty in 1906 in Saint Louis, Missouri.
Over 10,000 years ago, humans began to cultivate and raise crops. Back then, a single farm could maybe grow enough food to feed a family and perhaps a little more.
Obituary for Thor Thompsen.
When most people think of World War II, they think of the Allied powers of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union, versus the Axis powers of Germany, Italy, and Japan.
Sometime during the reign of Ptolemy I or Ptolemy II, the Egyptian state decided to build an institution dedicated to accumulating all human knowledge in the City of Alexandria.
Winston Churchill once said, “Democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…”
Located approximately 1.8 billion miles or 2.9 billion kilometers from the sun is the seventh planet in the solar system, Uranus……or Uranus.
The surface of the Earth is 70 percent water.
King Arthur is one of the most popular and widely known characters in literary history around the world.
In the 19th century, the British and the Chinese went to war on two separate occasions—the reasons why they went to war are both simple and complicated.
Back in the 19th and early 20th centuries, several European countries had colonies all around the world.
In the Spring of 1846, a group of intrepid pioneers set out from Springfield, Illinois, to cross the Oregon Trail to seek a better life in the fertile Oregon Territory.
On the fourth Thursday in November every year, American’s celebrate the holiday of Thanksgiving. It is a holiday that originated in the Americas but has subsequently spread to many countries around the world.
For about a month, from the end of November to the end of December, every year, one of the most popular animals in North America is the turkey.
If you are an American, you probably grew up hearing the story of Thanksgiving, how the pilgrims came to America to escape religious persecution to establish a new life.
When the United States became independent in the late 18th century, it didn’t have much of a foreign policy. Their primary concern was creating the framework of a country that hadn’t existed before.
Since the dawn of human history, humans have been aware of a seemingly miraculous substance. It was a substance that had the same color as silver, but unlike silver, it wasn’t a solid. It was a liquid.
For centuries, the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire were able to conquer and force their will on other people around the Mediterranean Sea.
On March 1, 1932, one of the most famous men in the world, Charles Lindbergh, found that his 20-month-old son had been taken from his crib.
Centuries ago, someone decided jumping from a great height and trying to land without being injured would be a good idea.
During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union competed in almost every arena: space, sports, and of course the military. Everything they competed in was designed to show the superiority of their respective systems.
The First World War was the most horrific war the world had ever seen at that time. When the conflict ended, there was an effort to make sure that such a thing never happened again.
There is a good chance that sometime in the last few days, weeks, or months, you might have enjoyed a slice or two of pizza.
In a previous episode, I went through a list of eponymous laws. These were laws, general rules, or sometimes even scientific laws that were named after people.
On October 15, 1991, a cosmic ray detector in Utah observed something that had never been seen before or since.
In the year 330, the Roman Emperor Constantine decided that the capital of the entire Roman Empire should be moved.
In the days immediately following the surrender of Germany in May 1945, new concerns gripped the victorious Allied forces.
In the year 70, the Roman Emperor Vespasian commissioned what would become the world’s largest amphitheater.
In the early 1960’s the Soviet space program was on a roll. They launched the first satellite into space. They launched the first man and woman into space. They conducted the first space walk.
Right now, you are listening to the sound of my voice on some sort of digital audio device. In fact, almost all of the audio you consume today was digitally recorded or edited at some point in the process.
In 1605, members of the Catholic resistance in England hatched a plot that would have completely changed the political landscape of the country. They wanted to blow up the entire parliament and the king on November 5, which they thought would return a Catholic…
You have questions, and I have answers....
Approximately 93 million miles or 150 million kilometers from Earth lies our nearest star, the Sun.
One of the most successful enterprises of the Middle Ages was a collection of free cities located in Northern Germany and along the North and Baltic Seas.
The British ruled India for over 200 years.
In 1692, in the town of Salem, Massessechuets, two young girls made claims that other members of their community were witches.
On October 31, every year, we celebrate Halloween. It is especially popular in the United States where we use the holiday as an excuse for kids to dress up and ask for candy and for adults to dress up and drink.
Located within the nation of China is the world’s third-longest river and the longest river to exist in a single country, the Yangtze.
In 1893, the eyes of the world turned to the city of Chicago, which was hosting the World’s Fair. The fair was the largest public demonstration at that point of the new technology called electricity.
In June 1940, with the conquest of France, Nazi Germany and Italy had conquered almost all of Western Europe. The map of Europe was one solid color reflecting the domination of the Axis Powers.
As early as 2400 years ago, Greek philosophers were coming up with paradoxes that seemingly had no solution.
Located in the southeastern corner of the Arabian peninsula is the Sultanate of Oman.
Ever since humans could see, we’ve been able to look up at the night sky and see things lightyears away.
In 1939, the last naturally occurring element on Earth, Francium, was discovered. However, the periodic table of elements still wasn’t full.
The Roman Republic existed for almost 500 years. The Romane Empire then existed for almost another 500 years.
In the early 13th century, England suffered through the worst monarch it would have in its history: King John.
In 1582, a Japanese nobleman by the name of Lord Ōtomo Sōrin sent a group of envoys to Europe.
All over the world, you can find restaurants serving Japan’s greatest cultural export: sushi.
On May 7th, 1824, in Vienna, Austria, the musical world changed forever.
China has a long and rich history. For over 2,200 years, China, or at least parts of what we would recognize as China, was ruled by a series of imperial dynasties.
The First World War was one of the most devastating conflicts in human history.
Sound travels fast. Very fast. However, it is not so fast that we can’t recognize that it has a finite speed.
In 1942, Allied forces attempted a landing on the coast of France to gain a toe hold on the continent.
During the Roman Republic, the highest office that someone could aspire to was the position of consult. Every year, two men were elected consul, and it was such a high honor it would help your family for generations.
People are fascinated by extremes. We are interested in the biggest, strongest, fastest, and tallest.
It has been said that a dog is a man’s best friend.
One of the most popular foods in the world is tomatoes.
World War II was famously fought between two forces, the Axis and the Allies.
One of the biggest changes to humanity over the last 100 years has been the increase in life expectancies.
In 1483, the King of England, Edward V, and his brother were taken into custody by his uncle Richard the Duke of Glouster and placed into the Tower of London.
In the early 12th century, a military monastic order developed in the Middle East with the express intent of protecting Christian pilgrims traveling to the Holy Land.
Throughout the Second World War, one of the world’s most popular musicians was the American big band leader Glenn Miller.
In the last days of the First World War, an event occurred that resulted in the rapid collapse of the German monarchy and ultimately hastened the end of the war.
On December 10, 1896, the Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel passed away.
In 1947, India and Pakistan became independent countries after almost 200 years of British colonial rule.
In his 1979 book Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, an alien race builds a computer to answer the ultimate question to life, the universe, and everything.
The United States and Canada are like two siblings. They live next to each other, have the same parents, and are a lot alike.
If aliens were to look at the Earth through a telescope from far away and analyze our atmosphere, they would find that the dominant element is nitrogen.
I’m guessing that almost everyone listening to this podcast has, within the last 24 hours used a zipper.
In the year 490 BC, one of the most pivotal battles in world history took place.
One of the biggest innovations in computing over the last several years has been the blockchain.
Under your feet and all around you are rocks and minerals.
Around 3,500 years ago, the people of Central America discovered something marvelous: the cacao bean could be used to create a fermented beverage that was unlike anything they had experienced.
In 1864, Elizabeth Jane Cochran was born in Cochran Mills, Pennsylvania.
In 1864, Maximilian, the son of Archduke Franz Karl of Austria and a member of the Hapsburg dynasty, arrived in Mexico.
In the year 312, two claimants to the Roman imperial throne met outside the walls of Rome near a bridge that crossed the Tiber River.
After the Allied landing in Normandy in World War II, the Allies made progress pushing back the Germans.
Every country has a national dish, and Spain is no exception. The dish that most people associate with Spain is the rice dish known as paella.
Many people have hobbies—pastimes that they enjoy and maybe even spend a lot of money on.
The middle ages didn’t have sports like we have today, but they did have competitions.
When European explorers set off from Europe, many of them chased things that didn’t exist. The Fountain of Youth, the City of El Dorado, and Prester John were all things they pursued but came up empty-handed.
In the early 20th century, there was one woman who put herself in the center of the world of modern art.
Located in India is one of the largest cities in the world, Delhi.
In the mid-19th century, the United States began to change.
The Countess Elizabeth Báthory de Ecsed was a Hungarian noblewoman in the late 16th and early 17th centuries.
One of the fundamental questions of humanity is where did we come from? How did life on Earth come about?
Throughout human history, people have killed, robbed, and put their lives at risk in the pursuit of power. In fact, almost all of history can be thought of as people, tribes, and nations all competing for power.
On June 24, 1948, the Soviet Union placed a blockade on Berlin’s American, British, and French-occupied zones.
I’ve done many episodes talking about the first world war and I’ve done many episodes talking about the second world war.
The Sahara desert is by far the largest desert in the world. It evokes images of sand dunes, camels and just being really really dry.
Throughout history, philosophers have pondered how the universe began.
Every day, in most countries with a Westminster System of parliament, whenever parliament is in session, there is a period known as Question time.
The biggest thing there is and the biggest thing there can be is infinity, right? It literally has no bounds. In fact, thinking about infinity can quickly give you a nosebleed because our finite minds can’t really grasp just how enormous it really is.
Located in the Gulf of Guinea, off the west coast of Africa, lies the island nation of São Tomé and Príncipe.
In 1555, a French physician and astrologer named Michel de Nostredame published a book of poems titled Les Prophéties. Ever since people have been trying to interpret world events through his writings.
In the United States Senate, there is a procedural rule which is very uncommon among legislative bodies.
In 1949, a young inventor by the name of Norman Woodland was sitting on the beach in Florida. While drawing some lines in the sand, he had an idea that would revolutionize the world of retail and logistics.
The United States consists of 50 states, each of which is represented by a star on the American flag.
There is an excellent chance that you know someone who has a twin sibling. In fact, there are some of you listening who have a twin brother or sister.
Ever since humans came out of the African savannah, they have had to work to survive.
There is a good chance that every day, you encounter bricks. You might drive on them, walk on them, and live inside them, and you’ve probably never even given them a second thought.
In the late 19th century, bananas, a fruit that had been popular for thousands of years, suddenly became a mass-market sensation.
In 1961, Michael Rockefeller, an heir to one of the greatest fortunes in the world, disappeared on an art-collecting trip off the coast of the island of New Guinea.
If there is one song almost everyone knows it is Happy Birthday to You (yes, that is the actual title of the song, even though everyone just calls it Happy Birthday).
All around you, in the air and the ground, is the most common element on Earth: Oxygen.
We are all familiar with tattoos. All of you have at least seen someone with one, most of you know someone with one, and many of you have at least one of your own.
Many places on Earth have extreme climates. However, there is one place on Earth that has a climate so extreme that it is the closest thing to it might be on another planet.
In the Indiana Jones movies, Indiana is usually searching for a rare artifact with mystical powers while some other nefarious archeologist, usually a Nazi, is trying to find the artifact before Indy.
You’ve probably seen a movie or a TV show that took place in ancient Rome where gladiators fought in the coliseum or an amphitheater. At the end of the fight, the emperor or some other official would extend their thumb to see if the defeated gladiator would li…
All three of the holy books from great monotheistic faiths share a similar story about a Queen from a land in the south who traveled to Jerusalem to meet King Solomon.
It is the most expensive substance in the world by a wide margin.
Despite having very different cultures and being separated by thousands of kilometers, Asia and Europe have been connected for thousands of years.
Located in the South Pacific, squarely within the Polynesian Triangle, lies the Kingdom of Tonga.
In the years immediately following the end of the Second World War, several of the scientists who took part in the Manhattan Project had an explosive idea.
One of the most popular board games in the world is Monopoly.
Gnaeus Pompeius was one of the most significant personalities during the late Roman Republic.
In the Dialogues written by Plato in the year 360 BC, he wrote of a place called Atlantis. Atlantis was a land where the citizens were half-gods and half-men, yet it was destroyed in a cataclysmic event.
In the middle ages, a legend persisted among Europeans that there was a Christian ruler in Asia, or Africa, who would come to join with European Christians to help fight Muslims in the Crusades.
In 1944, several months before the D-Day invasion, a group of Allied prisoners of war hatched one of the most audacious prison escapes in military history.
Sometimes over 3000 years ago, somewhere in Southwestern China, a leaf from the Camellia sinensis plant accidentally found its way into a pot of boiling water.
In the early 20th century, as automobiles became more and more popular, the need for a national system of roads in the United States became more evident.
On August 15, 1977, for a period of 72 seconds, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence had its greatest moment.
As I do every month, I went to the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus to meet with the Augurs. I met an old priest, and I asked him, “Quo die est felicissimum?”
When people from prehistory created the first works of art on the walls of caves, they used the colors that they found around them. Almost all of the early cave art is drawn in black or dark red.
Located at the narrowest point in the Strait of Malacca, one of the most strategically important points on Earth is the nation of Singapore.
Whenever there is a lottery, the odds of winning are given.
You’ve probably seen footage of a rocket launch. There is a bunch of smoke and fire as the rocket lifts off to begin its flight to achieve an altitude and velocity which will get it into orbit.
In the movie Forrest Gump, one man finds himself at the center of historical events, encountering famous people over the course of decades.
Located on the island of Honshu, in the middle of the Japanese archipelago, lies one of the most important and iconic places in all of Japan, Mount Fuji.
In the year 480 BC, one of the most famous battles in history took place on the shore of the Malian Gulf in the Aegean Sea.
Back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, a war erupted in the world of video technology.
Having lost the race to the Moon, the Soviet space program decided to go in a different direction. If they couldn’t be first on the moon, then they could take the lead in the area of endurance in space and the development of space stations.
Every day, millions of people around the world hit the links to play a round of golf. The very best at the game are able to earn millions of dollars a year as professionals.
Centuries before the arrival of Europeans, one of the greatest civilizations in the Americas rose and fell.
For thousands of years, wine has been one of the most important beverages in the world.
In June 1942, American and Japanese naval forces squared off in what was to become a decisive naval battle of the war in the Pacific.
When we think of what made human beings into human beings, one of the first things which come up is the discovery of fire.
Some of the things we use every day were invented in the distant past. Other things were invented quite recently.
If you have ever looked at a map of the Caribbean, you might have noticed that the tiny islands in the Lesser Antilles consist of a whole bunch of tiny, independent countries.
From August 15 to August 20, in the year 636, one of the most important battles in history took place.
Located approximately 560 miles or 900 kilometers off the coast of Ecuador lies a chain of islands that are like no other in the world.
Almost 2000 years ago, after conquering most of the island of Great Britain, Roman forces established a settlement at a strategically narrow point on the Thames River.
The universe is billions of years old.
Titanium is the ninth most abundant element in the Earth’s crust.
On December 22, 1808, concertgoers in Vienna, Austria, witnessed a significant event in music history.
Unquestionably, the most popular clothing innovation of the last 150 years has been blue jeans.
Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, known to history as Claudius, was the fourth Emperor of Rome.
One of the biggest questions that humanity has asked is, “Are we alone in the universe?”
3,110,400 seconds ago, you, the listeners of this podcast, asked me questions, and I, in turn, provided you with answers.
In early 1947, a teenage Bedouin herder was looking for a lost goat from his flock when he came upon a cave near the Dead Sea.
Everyone knows that Europe is one of the seven continents in the world, right?
Almost every single person listening to this podcast right now is doing so on some sort of personal computing device.
In the world of sports, some things take place all the time. You will see some of the same things happen in every game or match.
One of the most widely spoken languages in the world is Chinese.
The American flag is something that is recognized around the world.
In the 7th century, the world saw the rise of one of the most important religious and political forces in history: Islam. Springing forth from the Arabian Peninsula, within a matter of years, the Islamic Caliphate had become one of the largest empires on Earth…
Every July 1, the people of Canada celebrate their national holiday of Canada Day.
Located in the city of Agra in the state of Uttar Pradesh sits the most iconic building in India, the Taj Mahal.
Everyone knows that Neil Armstrong was the first person to step foot on the moon. But who was the last person on the moon?
For the last 250 years, there has been a problem in the world of mathematics.
Of all the billions of people who have spoken English, one person has probably impacted the language more than any other.
74,000 years ago, the Earth suffered the greatest natural disaster that it has seen in the last several million years.
Most people probably don’t think of Iceland when they think of the Second World War.
Sometimes the most important things are things we don’t even want to think about let alone talk about.
In the mid-12th century, England was in chaos.
Located roughly in the territory of the modern-day nation of Iran is the ancient region known as Persia.
Straddling the border of Switzerland and France is the largest scientific instrument ever created.
In 1941, after the German invasion of the Soviet Union, a 24-year-old woman in Ukraine volunteered to join the Red Army.
Located in the middle of the Old City of Jerusalem lies one of the most famous structures in the world.
The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States Armed Forces. It is given to individuals who have displayed exceptional acts of valor in the face of enemy forces.
In the middle of the first world war, a group of artists, poets, and philosophers created an artistic and intellectual movement in response to the war.
In the first half of the 20th century, racial segregation was rampant across much of the United States. Perhaps nowhere was it more evident and public than in the sport of baseball.
Places all over the world are suffering from a similar ecological problem.
Humans and rats have lived in an uneasy relationship for millennia. Rats have spread diseases like the bubonic plague, destroyed grain harvests, and stolen our pizzas.
Located at the 26th place on the periodic table is the element iron.
In the late 13th century, the Mongol Empire was at the peak of its power.
In the 1880s, a Polish ophthalmologist set out to create a universal language. A language that could be a second language for everyone around that world that no one country or one people would control.
Located on the island of Java in Indonesia, just 100 kilometers from the capital of Jakarta, lies what might be one of the most important archeology sites in the world.
One of the most popular forms of media is comic books.
In the early morning of November 13, 1833, one of the greatest astronomical spectacles in recorded history took place.
Located off the Northwestern Coast of continental Europe lies an archipelago of islands that most of you are familiar with.
What do lasers, photovoltaic cells, the transistor, digital cameras, cell phone technology, the communication satellite, computer networking, radio astronomy, and the UNIX operating system have in common?
In January 897, something unprecedented took place in Rome.
There was no product more important to the economy of the ancient world than silk.
International borders can be very strange things.
In June of every year, the sun has its solstice. In the north, the days are long; in the south, the days are short, and we can plan our calendars around this event.
There is a giant rift in East Africa today. It is a rift that literally tearing countries apart.
If you are listening to me speak these words, regardless of where in the world you live, you are part of a global network we call human civilization. You share in the ideas, technology, and goods created worldwide and by people in your community.
Insurance seems like a pretty modern concept. There are insurance commercials on television, and insurance companies sponsor major sports teams.
In a previous episode, I spoke about the Drake equation and the odds of there being intelligent extraterrestrial life. Many people have used the Drake equation to argue that it is almost impossible for there not to be intelligent life in our galaxy.
In 1585, Sir Walter Raleigh established an English colony on an island in what is today the state of North Carolina.
During the 5th century, one name struck fear into the hearts of almost every European: Attila, leader of the Huns.
Children are highly inquisitive and are always asking questions.
There are many factors that go into the outcome of a battle.
Imagine you want to start a brand new country. Only, you don’t want to go through the messy process of starting a revolution or a civil war in a currently existing country.
There were millions of stories that came out of the second world war.
Lying northeast of Australia and almost east of Papua New Guinea lies one of the world’s lesser-known and seldom visited countries: The Solomon Islands.
There is a particular type of number that is so common we have keys on calculators to handle them.
The English language is a very odd thing.
If you were to ask most people what the very first invention that humans came up with is, many of them might say the wheel.
The Mona Lisa is unquestionably the most famous painting in the world. Heck, it is probably the most famous work of art in the world.
There are a great many chemicals that are dangerous to work with. Things that you wouldn’t want to get on your skin or somehow ingest.
On May 18, 1980, one of the most violent and cataclysmic natural disasters of the modern era took place.
Located in Southwest Africa is the nation of Namibia.
Every year, on the second Sunday in May, 96 countries around the world celebrate Mother’s Day. Dozens of other countries celebrate the same thing on different days throughout the year.
Ever since organized sports began, people have been collecting statistics.
Located in the 90th place on the periodic table is the element Thorium.
Dogs and cats are both domesticated, four-legged, fur-bearing mammals.
On July 16, 1945, at 5:29 am, 35 miles southwest of Socorro, New Mexico, the world’s first nuclear bomb was detonated.
Globalization consists of a system of interlinked markets and economies. Most people think of this as a modern phenomenon, however, its roots go back much further.
The media portrayal of the wild west is filled with gunfights in the middle of the street, bank robberies, and vigilantes. In fact, it is very difficult to find a media portrayal that doesn’t use the wild west as a backdrop for some struggle of good vs. evil a…
Even before humans first went into orbit, there had been dreams of establishing a permanent presence in space.
According to the laws of supply and demand, an equilibrium will eventually be researched where suppliers will meet the demands of consumers at a given price and quantity level.
Every year Mexico and Mexican culture are celebrated during the holiday of Cinco de Mayo, which in Spanish just means May 5th.
If you wanted to know how many countries there were in the world, it should be a pretty easy thing to find out. Go to a map, count all the countries, and voila!
On May 6, 2023, something will happen in London that hasn’t occurred in 70 years. A British monarch will be crowned. An event for which King Charles has spent his entire life in preparation.
In the 1960s, a New York clinical psychiatrist and an adoption agency conducted an experiment. They separated multiple sets of identical twins and one set of identical triplets into different families to test how much of personality is due to genetics or the e…
For most of human existence, we looked up at the night sky and thought that was all there was to the universe.
Probably the most consequential monarch in British history was Henry VIII. He upended much of English society by changing the religion in the country from the top down.
All of us have some sort of mental map inside our heads for how the world is laid out. North America is north of South America. Europe is west of Asia. et Cetra.
Located in the heart of Rome is one of the oldest standing buildings in the world. Unlike other ancient structures, it isn’t a ruin. For almost 2,000 years, it has been in continuous use.
Every year the last Friday in April in the United States is Arbor Day.
In 1897, the visionary Russian rocket scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky discovered an equation that governed how rockets worked.
In the 18th century, the French writer and philosopher Voltaire said, ??”This body which was called, and which still calls itself, the Holy Roman Empire was in no way holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.”
At the start of the 20th century, the world’s third-largest lake was located in Central Asia. It had been known to the people of the Asian steppes for thousands of years.
Every year on April 25, Australia and New Zealand celebrate a holiday that is unique to those two countries.
As long as humans have looked up in the sky, they noticed something. There was an unusually bright star that would show up in the early morning or early evening.
In 1945 after the conclusion of the Second World War, a Dutch man was accused of collaborating with the Nazis and plundering the Netherlands of some of its greatest artistic works.
The English language is full of very quirky idioms and phrases. Every language has them, and these are just some of the things which make each language unique.
Sometime in the 15th century, a drink became popularized in the Arabian peninsula. It was dark, bitter, and people couldn’t get enough of it.
After the end of the second world war, Berlin was a divided city controlled by the four major allied powers. Despite the different zones of control, people could move freely between the zones in the city.
For hundreds of thousands of years, humans lived a nomadic life, hunting for game and foraging for food.
Every country in Africa is unique and has its own history. However, many African countries share a similar story over the last 150 years, having gone through European colonization and decolonization.
In 1906, George Soper, a freelance sanitary engineer, was hired to investigate several outbreaks of typhoid fever in wealthy New York households.
When one thinks of the history of North America, it often invokes images of native Americans and cowboys riding on horseback.
Songkran is a traditional festival celebrated in Thailand that marks the start of the Thai New Year. It is also known as the Water Festival, as it involves splashing water on one another as a symbolic gesture of cleansing and washing away the sins and bad luck…
For over 1000 years, England has been a monarchy.3…except for twelve years in the 17th century when it wasn’t.
Located on the tips of our fingers are features known as friction ridges. We evolved them to get a better grip on objects.
Located in southeastern Europe is the Balkan Peninsula. It is home to multiple ethics groups, languages, and religions.
Every year, Christians around the world celebrate Easter.
Gravity is the weakest of the fundamental forces of nature, yet, if you have enough of it, it can create the most powerful thing in the known universe: a black hole.
Cleopatra VII Philopator was the last ruler of an independent Egypt and one of the most important women of the ancient world.
The rise of agriculture has been pointed to as being responsible for the rise of civilization as we know it.
Located in the middle of North America lies one of the largest collections of freshwater lakes in the world.
In 1947, a Norwegian adventurer named Thor Heyerdahl set out to prove a theory of his that the people of Polynesia came there from South America.
Depending on how you define it, there were approximately 70 Roman Emperors.
Two years, nine months, and 1 day ago, I sat down and recorded the first episode of a daily podcast.
Every day on April 1st, you have to be careful what you read and hear. This day, known to accounts as the beginning of the second quarter, is known to most people as April Fool’s Day.
Throughout history, people have bet on everything and anything. From the mundane to the extremely important. From casino bets to bets on science, and even the future of humanity.
We are often told that schools are where you learn how to think, not what to think. Sadly, almost no school curriculum deals directly with logic and the closely related subject of logical fallacies.
Once a month, every year, Muslims around the world celebrate Ramadan.
Canada has a reputation for being a rather low-key, friendly place.
In most academic disciplines, there is often a single idea or discovery which makes everything fall into place.
As soon as humans developed systems of writing, they faced a problem. What to do with all of the things that were written down?
Perhaps the most important research in anthropology is how modern humans left their birthplace in Africa and migrated to the rest of the world.
Over the span of human history, there are certain ideas that humans have had a very difficult time accepting.
In the very days of the United States, the country was mostly made up of farmers.
In the 19th century, the first real American sport took off in popularity: baseball.
On March 27th, 1964, the second-greatest earthquake in recorded history stuck the state of Alaska.
For over two thousand years, China lived under imperial rule. A series of dynasties and emperors were the defining feature of Chinese governance.
Located in the heart of South America is the Amazon, the world's largest river. It isn’t just big, it is by almost any measure you can think of the world’s largest river, and it is so by a wide margin.
Located at the northernmost end of the Adriatic Sea lies the city of Venice.
In October 1962, a U-2 spy plane discovered Soviet nuclear missile sites in Cuba.
Weather systems on Earth aren’t stable. There are cycles that weather patterns go through, which can have enormous effects around the globe.
In 1887, the German physicist Heinrich Hertz discovered radio waves.
In 19th century America, a movement began to take areas of exceptional natural beauty and preserve them.
Every since the lands of the New World were mapped, people dreamt of creating a canal through Central America to connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
In the early 1950s, a new type of music burst forth, which had its roots in blues, gospel, country, and swing.
Four things are considered to be the Great Inventions of Ancient China: gunpowder, the compass, the printing press, and paper.
In the late 19th century, a young man by the name of Erich Weiss decided to pursue a career in magic and illusion.
Around 10,000 years ago, someone in Southeast Asia captured a bird that lived on the floor of the jungle. Today, billions of descendants of that bird now live on six different continents and provide food for billions of people.
In the early 11th century, a group of merchants from the Amalfi Coast of Italy received permission from the Caliph of Egypt to rebuild a church and hospital in Jerusalem to care for pilgrims to the Holy Land.
In the year 1258, two of the greatest empires in world history collided.
It is time once again for the monthly Q&A episode!
In the summer of 1969, the nations of Honduras and El Salvador went to war.
Several hundred thousand years ago, human beings walked out of Africa.
On December 29, 1940, a year before the United States entered the Second World War, President Franklin Roosevelt declared the United States to be an arsenal of democracy.
In the early 20th century, a Soviet agronomist named Trofim Lysenko developed some unique theories of biology and genetics.
Right now, as you are listening to the sound of my voice, you are breathing air.
Imagine a device that could supply an unlimited amount of energy. It would solve many of the world’s problems in one fell swoop.
The cold war was the defining event of the second half of the 20th century.
The movie The Purge depicts a fictitious world where one night a year, there is a war of all against all.
In Greek, the word for dwarf is “nanos.”
Located on the banks of the River Seine lies the city of Paris.
One of the most important inventions of early humanity was the compass. The compass has aided human navigation around the Earth for centuries.
One of the most fascinating areas of mathematics and economics is game theory.
On January 27, 1986, an event occurred that would be remembered by almost everyone alive at the time.
The third Monday of February every year in the United States is a holiday that most people know as Presidents’ Day.
If you think of the first world war, your mind probably turns to images of trench warfare and thousands of men losing their lives to try and gain just a few meters of land.
In 1879, Constantin Fahlberg, a chemist at Johns Hopkins University, made an astonishing discovery. He was conducting experiments with coal tar when he forgot to wash his hands.
The American constitution was written in 1787, but there was a mechanism built in to amend and change the document.
On March 5, 1770, one of the major events leading up to the American Revolution occurred.
Once every 450,000 years or so, the Earth undergoes a radical transformation.
In 1999, two social psychologists, David Dunning and Justin Kruger, published a seminal paper on a cognitive bias that can affect nearly everyone.
17th-century Europe was witness to one of the longest and most brutal wars in human history.
One day every year, the United States celebrates its biggest non-official holiday: Super Bowl Sunday.
Of all the vitamins and nutrients which are required by the human body, there are 13 of which that are considered essential nutrients. That means they can’t be produced within our bodies.
In 1612, when Galileo Galilei first looked at the stars through a telescope, he might have accidentally discovered a new planet, although he had no idea at the time.
The French Revolution wasn’t just a political revolution where one government was replaced with a new one.
During the height of the Second World War, American shipping to Europe was constantly being attacked by German U-boats.
In the very long history of China, it has had exactly one female ruler.
Questions: Check
Have you ever filled out a form online where you had to select a country and you noticed that one of the country options was the “United States Minor Outlying Islands”?
There have been many really bad years in world history. There have been World Wars, the Black Death, and horrific natural disasters, all of which have made for very bad years.
In the early 1920s, what was considered to be the largest political scandal in American history became public.
Located in the southern Pacific Ocean lies the small nation of Vanuatu.
Volcanoes are some of the most fearsome things in nature.
Humans have probably had the desire to fly ever since they saw the first bird fly in the air.
After the US Civil War, the French historian Edouard de Laboulaye floated the idea of creating a large monument to honor the success of the United States in creating a democracy.
If you were to call someone a snake oil salesman, it usually means they are trying to defraud someone, and more specifically, it often implies making false medical claims.
In the 17th century, the Netherlands was struck by the world’s first investment bubble. They weren’t investing in stocks or bonds, or real estate. They were investing in…..tulip bulbs.
In 1867, United States Secretary of State William Seward signed a treaty with the Empire of Russia to purchase the territory of what would be called Alaska.
In 1978, a Soviet helicopter pilot flying over the forests of Siberia made an incredible discovery. Not far from the border of Mongolia, up the side of a mountain, he saw a clearing and signs of human habitation.
2,000 years ago the Han Empire in China and the Roman Empire in Europe were the two greatest empires in the world. Between them, they covered an enormous amount of the Earth’s land and a large percentage of the world’s population.
In 1781, after six years of fighting, the American Revolution came to a dramatic conclusion.
There is nothing faster in the entire universe than the speed of light. Not only is it the fastest thing, but nothing can be faster than light.
In the early 19th century, the most abundant bird in North America, and perhaps the entire world, was the passenger pigeon. An estimated three billion of them would fly in flocks so large that they could blot out the sun.
In 1688, a palace coup took place in England.
On July 17, 1944, one of the worst disasters to befall the American military during World War II occurred. It didn’t occur in Europe or the Pacific, however. It took place on US soil.
Just one week after President Abraham Lincoln was re-elected in November 1864, Union General William Tecumseh Sherman set out to execute one of the most audacious plans of the US Civil War.
On December 21, 1891, a physical education teacher in Springfield, Massachusetts, looking to keep athletes occupied during the winter, hung some peach baskets on the balcony of the gymnasium.
For thousands of years, one of the most terrifying and destructive diseases which afflicted humanity has been leprosy.
During World War II, allied soldiers would often spend their time listening to the radio. They could, at least for a little while, be transported back home by listening to popular music with the soothing sounds of a female radio host with a flawless American a…
About 2,500 years ago, a Greek philosopher by the name of Zeno of Elea proposed several paradoxes about the natural word.
Located in the South Atlantic Ocean, situated between South America and Africa, lies the most remote human settlement on Earth.
When Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, he declared his new regime to be The Third Reich and that it would last 1,000 years.
In the year 79, Mount Vesuvius, a volcano located east of the modern-day city of Naples, erupted.
Early in the morning of August 21, 1986, in a valley near Lake Nyos, Cameroon, something horrible happened.
In September 1944, despite over half a year remaining in World War II, the Allies began preparing for an eventual post-war world.
In the year 1900, a crew of sponge divers was looking for sponges off the coast of the Greek island Antikythera. While they were searching, they found the remains of an ancient shipwreck.
Every form of life which has ever been discovered, regardless of its size or how it metabolizes energy, has one thing in common.
Ladies and Gentlemen of the podcast audience, I would like you to consider Chewbacca.
The United States Congres is divided into two houses. The larger of the two houses, the House of Representatives, is led by a single representative known as the Speaker of the House.
Sometime about 3,200 years ago, one of the most famous wars in ancient history took place.
What if I told you there is a place within the borders of the United States where, theoretically, you could get away with murder scot-free?
When airplanes were developed in the early 20th century, the technology developed rapidly.
Every year, people around the world ring in the New Year.
New Year’s Day is not only the day we turn over a new year on the calendar, but also a day where people start resolutions, companies begin new budgets, and everyone screws up writing checks.
What is the greatest movie ever made?
Divided between Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian West Bank lies the lowest point on the surface of the Earth: The Dead Sea.
Abram Petrovich Gannibal was one of the most notable Russians of the 18th century.
Approximately 700 years ago, something happened to the Earth’s climate.
Every year, primarily in Commonwealth countries, the day after Christmas is a legal holiday.
In the very early morning of Christmas Day, 1914, something remarkable happened on the western front during the First World War.
Of the many traditions associated with the Christmas season, one of the biggest is food. Foods that are often eaten only at this time of the year and seldom outside of the season.
Every year, sometime around the end of summer, it seems, you start hearing the very familiar songs of Christmas.
Twice a year, the sun reaches an extreme point in the sky. It is the day with the least amount of sunlight or the most amount of sunlight, depending on where in the world you happen to be.
In northern Greece, lying off the larger Chalkidiki peninsula is a place that is unique on planet Earth.
Today computers are ubiquitous. You are listening to this podcast right now on some sort of computing device.
After the horrors of the first world war, many of the nations in the conflict sought to build memorials to honor their dead.
Most people know of Isaac Newton as one of the world’s foremost mathematicians and physicists.
After the rise of Islam in the 7th century, it spread rapidly, establishing a foothold in Asia, Africa, and in Europe.
In 2005, a small auction house in New Orleans sold a painting at auction labeled at Lot 664. The description of the item was simply, “Christ Salvator Mundi. Oil on cradled panel.”
Adolf Hitler single-handedly started the Second World War in Europe.
On April 11, 1970, Apollo 13 was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, as the third mission to land on the moon.
Formerly located in the territory of Hong Kong was arguably the most densely populated place on Earth. In fact, it might have been the most densely populated place in human history.
There are estimated to be over 1,300 active volcanoes in the world today.
There are a host of different musical instruments. There are woodwinds, strings, brass, and percussion instruments. These are the instruments that make up the backbone of orchestras and bands.
Located 1,500 miles south of the nation of Cote d’Ivoire and about 2,500 miles east of Rio de Janeiro, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, lies one of the most remote human settlements on Earth: The island of St Helena.
The elite citizens of the Roman Republic were part of a system built to encourage ambition and competition.
History is shaped by many things. Political and religious leaders, diseases, and technologies.
For thousands of years, one of the most valuable elements which humanity has treasured is silver.
Previous Episodes Referenced
It has been said that a dog is a man’s best friend.
One of the most ubiquitous forms of payment today is credit cards. The odds are good that you have one, and most probably have one on your person right now.
Almost thirty years ago, a rather unremarkable soccer match in an unremarkable tournament became the stuff of legend.
Soon after the start of the space race, a major problem with space flight became obvious: it was really expensive.
Countries are kind of like people. Every one of them has a name.
The First World War saw many innovations in warfare. Probably the most significant was the introduction of aircraft.
Prime numbers are considered to be the building blocks of mathematics. Every natural number can be broken down into the constituent prime numbers that make it up.
The Earth is highly imbalanced. Some countries have more resources than others. Some have natural harbors, and some are landlocked.
Almost every day, you might check the forecast to see what the temperature will be like in the near future or if it might rain.
Located in northcentral Spain live, one of the most unique people in all of Europe.
The United States has created many cultural institutions which have spread around the world. People all over the Earth have enjoyed and benefited from rock and roll, Hollywood films, and the Internet.
If you are an American, you probably grew up hearing the story of Thanksgiving. How the pilgrims came to America to escape religious persecution to establish a new life.
On the fourth Thursday in November every year, Americans celebrate the holiday of Thanksgiving. It is a holiday that originated in the Americas but has subsequently spread to many countries around the world.
If you ever want to travel around the world, even if you don’t know another language, no matter where you go there is already one word you know.
The world has many amazing buildings. From the 2,000-year-old Pantheon in Rome to the gleaming new Burj Khalifa in Dubi, humanity has been reflected in its buildings.
In 1872 the first international football match took place between England and Scotland.
During the Roman Republic, two brothers took it upon themselves to seek to change Rome to benefit the poor and underclass.
On March 25, 1911, one of the deadliest industrial disasters in American history took place.
Every few years, without any schedule or planning, officials at the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service will add an extra second to the year.
In 1942, Allied forces attempted a landing on the coast of France to gain a toe hold on the continent.
Human beings have been around for hundreds of thousands of years. For the vast majority of that time, the total population of humans has been quite small.
When Alexander the Great died, one of his generals and best friends, Ptolemy, took Alexander’s corpse and went to Egypt to establish a new pharaonic dynasty.
For over 300 years, the Romanov family ruled over the Russian Empire.
Children are highly inquisitive and are always asking questions.
Located between the islands of Great Britain and Ireland, in the middle of the Irish Sea, lies one of the oddest political jurisdictions in the world.
In 1648, Europe saw the end of two of the most horrific wars that had ever been seen on the continent up until that point.
Every four years, Americans go to polling places where they do NOT decide who will be President of the United States.
There was a time when languages had no punctuation. Not only did they not have punctuation, but they also didn’t even have spaces between words, and in some cases, they didn’t even use vowels.
The Roman Empire was one of the greatest empires in the ancient world.
For over two years and 850 episodes, I have been providing you with daily podcasts on a wide assortment of topics.
On February 15, 1971, the United Kingdom had a landmark day in its history.
Most people think of the second world war as being a mechanized war fought with tanks, planes, jeeps, and ships. This is true, it was certainly a mechanized war.
In 1910, a German Earth scientist noticed something about the map of the world. South America seemed to fit into Africa. North America seemed to fit into northwest Africa and Europe.
Many movies and television shows have as their plot some disaster that eliminates the United States government.
It was the worst economic depression that the United States had ever seen.
In 1968, American high jumper Dick Fosbury introduced a new way to compete in the high jump. His new technique worked so well that he won an Olympic gold medal, and within a few years, everyone used his method of high jumping.
Despite what you might have been told, Christopher Columbus and his expedition were not the first Europeans to reach the Americas.
Philip II of Spain was one of European history’s most important yet underrated monarchs.
Located just southwest of the southern tip of India lies one of the only countries in the world consisting soely of coral atolls.
Early in the second world war, the Germans found themselves with a metaphorical pebble in their shoe. The pebble was actually a rather large rock that happened to guard the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea.
One of the landmark inventions in human history was the ability to record sound.
The American Civil War wasn’t just a military conflict. There was also a major political and legal conflict struggle that took place alongside the military campaigns.
Cricket is the world's second most popular spectator sport, behind association football or soccer.
In the year 312, two claimants to the Roman imperial throne met outside the walls of Rome near a bridge that crossed the Tiber River.
For thousands of years, humans have been using the power of the wind to do useful work.
Most people are familiar with the ancient Egyptian civilization, which arose along the banks of the Nile River.
In 1816, the world experienced something that it had never seen before. All over the Northern Hemisphere in Europe, Asia, and North America, summer never came.
For thousands of years, humans knew that certain foods could treat certain ailments. However, why or how the foods did this was totally unknown.
Centuries ago, if you were a ruler, you needed to protect yourself and your realm. You’d obviously need an army and soldiers, but you would also need some sort of defensive fortification to protect yourself from attack.
For thousands of years, humans have looked up at the night sky and wondered, “are we alone?”
In 1854 an unusually severe outbreak of cholera occurred in London.
In 1957, two chemists at the Clinton Corn Processing Company of Clinton, Iowa, developed a system for converting the sucrose found in corn starch into fructose.
The Swedish King Gustavus Adolphus oversaw the rise of Sweden as one of the great powers in Europe.
Located in the South Pacific Ocean is one of the most isolated islands in the world. It is over a thousand miles from the nearest human settlement.
In February 1904, the Russian Empire found itself at war with the Empire of Japan over what was the territory of China.
All around you, right this second, you are surrounded by electromagnetic radiation.
The first world war, known simply as the Great War at that time, was the most horrific war the world had ever seen. When the conflict ended, there was an effort to make sure that such a thing never happened again.
Most children growing up are admonished not to take candy from strangers.
In the TV series Game of Thrones, there were four different seasons where disputes were determined with trial by combat.
For most of human history, if you wanted something, you had to make it yourself or know the person who made it.
If you’ve done your share of flying, you are probably familiar with the three-letter airport codes which identify every commercial airport in the world.
When Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act of 1862, there was a rush of people who moved west to claim the free land that was offered.
Nuclear weapons are the most devastating things humans have ever created. They are so powerful and terrible that nations that have them strictly control how they are used and handled.
Most of our major divisions of time are based on some sort of natural event.
Every year parts of the planet are hit by devastating typhoons and hurricanes. They can cause billions of dollars of damage and can take hundreds if not thousands of lives.
When Napoleon Bonaparte conquered much of Europe in the early 19th century, he didn’t create a monolithic empire that was centrally run out of Paris.
Ninjas are awesome. They’re silent, they can turn invisible, and they can totally flip out and kill people, especially their mortal enemies…pirates.
Born in 1815, Ada Byron was the only legitimate child of the famous poet Lord Byron.
It seems like the sort of thing humans have used throughout our existence, but historically speaking, footwear is a relatively new invention.
The death of a British monarch is a very big event. Thousands of people may take part in the funeral and procession, with millions more lining up to pay their respects and billions more watching on television.
In the summer of 1971, Stanford professor of psychology Philip Zimbardo conducted an experiment to determine if cruelty amongst people of authority was because of the position or the people.
Every so often, astronomers will publish photos taken with an astronomical telescope and say that the object they captured is so many billions of light years away.
On the morning of August 7, 1974, the people of New York City woke up to witness one of the most incredible sights that the city had ever seen.
In the 1920s and 1930s, one of the most cutting-edge and exciting forms of transportation was the zeppelin.
English is a very strange language. It is a Germanic language where half of the words come from a Romance language.
After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the American military was on the defensive. They had been hit hard, and it would be months before they could regroup and strike back.
Located between England and France are several islands which have a unique status in the international community.
Around 3,500 years ago, the people of Central America discovered something marvelous: the cacao bean could be used to create a fermented beverage that was unlike anything they had experienced.
When the 13 American colonies decided to form a proper constitution, the single largest question which confronted them was how their legislature would be organized.
In 201 BC, the Romans were victorious over their archrivals, the city-state of Carthage, in the Second Punic War.
Computers have obviously transformed our world. You wouldn’t be listing to my voice right now if it wasn’t for computers.
In the ancient world, only seven metals were identified and named: gold, silver, iron, lead, copper, mercury, and tin.
On June 24, 1948, the Soviet Union placed a blockade on Berlin's American, British, and French-occupied zones.
You can find restaurants serving Japan’s greatest cultural export all over the world: sushi.
During World War II, one of the biggest concerns of the Allies was the development of an atomic bomb.
Long before Europeans arrived in North America, native people told stories of large hairy men who lived in the woods.
Throughout the history of the Roman Empire, there were 96 men who are considered to have been Roman Emperors, from Augustus to Romulus Augustulus.
As all of you know, yesterday, Queen Elizabeth II passed away.
Located in the hills above the Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, is one of the most iconic signs in the world.
Ellen Wood was born in 1838 in England.
All around the world, more jurisdictions are implementing a voting system known as ranked choice voting.
The middle ages didn’t have sports like we have today, but they did have competitions.
In 1917, Albert Einstein published a paper whereby he proposed a new method of creating light based on the principles of quantum physics.
Before 1976, the California wine industry wasn’t on anyone’s radar. Most Americans didn’t even know that wine was produced in California.
Several thousand years ago, astronomers in the Middle East studying the night sky divided it into 12 equal regions. Each region was given a name, was associated with an animal and a constellation.
From the years 59 to 53 BC, three high-ranking Romans conspired to control the Roman political system for their own benefit. They called this system a triumvirate.
Since humans began to adopt writing systems, they also created systems for passing along written messages.
King Arthur is one of the most popular and widely known characters in literary history around the world.
On December 14, 1972, the last human beings left the moon's surface.
Located in the heart of the African continent is one of the world’s largest rivers: the Congo.
Located in the heart of Paris, along the banks of the River Seine, lies the Louvre.
When the Austro-Hungarian Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated, a chain reaction resulted in the First World War.
Amelia Earheart was a pioneer in the early days of aviation. She became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic. She was the first person to fly solo from Hawaii to California.
One of the simplest mathematical statements possible is 2+2=4.
Many people have an idealized view of how science works. They think that someone makes a discovery or publishes a paper, then everyone acknowledges their discovery, and everyone moves on to the next thing.
Sandwiched between the nations of Germany, Belgium, and France is one of the smallest countries in the world.
The quest to conquer space had many problems and many unknowns. Simple, basic things on Earth can be quite difficult in the zero gravity conditions of outer space.
Jim Thorpe was a Native American of the Sac and Fox Nation. He was born in 1887 in what was then known as the Indian territory and today is known as the state of Oklahoma.
Wars are often notable points that punctuate the historical timeline. It is a period of tragedy, drama, and often geopolitical changes.
In 1475, Michelangelo Buonarroti was born in Caprese, Italy.
At the 1923 Pan-American Conference, a proposal was presented to link together all of the countries of the Western Hemisphere. A single road that would run from the shore of the Arctic Ocean all the way down to Terra Del Fuego in Argentina.
Sitting in most homes is a deck of playing cards.
In 1958 the United States government created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration or NASA.
As soon as automobiles were created, people began racing them.
Over the last several centuries, there has been a concerted effort to raise literacy rates around the world.
With an atomic number of three, Lithium is the third lightest element and the lightest solid at room temperature and pressure.
Around the year 36 BC, the King of Judea, Herod the Great, built a fortress in the Judean desert overlooking the Dead Sea.
On October 26, 1881, one of the most defining moments in the history of the American west took place.
Tens of thousands of years ago, early paleolithic humans painted on cave walls things that were important to them and with which their entire lives revolved.
The First World War wasn’t just fought on the fields of France and Belgium. There were lesser battles fought on the homefronts of the nations which were fighting.
Johannes Vermeer was one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age. Unlike many of his contemporary painters, however, he didn’t leave a large body of work behind.
The Great Nobel Prize winning physicist Richard Feynman was once asked to convey in a single sentence the most important scientific knowledge that humans possessed.
Located in Northern France is one of the most well-known wine-producing regions on Earth. In fact, it is so well known that it has legally protected the name of its signature product around the world.
Marie Antoinette was the last queen of France prior to the French Revolution. She and her husband were executed by guillotine during the Regin of Terror, which soon followed.
Located between Hawaii and Guam in the middle of the Pacific Ocean is one of the smallest countries in the world: The Marshall Islands.
Entering the second world war, Britain was still the top naval power in the world.
In the year 607, the Emperor Yang of the Sui dynasty implemented a reform whereby a series of exams would be administered throughout the empire to create a bureaucratic elite that would administer the country.
As you probably know, the Earth consists of 70% water and 30% land. However, all those bits of water and land are not the same.
In 1914, Erwin “Cannon Ball” Baker crossed the United States on a motorcycle in 11 and a half days.
Ancient astronomers from almost every culture knew of seven things in the sky that moved. the Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter.
The United States and Canada are like two siblings. They live next to each other, have the same parents, and are a lot alike.
From July 1 through the 3rd, 1863, the largest battle in the history of the Western Hemisphere took place in southern Pennsylvania.
If you go through the history of ancient Rome, you will find the stories of many important men.
Once humans managed to put artificial satellites into orbit, the next question was, “what can we do with this?”
Located near the city of Masvingo in Central Zimbabwe are the ruins of one of the greatest civilizations of the Middle Ages.
At the end of the second world war, a Captain in the United States Navy had a radical idea about the future of the American fleet.
Introduced in 1968, the Boeing 747 totally revolutionized commercial air transportation. It was more than twice the size of the next closest passenger plane, and it brought air travel to a much wider audience.
Traveling to space is an inherently dangerous thing to do. In the first years of the space race, both the Soviet Union and the United States were fortunate in that none of their missions resulted in a loss of life.
Ancient people around the world all made a rather similar discovery. In certain places, they could find a black stone in the ground which could burn.
One of the most important inventions of early humans was the compass. The compass has aided human navigation around the Earth for centuries.
In the year 70, the Roman Emperor Vespasian commissioned what would become the world’s largest amphitheater.
On December 29, 1170, the Archbishop of Canterbury was brutally murdered on the floor of the Canterbury Cathedral by four armed knights while preparing for his evening prayers.
Prior to the modern era, very few people traveled anywhere. It was rare for anyone to travel more than about 20 miles from where they were born.
It is the world’s largest island, has the closest point of land to the North Pole, and is the least densely populated political territory on the planet.
In January of 1930, a 21-year-old by the name of Clyde Barrow met a 19-year-old by the name of Bonnie Parker.
During World War I, a Dutch dancer and courtesan was recruited by the French as a spy.
In the history of mathematics, there were several times when mathematicians encountered problems that they didn’t know what to make of.
Depending on how you define it, there were somewhere between 70 to 100 Roman emperors between the ascension of Augustus to the fall of the western empire in 476. A period of about 500 years.
It can be consumed in blocks or wheels, strings or curds, slices or cubes.
In the mid-19th century, the various games called football separated and evolved into their own games.
In 1792, the people of France overthrew their monarchy and established the French Republic.
Sometime around 3,200 years ago, a new civilization became ascendent on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea.
In the year 1511, King Henry VIII of England launched what was to be his flagship, The Mary Rose.
Located in the heart of North America is one of the most important rivers.
On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress of the 13 British colonies in North America issues a document addressing their grievances with the British Crown and stated to the world why they considered themselves to be a free and independent country.
In July of every year, over the course of three weeks, the world’s best road cyclists assemble in France to compete in the world’s premier bicycling race: the Tour de France.
Ever since astronomers figured out that the stars in the sky are just like our sun, they began wondering if those stars had planets just like our sun.
On July 1, 2020, I published the very first episode of this podcast. Since then, it has been quite a journey.
It has been said that they are a girl’s best friend, they are forever, and that they are the hardest substance in the world.
Located approximately 560 miles or 900 kilometers off the coast of Ecuador lies a chain of islands that are like no other in the world.
In the year 330, the Roman Emperor Constantine decided that the capital of the entire Roman empire should be moved.
At the end of the second world war, the allies captured 21 top, surviving Nazi leaders, and put them on trial in Nuremberg, Germany.
Wherever you happen to be listening to this show, at some level beneath your feet the rocks in the Earth reach a temperature hot enough to boil water and create steam.
Located on the far right side of the periodic table are the Noble Gases. These elements, six of which can be found in nature, are unlike any other elements.
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to create a utopia? A place where all your wants and needs were taken care of and there was never any fear of harm?
There are some subjects that are perceived to be mind-numbingly dull and boring. One such subject is accounting.
On September 2, 1945, on the deck of the battleship USS Missouri, the Japanese Empire formally and unconditionally surrendered.
In 1838, an American portrait painter by the name of Samuel Morse developed a system whereby signals could be sent down an electrical wire.
For over 2,000 years, stories have been passed down about the famous and infamous people from ancient Rome.
In 2021, the United States Congress declared the first federal holiday in almost 40 years: Juneteenth.
When one thinks of the history of North America, it often invokes images of native Americans and cowboys riding on horseback.
Situated in the north of the nation of Chile lies one of the most extreme environments on Planet Earth. The Atacama Desert.
Over 2,000 times a year, all over the world, a meteorological phenomenon strikes the Earth with devastating consequences.
In 1940, an investigation conducted by the British military found that only 1 in 5 of their bombers were actually landing bombs within five miles of their intended targets.
In the late 19th century, the American frontier became famous for its outlaws and gangsters. Men like Billy the Kid and Jesse James became notorious for their criminal exploits.
Somewhere in your kitchen, you might have a bottle of olive oil. When you made that purchase you probably didn’t think twice about it, but believe it or not, olive oil used to be one of the most important products in the world.
The industrial revolution began the biggest change to humanity since the dawn of agriculture.
Secrecy is a huge part of military success. You want to be able to communicate with your own forces without the enemy finding out what your plans are.
Today in Western Europe, there is a line that divides speakers of Germanic languages and speakers of Romance languages. While that line has shifted over two thousand years, its existence can be traced back to a battle that took place over 2000 years ago.
Located in the middle of the Pacific Ocean is a country that, to most people’s surprise, is shockingly large.
It has been called the boob tube and the idiot box, but the fact is that perhaps no invention was as important to the latter half of the 20th Century as the television.
On June 1, 2001, the nation of Nepal was shocked at the announcement that 10 members of the Nepalese Royal Family were killed in a massacre inside the royal palace.
Prior to the 1929 stock market crash, a race was on to build the tallest building in the world in New York City.
All of us have some sort of mental map inside our heads for how the world is laid out. North America is north of South America. Europe is west of Asia. et Cetra.
Imagine you want to start a brand new country. Only, you don’t want to go through the messy process of starting a revolution or a civil war in a currently existing country.
He was one of the greatest thinkers of the ancient world. He was a philosopher, a mathematician, and had some unique views on diet and religion.
Charles Darwin is often credited with the discovery of the theory of natural selection.
In the late 19th century, bananas, a fruit that had been popular for thousands of years suddenly became a mass-market sensation.
Ever since humans looked up at the night sky and noticed that some of the points of light moved, they have been aware of the planet Jupiter.
On April 4, 1949, representatives of 11 North American and European countries assembled in Washington DC to sign a treaty of mutual defense.
When Europeans arrived in the New World in 1492, it was the beginning of a series of events that ws the biggest change in humanity since the discovery of agriculture.
On July 20, 1976, Viking 1 became the first robotic lander to land on Mars. On September 3, its sister Viking 2 followed suit.
All three of the holy books from great monotheistic faiths share a similar story about a Queen from a land in the south who traveled to Jerusalem to meet King Solomon.
In the year 60 BC, a very unlikely alliance was formed between three of Rome’s most powerful men.
For ages, people have tried to categorize people by intelligence. However, it wasn’t until the early 20th century that attempts were made to provide a quantifiable measure of human intelligence.
In the year 1162, in the Khentii Mountains of what is today Northeastern Mongolia, a baby by the name of Temüjin was born.
You have probably heard the old saying that there are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Hollywood is known the world over for being the center of the motion picture industry.
In the 18th century, the French writer and philosopher Voltaire said, "This body which was called, and which still calls itself, the Holy Roman Empire was in no way holy, nor Roman, nor an empire."
For thousands of years, rice has been one of the most important agricultural crops in the world.
In the early 20th century, a Soviet agronomist named Trofim Lysenko developed some unique theories of biology and genetics.
On August 15, 1971, US President Richard Nixon ended the gold convertibility of the US Dollar and simultaneously ended the Bretton Woods System, which had governed international monetary policy since the end of the Second World War.
About 66 million years ago, a massive asteroid collided with the Earth near the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. This impact ended the era of the dinosaurs and resulted in one of the greatest species extinctions in history.
In the early 4th century, the Roman Emperor Constantine ordered the construction of a church on the burial site of Saint Peter. It was the greatest church in Christianity.
Friday the 13th is a day associated with bad luck and ill omens.
On April 28, 1789, the crew of the HMS Bounty engaged in a mutiny against their despotic captain, William Bligh. After sending the captain out on a rowboat, the rest of the crew sailed to an uninhabited island, sank the ship, and set up home.
Sometime during the reign of Ptolemy I or Ptolemy II, the Egyptian state decided to build an institution dedicated to accumulating all human knowledge in the City of Alexandria.
In 1922, British archaeologist Howard Cater stumbled upon one of the most pristine tombs of an Egyptian Pharaoh ever found.
At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, the delegates worked hard to create a document that would govern their new country.
In the early 1845s, farmers around Europe suffered from a blight that devastated the potato crop.
On May 20, 1910, an event occurred which never occurred before or since.
Every year, on the second Sunday in May, 96 countries around the world celebrate Mother’s Day. Dozens of other countries celebrate the same thing on different days throughout the year.
Barely a month after the Normandy Landing in 1944, the allied powers were already thinking of what the post-world would look like.
In 1839, a French scientist by the name of Edmond Becquerel was experimenting with an electrochemical cell when he discovered something interesting.
In October 1919, the champions of the National League, the Cincinnati Reds, faced the champions of the American League, the Chicago White Sox in the World Series.
It is estimated that within the observable universe there might be as many as septillion stars. While each of them is far larger than the Earth, they all differ in terms of age, size, color, and composition.
Over the centuries, there has been a host of self-proclaimed prophets, astrologers, scientists, and cranks who have predicted the end of the world.
In January 1920, an Italian American businessman in Boston started a new enterprise. In order to raise money, he took $100 investments from 18 people and offered them a fabulous return on their money in only 45 days, and he delivered on his promise.
Located approximately 1500 kilometers or 950 miles south of the equator and split by the International Date Line, is a small chain of islands which was was believed to be the birthplace of Polynesian civilization.
I’ve done episodes before about people who have saved a large number of human lives. Mostly, these people have done so through inventions or innovations in fields like agriculture or medicine.
In 1880, the Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was commissioned to compose a work in honor of the completion of a new cathedral.
Many of the foods that people associate with America didn’t actually originate in the United States. Hamburgers, hot dogs, and pizza are all things that were popularized in the US but didn’t originate there.
Whether or not you know it, you use them every day. You were actually trained to use them as a child. Much of the world we live in today is directly or indirectly a result of their use.
The Countess Elizabeth Báthory de Ecsed was a Hungarian noblewoman in the late 16th and early 17th centuries.
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Leave a review over at Podchase.com this month and help raise money for World Central Kitchen and help Ukrainian Refugees.
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
New Year’s Day is not only the day we turn over a new year on the calendar, but also a day where people start resolutions, companies begin new budgets, and everyone screws up writing checks.
The printing press is considered to be one of, if not the greatest invention in history. The printing press allowed for an explosion in information and it ushered in the renaissance, the enlightenment, and the scientific and industrial revolutions.
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
Subscribe to the podcast!
The British House of Commons has been called the Best Club in Town due to the fact that there is a 1,000-gallon vat of Scotch whiskey located in the cellar.
Subscribe to the podcast!
On March 25, 1911, one of the deadliest industrial disasters in American history took place. In the middle of Manhattan, a fire broke out in a garment factory that killed 146 people. Most of the deaths were totally preventable, and the legacy of that incident …
It is arguably the world’s oldest game, yet it is one of the most popular cybersports. It has been called the game of kings, and yet it can be mastered by children. Its origins are truly global having passed through several of the world’s greatest civilization…
From 1969 through 1972 six Apollo missions landed on the moon and returned a total of 840 pounds of moon rocks to the Earth. Geologists were able to study them and learned an enormous amount about the composition and formation of the moon. However, those same …
A world’s fair used to be a very big deal. They would draw tens of millions of visitors and they would showcase some of the most cutting edge advancements in science and technology. They were also responsible for the creation of some of the most iconic structu…
Henry, King of England, Ireland, and Wales, Eighth of his name and head of the House of Tudor, was one of the most significant monarchs in British history. One of the things which made his reign so significant was the controversy surrounding his wives. His mar…
In 1815, one of the most catastrophic and deadly events in recorded human history occurred in Indonesia. A volcanic explosion took place which was larger than anything, any human had ever witnessed in over 10,000 years. The total global death toll from the eve…
Humans have been aware of ice for as long as there have been humans and ice. However, using ice outside of winter has always been a huge challenge, but that didn’t stop people from trying to harness and use ice even when it was well out of season. It wasn’t un…
In 1939, the last naturally occurring element on Earth, francium, was discovered. However, the periodic table of elements still wasn’t full. The next year, a non-natural element was discovered: Plutonium. This new unnatural element had fascinating properties w…
There are some subjects that are perceived to be mind-numbingly dull and boring. One such subject is accounting. Yet, believe it or not, accounting and bookkeeping have not only have been around since the dawn of human civilization, but they also had a hand in…
Most people are probably aware of the events which took place on December 7, 1941. As Franklin Roosevelt said, “it was a day that would live in infamy.” However, the events of December 7 weren’t limited to Hawaii, and they weren’t even limited to December 7. I…
The second Roman emperor was Tiberius. His right-hand man was the leader of his Praetorian Guard, Lucius Aelius Seianus, known to us as Sejanus. Over the years, Sejanus slowly gained power and influence as well as a host of enemies throughout Rome. Eventually,…
On December 6 every year, countries all across Europe celebrate Saint Nicholas Day. The way they celebrate can vary dramatically from place to place, but what they all have in common is honoring a man with a long white beard who gives presents to children. If …
According to the records of the Catholic Church, there have been 266 men who have been pope. However, for centuries it was thought that there was another pope not on the list that was different from all of the others. What made this pope different is that the …
One of the technologies which have helped make the modern world is the internal combustion engine. Without it, the world would be a very different place today. Yet it wasn’t a technology that appeared fully formed. It was developed incrementally over a century…
Hosting the Olympics can be a huge honor for the city that hosts the event. Cities from around the world have competed for the privilege. However, some cities which have hosted the Olympics have come to regret the decisions. In fact, they paid for the privileg…
The term “banana republic” is often used pejoratively to describe small, poor, unstable developing countries. Being called a banana republic is never a good thing. However, that term has a very real origin which involved actual bananas, mercenaries, corporate …
The Swedish King Gustavus Adolphus oversaw the rise of Sweden as one of the great powers in Europe. In 1626, he ordered the construction of a warship that would be the most powerful floating platform in Northern Europe. Its maiden voyage in 1628 was one of the…
The planet Neptune was discovered in 1846. Ever since then, astronomers have felt there had to be another planet beyond the orbit of Neptune. Everyone assumed they found it with the discovery of Pluto in 1930, however, something still wasn’t quite right. 90 ye…
Located in Vatican City, just off St. Peter’s Square lies one of the plainest and most uninteresting buildings you might ever find. It has no adornments and it is just a solid beige color. However, inside that bland structure, you will find one of humanity’s g…
You’ve probably heard of artificial intelligence systems which have gotten so good that they can beat the best humans at Go, chess, and even Jeopardy. However, over 200 years ago one Hungarian engineer created a mechanical device that could defeat the world’s …
The Sahara desert is by far the largest desert in the world. It evokes images of sand dunes, camels and just being really really dry. However, it didn’t always use to be that way. Quite recently, at least geologically speaking, it was a place with grasslands a…
The United States has created many cultural institutions which have spread around the world. People all over the Earth have enjoyed and benefited from rock and roll, Hollywood films, and the Internet. However, we’ve also created some things that have spread to…
On the fourth Thursday in November every year, American’s celebrate the holiday of Thanksgiving. It is a holiday that originated in the Americas but has subsequently spread to many countries around the world. It is a holiday that is actually secular, but with …
If you are an American, you probably grew up hearing the story of Thanksgiving. How the pilgrims came to America to escape religious persecution to establish a new life. But who were the pilgrims really? Were they really persecuted? Why did they decide to cros…
On April 28, 1789, the crew of the HMS Bounty engaged in a mutiny against their despotic captain, William Bligh. After being sent out on a rowboat, the rest of the crew sailed to an uninhabited island, sank the ship, and set up home. The descendants of those m…
It covers 70% of the Earth’s surface and is one of the most common substances on Earth, and it makes up 97% of the water on the planet. Despite being so common, it is also one of the most complex substances you’ll ever encounter. You can swim and surf in it, b…
Despite what you might have been told, Christopher Columbus and his expedition were not the first Europeans to reach the Americas. Almost 500 years earlier, a small group of Norse settlers arrived on what is today the Island of Newfoundland. Yet, their presenc…
In the 1980s, two superpowers battled each other for global supremacy. Across the world, the two goliaths collided on almost every front. In the end, it left a landscape littered with millions dead…..tired of listening to their commercials. Learn more about th…
In 1778, in the middle of the Revolutionary War, while camped outside New York City, General George Washington and Major Benjamin Tallmadge hatched a plan. They created a network of spies that would provide information about British military effort, which coul…
Back in July of 2020, a man in the middle of a pandemic decided to launch a new podcast. It would be a daily podcast that would cover, well, everything. It was an ambitious project that everyone told him was crazy to do, but it pushed ahead and did it anyhow. …
If you’ve been around long enough, you might have noticed that things are more expensive than they used to be. If you’ve really been around long enough you know that things are a lot more expensive than they used to be. This is of course known as inflation. It…
After World War II, the American forces in Germany implemented a program of de-Nazification in the parts of the country which they administered. The goal was to remove anyone who was a member of the Nazi party from any position of authority. However, some of t…
Believe it or not, one of the most valuable elements on the Periodic Table was also the first one that was discovered by humans. Since then it has held a prominent spot in almost every culture on Earth. We use it to signify first place, we use it as a metaphor…
In the year 52 BC, the Roman General Julius Caesar fought the last major battle in the conquest of Gaul. The implications of the battle have reverberated throughout history and can still be felt in the world today. But the real story isn’t the implications of …
In 1911, a Dutch physicist named Heike Kamerlingh Onnes was experimenting with ultra low-temperature metals. He was measuring the electrical resistance of mercury to find out what would happen What he found was shocking and totally upended everything we know a…
History is full of battles and conflicts. Most of them are forgotten over time as they don’t really impact history. Whether one king or another wins a battle usually doesn’t matter in the big scheme of things. However, there are moments that truly change world…
On November 11th, 1918, the first world war came to an end. Or to be more precise, the fighting stopped. For the next eight months, a final peace treaty was hammered out, and hanging over the negotiations was the very real threat that fighting could break out …
Have you ever met someone who couldn’t pronounce the name nearby town, or they just spoke different enough that you could tell that they were from somewhere else? If so, you have probably learned about shibboleths without even knowing it. These differences in …
Africa is big. Really big. And for thousands of years, people have dreamed of a way to cut through the narrowest part of the Siani Peninsula to connect the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea. In the 19th century, that dream was actualized. Since then, the canal…
During World War II, allied soldiers would often spend their time listening to the radio. They could, at least for a little while, be transported back home by listening to popular music with the soothing sounds of a female radio host with a flawless American a…
2,500 years ago, the Greek philosopher Zeno posed a question. If you want wanted to travel from one place to another, you first have to go half the distance, then you have to go half the distance again, and then again. You can do this infinitely and never reac…
62 miles north of Los Angeles in the city of Palmdale, California, lies one of the most secretive aircraft design and production centers in the world: Lockheed Martin's Advanced Development Program. From this location, some of the most famous and important mil…
In 1605, members of the Catholic resistance in England hatched a plot that would have completely changed the political landscape of the country. They wanted to blow up the entire parliament and the king on November 5, which they thought would return a Catholic…
In 1860, the United States was as divided as it ever had been. The issue of slavery had been growing more and more contentious over the decades and by 1860, things were nearing a breaking point. The presidential election of 1860 literally would determine the f…
In 2008, researchers searching for fossils in the Denisova cave in Siberia came across something interesting. It appeared to be the bone from an ancient hominid species. Subsequent DNA analysis on this bone has revolutionized everything we know about the origi…
In 1941, after the German invasion of the Soviet Union, a 24-year-old woman in Ukraine volunteered to join the Red Army. She was initially pressured to become a nurse like most women who volunteered, however, that wasn’t what she wanted to do. She wanted to be…
At the start of the American Revolution, a young American major general was one of the brightest stars of the war. He was responsible for several major campaigns and he had a great future ahead of him in his new country. By the end of the war, he was a British…
Vampires have been been a part of folklore for centuries. Perhaps no mythical vampire is more famous than Count Dracula. While Count Dracula might be fictional, believe it or not, he was based and named on a real person who lived in 15th century Romania. While…
On October 31 every year, we celebrate Halloween. It is especially popular in the United States where we use the holiday as an excuse for kids to dress up and ask for candy, and for adults to dress up and drink. But why do we dress up, and what’s the deal with…
Casinos are fascinating places. They can make tons of money, but they don’t really have a product. While it is often called entertainment, unlike other forms of entertainment, no one is entertaining you. In fact, the entire business is really nothing more than…
One of the rarest and most expensive substances in the world is actually pretty disgusting. The way it is created is pretty gross, it looks pretty gross, and smells even worse. Despite how disgusting it is, there are people who will pay as much for it on a per…
I’ve had many episodes where I talked about a country being a “republic”. In fact, we often use the word but many people have a mistaken idea about what exactly a republic is. So what exactly is a republic, and how does it differ from a monarchy or other forms…
Located in the heart of Paris, along the banks of the River Seine, lies the Louvre. It has over 750,000 square feet of gallery space, it has over 615,000 items in its collection, and in a non-pandemic year, gets over 10 million annual visitors. Yet, it wasn’t …
Weddings are full of traditions. Almost every aspect of a traditional western wedding involves customs that may date back hundreds or thousands of years. However, most people have no idea where these customs or traditions come from. They simply do them because…
The year 1972 saw two epic contests between the United States and the Soviet Union. The first was American Bobby Fischer defeating Soviet Grandmaster Anatoly Karpov for the world chess championship. The other took place on a basketball court in Munich in the g…
1902, the French governor of Indochina faced a huge problem in the city of Hanoi. They were suffering from a massive infestation of rats and the rats could carry diseases, including the plague. The governor implemented a plan to get rid of the rats. Thousands …
Located on the French Riveria, just a few kilometers from the border of Italy, sandwiched between the mountains and the sea, is the tiny country of Monaco.
Secrecy is a huge part of military success. You want to be able to communicate with your own forces without the enemy finding out what your plans are.
To explore the universe humans have made any manner of telescopes. These telescopes can observe visible light, infrared light, radio waves, and even x-rays.
Weather systems on Earth aren’t stable. There are cycles that weather patterns go through which can have enormous effects around the globe.
In the Dialogues written by Plato in the year 360 BC, he wrote of a place called Atlantis. Atlantis was a place where the citizens were half-gods and half-men, yet it was destroyed in a cataclysmic event.
Brooklyn wasn’t always a part of New York City. It used to be a separate city located across the East River from New York, which at the time was only on the island of Manhattan.
You are probably familiar with the term decimation. The word is usually used in English to mean “to cause great destruction or harm”.
In 1965, the director of research at Fairchild Semiconductor, Gordon Moore, made a prediction about the future of semiconductors. He said that over the next ten years, the number of transistors on an integrated circuit would double every two years.
I’ve done episodes before about people who have saved a large number of human lives. Mostly, these people have done so through inventions or innovations in fields like agriculture or medicine. What about people who prevented an impending disaster? Like when Su…
In 1555, a French physician and astrologer named Michel de Nostredame published a book of poems titled Les Prophéties. Ever since people have been trying to interpret world events through his writings.
On March 27, 1794, the United States Congress passed the Naval Act. The Naval Act authorized funding for six frigates which would become the basis for the new US Navy.
People who love to dance are said to have dancing fever. Dancing fever is just a phrase and not something meant to be taken literally.
The rise of agriculture has been pointed to as being responsible for the rise of civilization as we know it.
William Shakespeare is widely considered one of the greatest poets and playwrights in the history of the English language.
Copyright is what protects creators from having someone copy and make money off of their work without compensation.
On May 19, 1946, André René Roussimoff was born into the world in Coulommiers, France. At birth, he weighed 13 pounds or 6 kilograms...and from there, he only got bigger.
If you think of Spain as the country on the Iberian Peninsula which is sandwiched between France and Portugal, you are not wrong, but you are also not totally right. There is also a significant part of the country which is located in the Atlantic Ocean, off th…
Navigation on the open ocean is extremely difficult. It is a skill that takes years to master.
As I have mentioned in many episodes of this podcast, there are a great many things that were originally invented in Ancient China. There are literally hundreds of inventions that were developed in China before they were introduced anywhere else.
In the early 1950s, war ravaged the Korean peninsula. However, the fighting ceased on July 27, 1953. Both sides of the conflict pulled back from the front and created a buffer zone 4 kilometers or 2.5 miles wide.
You probably heard the expression that something is “the greatest thing since sliced bread”.
I am speaking these words in the year 2021. You might be listening to them in a different year, but whatever year you happen to be in right now, it will be a year using the same number convention for years that we do now.
During the second world war, one of the biggest efforts of the war was the Manhattan Project: the secret American program to create an atomic bomb.
In the year 331 BC, fresh from his conquest of Egypt, Alexander the Great established a new city in Egypt named after himself.
During World War II, the US Army assigned statistician Abraham Wald the task of statistically figuring out where extra armor should be added to American bombers.
When most people think of World War II, they think of the Allied power of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union, versus the Axis power of Germany, Italy, and Japan.
Statistically speaking, about 90% of you listening to my words right now are right-handed. Of the rest of you, almost all of you will be left-handed.
The ancient world had many great accomplishments. The Pyramids of Giza, The Great Wall of China, and the Colosseum are just a few of the great wonders which are still standing.
The Great Pyramid of Giza, also known as the Great Pyramid of Khufu, is a structure in which superlatives don’t really do justice.
In the late 19th century, several of the world’s foremost investors engaged in a public battle for the future of electricity. The battle was fought in boardrooms and newspapers, and there was seemingly nothing that was off-limits.
In 1961, the United States figure skating team was one of the top programs in the world. The year before at the 1960 Olympics, they took the gold in both the men’s and women’s competitions.
In 1910, a German Earth scientist noticed something about the map of the world. South America seemed to fit into Africa. North America seemed to fit into northwest Africa and Europe.
Ahoy ye mates! It be International Talk Like a Pirate Day.
At 9:30 am on July 2, 1881, at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington, D.C., James Garfield, President of the United States was fatally shot.
According to legend, sometime in the 5th century, a king of the Celtic Britons named Vortigern hired Anglo-Saxons mercenaries to help him fight his domestic enemies to hold his grip on power.
Who matter where you are right now, no matter what time you are listening to this, there is one thing that I can safely say about you right now. Your body is being bombarded with cosmic rays.
On July 17, 1944, one of the worst disasters to befall the American military during World War II occurred. It didn’t occur in Europe or the Pacific, however. It took place on US soil.
In 1994, a German archeologist named Klaus Schmidt was investigating a site in southeastern Turkey which had been know to be a source of ancient stone tools.
Ever since humans have understood the workings of the atom, the potential has existed for humanity to exploit the energy source which powers the stars: fusion power.
Located 1,500 miles south of the nation of Cote d’Ivoire and about 2,500 miles east of Rio de Janeiro, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, lies one of the most remote human settlements on Earth: The island of St Helena.
Prior to their destruction in 2001, the World Trade Center in New York was a marvel of architecture. It was a collection of seven different buildings which served as the center of New York’s financial district.
On September 13, 1848, a 25-year-old man named Phineas Gage received a horrific brain injury while working on a railroad in Vermont. The odds of anyone surviving such an accident were a million to one.
On the week of July 1, 1946, there were two explosions that shook the world. One was a physical explosion and the other was cultural.
The Earth is pretty old. Our current, best estimate is that it is 4.54 billion years old, plus or minus 50 million years. Since then, however, a lot has happened. To help clarify the Earth’s timeline, geologists have divided the Earth’s history into various er…
It is the American Revolutionary War. A rider on horseback sets out on an all-night ride to warn the militia of nearby towns that the British were coming.
The era of presidential aviation began on October 11, 1910 when former president Theodore Roosevelt took to the skies in a Wright Brothers Flyer at a county fair in Saint Louis. The flight only lasted a few minutes.
On September 1 and 2 of 1859, people all over the world were treated to something quite rare. Auroras were seen in the skies as far south as the Caribbean and as far north as Brisbane, Australia.
In a previous episode, I spoke about the Drake equation and the odds of there being intelligent extraterrestrial life. Many people have used the Drake equation to argue that it is almost impossible for there not to be intelligent life in our galaxy.
In 1844, the Philological Society of London began investigating the creation of a new English dictionary. This initial foray would lead to a dictionary that would be unlike any other dictionary ever created.
What did the first Chinese Emperor Qin, Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, Gengis Kahn, the Queen of Sheba, and all their contemporaries who lived when they did have in common?
Beginning in 1801, the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, the Earl of Elgin, began a project to document the sculptures located at the Parthenon in Athens.
In the mid-19th century, a Hungarian physician named Ignaz Semmelweis advocated for an incredibly simple technique that would go on to save millions of lives.
The planet Mercury is the smallest, fastest, and most pot-marked planet in our solar system. It is in many ways, unlike any other planet.
San Francisco Bay is one of the largest and best natural harbors in the world. The entrance to the harbor is a one-mile, 1.6 kilometer, wide straight called the Golden Gate.
In 1816, the world experienced something that it had never seen before. All over the Northern Hemisphere in Europe, Asia, and North America, summer never came.
Sometime around the year 95, a man who called himself John wrote what became known as the Book of Revelations.
In the year 2000, people in Japan were polled and asked what the greatest Japanese creation of the 20th century was.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the United States detonated nuclear bombs on land, on the water, underground, underwater, and in the atmosphere.
When the Austro-Hungarian Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated it set off a chain reaction resulting in the First World War. That chain reaction, however, was fully anticipated and one of the belligerent countries, Germany, had a plan in their back pocke…
Divided between Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian West Bank lies the lowest point on the surface of the Earth: The Dead Sea.
For several hundred years, the British navy was the most powerful in the world. One of the things which the British navy ran on was rum.
If you’ve ever seen a sculpture or an ancient coin of a Roman Emperor, you probably have noticed that they were wearing a wreath on their head.
Fritz Haber is unquestionably one of the greatest chemists in history. He was a Nobel prize winner and his inventions have touched billions of lives.
In the 1970s NASA embarked on a mission it had never attempted before. Due to a fortunate alignment of planets, they were going to attempt to send robotic probes on a flyby mission to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, before being sent to deep space, out o…
One of the most ubiquitous forms of payment today is credit cards. The odds are good that you have one, and most probably have one on your person right now.
There are tens of millions of stories to come out of World War II. Many of them are tales of horrible human cruelty.
If you were to call someone a snake oil salesman, it usually means they are trying to defraud someone, and more specifically it often implies making false medical claims.
There are few things that are truly universal across all cultures and throughout history. These things are often so obvious that we overlook them and forget how they are things that make us human.
On Friday, October 21, 1966, the small Welsh village of Aberfan suffered woke up to a typical autumn day. Many of the men in the village went to work at the local coal mine and the children went to the local school.
On January 15, 1919, the city of Boston suffered its greatest disaster when a storage tank filled with over 2 million gallons of molasses burst and killed 21 people and injured 150 more.
There is an old saying that everything old is new again. This is certainly true with electric cars.
In 2005, a small auction house in New Orleans sold a painting at auction labeled at Lot 664. The description of the item was simply, “Christ Salvator Mundi. Oil on cradled panel.”
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is known to almost everyone in the world. If he isn’t known, then his music certainly is.
Most coverage of the Olympics is very biased towards whatever country you happen to live in, and certain popular sports.
In the year 60, Roman forces on the island of Britain, the Roman town of Lunduniam, modern-day London, were attacked and sacked by a group of native Celts.
For over 30 years, Monty Hall was the host of the game show Let’s Make A Deal.
The American constitution was written in 1788, but there was a mechanism built in to adapt and change the document.
American politics has been called a two-party system. While there are two major parties today, and those two parties have been around a long time, they weren’t always the only two parties. In fact, there was a political party in the US that, took its name from…
Somewhere over your head, right the moment is an artificial satellite. Many of them actually.
On the morning of November 1, 1755, the citizens of Lisbon, Portugal set out to go to church for the feast of All Saints Day.
You’ve seen it in your science classrooms, and there was probably a copy of it on the inside cover of your chemistry book. Maybe if you are a real nerd, you might even have your own personal copy.
The modern Olympics have been celebrated for over 100 years. Since their beginning in 1896, there have been over 100,000 athletes who have competed at the Olympics and thousands of medals have been awarded.
Robert Smalls was born a slave in 1839 in Beaufort, South Carolina. From that humble beginning, he went on to become a war hero, a ship captain, a presidential advisor, and a member of the US House of Representatives.
Ever since the cease-fire which ended the Korean war, the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea has been a tense stand-off. Standing only a few meters from each other, soldiers from North Korea stand on one side with soldiers from South Korea and th…
Throughout human history, people have killed, robbed, and put their lives at risk in the pursuit of power. In fact, almost all of history can be thought of as people, tribes, and nations all competing for power.
The term Dark Ages has been used to refer to a period in European history when culture supposedly regressed and civilization was in decline.
You’ve probably heard the stories of many titans of industry. People like John D. Rockefeller, Sam Walton, Bill Gates, and Jeff Bezos grew their companies to become large enterprises and then became fantastically wealthy.
Almost everyone has a black sheep in their family. Someone who maybe gets in trouble with the law and doesn’t follow rules.
Every element on the periodic table has a completely different story. They behave differently, they exist in different abundances, and humans have totally different uses for them.
Wars can start with a bang but end with a whimper. Often an attack or an invasion will begin a war, but even one when one side surrenders, it can take days, weeks, or months for word of the capitulation to get out to everyone.
Almost 2,800 years ago the Ancient Greeks held a sporting event every four years on Mount Olympus. The festival was part competition, part religious celebration, and it was considered so important that wars would come to a halt in honor of the games. Then in t…
During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union competed in almost every arena: space, sports, and of course the military. Everything they competed in was designed to show the superiority of their respective systems. In 1972, one of the greatest co…
In 1949, a young inventor by the name of Norman Woodland was sitting on the beach in Florida. While drawing some lines in the sand, he had an idea that would revolutionize the world of retail and logistics. In fact, his invention might be found somewhere aroun…
One of the fundamental questions of humanity is where did we come from? How did life on Earth come about? While there have been many theories as to how this could have happened, in 1952, two men decided to actually run an experiment to see if they could replic…
In the year 1184 in the Dutchy of Thuringia, in what is today the country of Germany, a conflict raged between the Count of Thuringia and the Archbishop of Mainz. To resolve this dispute, the German King Henrich VI called the parties to the city of Erfurt to s…
At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, the Great War came to an end. In the preceding four years and four months, the world saw the greatest bloodletting history up until that point. Even after the announcement of the armistice…
When I mention the Kingdom of the Netherlands, you are probably thinking of the country in Europe that is really flat, where they ride bikes, have windmills, and grow tulips. Well, that is only partially correct. Well, technically 98% correct. There are other …
Have you ever filled out a form online where you had to select a country and you noticed that one of the country options was the “United States Minor Outlying Islands”? If you have you might have wondered, what are these island? Who lives there? And why are th…
After the first world war, many Australian veterans settled in the Campion district of Western Australia to become farmers on land provided by the government. It was there they encountered an enemy far more cleaver than any which they encountered in Europe. Th…
The biggest thing there is and the biggest thing there can be is infinity. It literally has no bounds. In fact, thinking about infinity can quickly give you a nosebleed because our finite minds can’t really grasp just how enormous it really is. However, what i…
In 1889, a new exhibit was constructed for the Paris World’s Fair. It completely dominated the Paris skyline. Most people considered it an eyesore and an architectural abomination. The only redeeming thing about it in their mind was the fact that it was only t…
Every government had objects which central to their functioning. These are items, physical objects, usually steeped in history and tradition which are involved in the mythology of the state. In most countries, these objects are often given the status of religi…
What do you do when you are facing a crisis? Perhaps you might consult a friend, or maybe some sort of expert? Well, the ancient Romans had a go-to source for advice whenever they a major problem. And the advice they got was…...different. Learn more about The …
Every so often you might hear something on the news about a record high or low temperature being set. Usually, these might be records for a particular month, or maybe for a particular place. Temperature records, especially global records, can be very contentio…
One of the brightest things in the universe is caused by one of the most powerful explosions in the universe: a supernova. While they don’t happen very often, they were known to ancient peoples and their appearance would often be recorded because they were suc…
Almost as soon as Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in 1947, people began thinking of ways to transport passengers at supersonic speeds. However, the challenges in creating a passenger aircraft that could travel at supersonic speeds were much greater than m…
On August 4, 1997, Jeanne Calment passed away in Arles, France. At the time, it was reported that she was 122 years and 164 days old. No one else has ever been verified to have ever even lived to the age of 120. However, in the years since her passing, many pe…
In the 7th century, the world saw the rise of one of the most important religious and political forces in history: Islam. Springing forth from the Arabian Peninsula, within a matter of months, the Islamic Caliphate had become one of the largest empires on Eart…
The Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, Turkey is one of the largest, oldest, and most significant buildings in the world. It has served as a holy place for three different religions and has been the focal point for two different empires. Almost, 1,500 years after its c…
Amelia Earheart was a pioneer in the early days of aviation. She became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic. She was the first person to fly solo from Hawaii to California. In 1937, she set out on her greatest adventure ever. It would be the longes…
From the very founding of the United States, there was a debate that took place amongst the representatives from the 13 states. Where should be the capital of the new country be located? A compromise was eventually reached where the states of Maryland and Virg…
One of the saddest things in the modern world is that with all of our technology, and with all of the information in the world at our fingertips, there are more people today who think the Earth is flat than there were 20 years ago. While most people don’t subs…
In the middle ages, a legend persisted among Europeans that there was a Christian ruler in Asia, or Africa, who would come to join with European Christians to help fight Moslems. The only problem was, the distant Christian ruler didn’t exist. Yet, while the ru…
On July 1, 2020, a world traveler who was grounded by an international pandemic made the business and personal decision to launch the podcast he wanted to listen to. One year later, he’s celebrating the one-year anniversary of his podcast. Learn more about yea…
The Earth takes a year to go around the sun, and a day to turn on its axis. It is tilted 23.5 degrees which is what causes the seasons. All of these facts which you learned in school are true, but they are not permanent. They change, very slowly, over time. On…
Located in the middle of the Pacific Ocean is one of the smallest countries in the world. The country has only one proper hotel and that has just 9 rooms. Once you visit the country, there is no car rental service, there isn’t an ATM machine anywhere in the co…
Unquestionably, the most popular clothing innovation of the last 150 years has been blue jeans. They can be found all over the world, yet they have become synonymous with American culture. While the modern blue jeans are definitely American, their origin actua…
On July 20, 1976, Viking 1 became the first robotic lander to land on Mars. On September 3, its sister Viking 2 followed suit. Both of them carried experiments to test for biology on Mars, something which no subsequent Mars lander since has replicated. The res…
In 1990, filmmaker Peter Brosnan set out to find a legendary Egyptian city that was lost to time and buried by sand dunes. After years of battling local officials, he finally was given the approval to begin an archeological dig. What he found were 35-foot tall…
One of the interesting things about temperature is that no matter how cold you’ve ever been, or how low of a temperature anyone has ever achieved, you can always get colder, if only by a little bit. That is because temperature has an absolute barrier that can …
There is an old saying that one person’s trash is another person’s treasure. But sometimes, one person’s treasure is just another persons’ treasure that they can’t afford. I’m talking about the realm of ultra-expensive items which would be more than most peopl…
On August 31, 1901, in Buffalo, New York, the President of the United States, William McKinley was shot twice in the torso. Seven days later, he passed away due to an infection. For the third time in only 36 years, a US president had been assassinated. Yet, fe…
Video games have become almost ubiquitous in today’s world. Most of us probably have some sort of computer game on our smartphone, as well as games on our desktop computer, and you might even have one or more dedicated computing devices dedicated solely to pla…
In the early 15th century, just before Europe began its Age of Exploration, China was embarking on a series of voyages that put to shame anything anyone in Europe would do for centuries. These voyages were led by a man who was the greatest admiral in history u…
In 1908, in the middle of the Siberian wilderness, near the Tunguska River, an explosion took place which was equivalent in size to the detonation of a 5 megaton nuclear bomb. But it wasn’t a nuclear bomb. Such things didn’t even exist then. It was a mystery t…
When the space race first began, scientists didn’t even know if it was possible for humans to eat in a zero-gravity environment. Once they figured out it was possible, it didn’t mean that it wasn’t without problems. There was a host of issues with eating in a …
Have you ever known someone who was really cheap? Like they would wear clothes until disintegrated? Or they would never pick up the tab? Or maybe they are horrible tippers? Well, there is cheap and then there is cheap. Some people are so cheap that they appear…
The second Roman emperor was Tiberius. His right-hand man was the leader of his Praetorian Guard, Lucius Aelius Seianus, known to us as Sejanus. Over the years, Sejanus slowly gained power and influence and a host of enemies throughout Rome. Eventually, howeve…
Located on a peninsula off of Southern Spain, best known for the massive rock which dominates its landscape, Gibraltar is one of the most strategic locations in the world. It has been fought over for millennia, been the focus of many sieges, and is still the s…
According to legend, in 1945 an engineer by the name of Perry Spencer was working in front of an active radar installation. As he was working, he noted that a candy bar that he had in his shirt pocket started to melt. His investigation into the phenomenon resu…
World War II was unquestionably the greatest bloodletting in world history. Never before had so many people lost their lives in such a short period of time. Of all of the many tragedies during the war, one of the largest actually took place after the war. It w…
Sixty years ago at the Green Bank observatory in West Virginia, a small conference was held for astrophysicists. The meeting was organized by Cornell University professor and astronomer Frank Drake. The subject of the conference was the search for extraterrest…
On April 15, 1920, two men who were delivering the payroll to the Slater-Morrill Shoe Company in Braintree, Massachusetts were killed in broad daylight. The payroll was taken by the killers, and they jumped into a getaway car. A few weeks later, two Italian im…
American history isn’t a single linear story. There are periodic changes to the political order where political parties and affiliations are reordered. According to political scientists, there have been six different political eras in American history. Each er…
The space race officially began on October 4, 1957, at 7:28 PM Moscow Time. That was when Sputnik was launched into orbit as the first artificial satellite, and from that moment, it was on. But when did the space race end? That is a much trickier question and …
For thousands of years, food storage was one of humanity’s biggest problems. Even if you could grow or hunt sufficient calories when food was abundant, it was very difficult to store those calories for when food was scarce. One man made a huge advancement in o…
On September 1 and 2 of 1859, people all over the world were treated to something quite rare. Auroras were seen in the skies as far south as the Caribbean and as far north as Brisbane, Australia.
Standards make everything easier. When everyone can agree on a standard way to do things, regardless of how it is done, it can reduce confusion and facilitate progress. You’d think if there was one thing that would be standardized everywhere, it would be the s…
In 2002 the BBC did a poll where they named the top 100 Britons in history. It had many people you have probably heard of, including Isaac Newton, Princess Diana, John Lenon, and Queen Victoria. The person who was ranked #2, however, is someone that many peopl…
László Polgár was born just after World War II in Hungary. His field of study was the nature of human intelligence. After studying the lives of over 400 great intellectuals from throughout human history, he came to a startling conclusion: geniuses weren’t born…
On May 7th, 1824, in Vienna, Austria, the musical world changed forever. The assembled crowd in the Theater am Kärntnertor heard one of the most groundbreaking and revolutionary musical performances in history. However, there was one person in attendance who d…
The British House of Commons has been called the Best Club in Town due to the fact that there is a 1,000-gallon vat of Scotch whiskey located in the cellar. However, I prefer to think of it as a roach motel. Because technically, once you are elected to Parliam…
Every year around June, millions of people will wear robes and put on funny flat hats to receive their university degrees. But why do they all wear robes, and what’s the deal with that flat hat, and why does the hat have a frilly thing hanging off of it? And w…
In 1942, two and a half years into the Second World War, the British were facing a problem. While the British Navy mostly commanded the Atlantic, the Germans had one significant advantage: The battleship Tirpitz. Rather than attack the Tirpitz head-on, they ca…
Who do you think what the wealthiest athlete in history? Maybe Michael Jordan. Perhaps Tiger Woods or Roger Federer. Or maybe Lionel Messi or LeBron James? Well, historically speaking, if you added up the fortunes of all of those people, they probably couldn’t…
Every year, on the last Monday in May, the United States honors its war dead. It is often celebrated with parades, cookouts, and ceremonies at military cemeteries. While many people just think of it as a three-day weekend and the beginning of summer, it is a t…
If I was to ask you what the wealthiest royal family in Europe was, your first guess would probably be the British Royal Family. But it isn’t. It also isn’t the royal families in Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Norway, or even the wealthy enclave of M…
One of the simplest mathematical statements possible is 2+2=4. While the concept is very easy to understand, when you write it down you have to use mathematical symbols which are, historically speaking, a relatively recent invention. At one point, mathematicia…
In the year 52 BC, the Roman General Julius Caesar fought the last major battle in the conquest of Gaul. The implications of the battle have reverberated throughout history and can still be felt in the world today. But the real story isn’t the implications of …
In 1787, Russian Empress Catherine the Great took a six-month trip to visit her newly acquired territories in the Crimean. Along the way, she sailed down the Dnieper River and saw many of the shiny villages in the new Russian Crimean. However, there was a prob…
What do lasers, photovoltaic cells, the transistor, digital cameras, cell phone technology, the communication satellite, computer networking, radio astronomy, and the UNIX operating system have in common? They were all invented or developed at the same place b…
Every 17 years one of the grandest spectacles in nature takes place. Billions of insects in a seemingly coordinated fashion will emerge from the ground and cover the skies and the trees. This is all part of their extremely unusual life cycle which consists of …
Have you ever been really full after a meal? Like really really full? Could you imagine eating and never feeling full? Like going to an all you can eat fish restaurant and then getting kicked out for eating too much and going fishing so you can eat more fish? …
Have you ever looked at a map and said to yourself “Wow, Greenland is really big!”, only to then look at a globe and realize, that Greeland wasn’t actually that big? If so, then you have discovered the Mercator Projection. A map that was originally created in …
For a professional musician, their instrument is their livelihood. If making music is your career, it isn’t surprising that many top musicians will pay the equivalent of a new car on their instrument. However, there is a class of musician which have instrument…
When Europeans began sailing the high seas on extended voyages, the most deadly thing they encountered wasn’t enemy navies, starvation, or even shipwrecks. It was a painful disease where your body would literally start falling apart and it killed more than 2,0…
Comeback stories are some of the best stories in sports. Whether it is coming back from a huge deficit, or being on the brink of elimination in a series, these are often some of the most dramatic moments in sports history. They don’t happen that often because …
In 1941, a young artistic prodigy released his first motion picture. It had enormous anticipation, received incredible reviews, and earned nine Academy Award nominations. However, the film was a financial failure because the vast majority of theaters refused t…
If you’ve done your share of flying, you are probably familiar with the three-letter airport codes which identify every commercial airport in the world. Airports like DFW, LGA, and HOU are easy to figure out. However, why is there an X in LAX? How did Washingt…
In the process of doing research, I often come across various stories which are interesting but might not be worthy of a full episode. They often are more like facts than stories. Every so often I save up those stories for a special episode because I really ha…
Located in the Tower of London are a collection of objects, some of which date back 800 years, which are the physical symbols of the British Monarchy. These objects have a value that would almost be impossible to measure given both their intrinsic and historic…
Henrietta Lacks was a mother of five who died of cervical cancer in 1951 at the age of 31. Before she passed, a tissue sample of her cancer cells was taken. Those cells have been the basis for decades of cancer and biological research, and have also been at th…
I’m guessing that almost everyone listening to this podcast has, within the last day, used a zipper. They are ubiquitous at this point and most people have never given them much thought. Yet, its invention was a rather inspired leap of creativity and required …
Randomness is all around us. Many of you probably think that this podcast is pretty random given that you have no clue what each day’s episode is going to be about. However, true randomness is a very different thing than something being seemingly random. While…
The rise of civilization is sometimes defined as the urbanization of humanity. The transition from hunter-gatherers to living in settlements was a fundamental transformation of human society and allowed for advanced social institutions such as kings, priesthoo…
For years people believed that there was a part of the Atlantic Ocean where ships and planes would disappear called the Bermuda Triangle. It turned out that ships and planes didn’t disappear there at any higher rate than they did elsewhere, and it just wasn’t …
When I was growing up I was taught like so many people that Ferdinand Magellan was the first person to circumnavigate the Earth. The problem with this is that is it isn’t true. In fact, Magellan never circumnavigated the Earth at all. Who should get credit the…
Every year, on the second Sunday in May, 96 countries around the world celebrate Mother’s Day. Dozens of other countries celebrate the same thing on different days throughout the year. Mother’s Day wasn’t always a thing, however. Its creation was due to a smal…
During World War II, the United States had a fleet of over 1,200 combat ships. Each of them had a unique story and service record. With so many ships, there would be many stories of heroism, stories of tragedy, and some stories of total incompetence. One ship,…
Historically, in the aftermath of a battle, there was nothing formal in place to take care of injured or captured combatants. There was nothing formally or informally that dictated how such people should be treated. One man in the 19th century, having seen the…
In the United States, there are awards given in many fields of entertainment. For Broadway productions, they have the Tony Awards. Television has the Emmy Awards. Music has the Grammy Awards, and Movies have the Oscars. To win one award is a lifetime accomplis…
In 1173, the Italian city of Pisa was on top of the world. They were a significant commercial power in Italy, commanded a sizable Mediterranean fleet, and wanted to demonstrate their power to the world. It had built a marvelous cathedral, and comparable baptis…
In October 1970, a blind woman accidentally walked into a Los Angeles County welfare office with a child in tow. The staff in the office immediately noticed the odd girl with the woman. She walked funny, was emaciated, drooling, didn’t make a sound, and when a…
She was never intended to be a queen. She wasn’t the firstborn and the rules of the time didn’t support her as a woman. Yet through cunning and guile, she managed to take power. As a queen, she was at the center of many of the most significant and notorious ev…
In the year 480 BC, one of the most famous battles in history took place on the shore of the Malian Gulf in the Aegean Sea. Several thousand Greeks held back several hundred thousand Persians, in a battle which is still remembered 2,500 years later. While the …
Every year of May 1st, people all around the northern hemisphere celebrate the arrival of spring. A day we call May Day. But it is also the day that communist countries held military parades, and the Soviets would show off all of their military strength in pub…
In 1815, one of the most catastrophic and deadly events in recorded human history occurred in Indonesia. A volcanic explosion took place which was larger than anything, any human had ever witnessed in over 10,000 years. The total death toll from the event migh…
Many people have an idealized view of how science works. They think that someone makes a discovery or publishes a paper, then everyone acknowledges their discovery, and everyone moves on to the next thing. Science! However, that isn’t quite how things work in …
When you think of battles involving broadswords and longbows you probably thinking back to the time of Braveheart.
The Apollo 11 mission to land humans on the moon was one of the most complex things ever undertaken by humanity. They had to prepare for any and every eventuality, including the failure of the mission. To cover that eventually, President Nixon’s speechwriter w…
He was a painter, a writer, sculptor, photographer, and one of the most significant avant-garde artists of the 20th century. He was also a showman, celebrity, and one of the well-known personalities in the world. ...and he had one of the most famous mustaches …
Historically, an army would have days, weeks, or even months to prepare for war. However, with the development of intercontinental missiles and nuclear weapons, the time for preparation was reduced to hours or even minutes. In light of these changes, it was ne…
If I were to say “prisoner of war interrogator” something rather menacing probably comes to mind. If I were to say “Nazi prisoner of war interrogator” something really menacing probably comes to mind. And If I were to say the “the greatest Nazi prisoner of war…
Navigation on the open ocean is extremely difficult. It is a skill that takes years to master. Even with years of skill, an experienced mariner was still able to ground their ship on an unseen reef, underwater rocks, or a sandbar, because they didn’t know thei…
Standing next to an extremely tall structure can be an exhilarating experience. Something which was no less exhilarating to early humans. Ever since humans created the first pile of rocks, we have been trying to build ever-larger piles of rocks. These piles of…
Hollywood is known the world over for being the center of the motion picture industry. But did you ever wonder why the movie business is centered there or why it hasn’t moved somewhere else? Well, it all has to do with a clause in various union contracts. Lear…
On December 6, 1917, one of the greatest tragedies of World War I took place. In a single instant, 1,782 people, mostly civilians were killed. However, this tragedy didn’t take place on the fields of Belgium or in a trench in France. It took place in the harbo…
Running a restaurant is a very difficult business. Most restaurants barely make a profit, and it isn’t unheard of for a series of restaurants to shuffle through the same building as one goes out of business after the other. Longevity in the restaurant game is …
“E Pluribus Unum”, “Habeus Corpus”, “Carpe Diem”, “Caveat Emptor”. All of these phrases are known by most people, yet they come from a language that has been dead for 1500 years: Latin. Latin is on our money, serves as mottos for universities, and is the found…
In 1964, New York City disc jockey “Murry the K” humorously dubbed himself the fifth Beatle due to his early promotion of the Beatles on his radio program. Since then, almost two dozen other people have been dubbed the 5th Beatle due to their contributions to …
In 1598 the Dutch Empire acquired the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean.
In the very days of the United States, the country was mostly made up of farmers.
Elizabeth Swaney was born in 1984 in Oakland, California. She attended the University of California Berkley where her only athletic accomplishment consisted of serving as the coxswain of the men’s rowing team. Elizabeth, however, desperately wanted to be an ol…
When people from prehistory created the first works of art on the walls of caves, they used the colors that they found around them. Almost all of the early cave art is drawn in black or dark red.
Most people think of languages and countries usually coincide. Germans speak German, the French speak French, and the Spanish speak Spanish. While this is largely true, it isn’t totally true. There are a host of small, regional languages which are only spoken …
Charles Cunningham Boycott was not a well-liked person amongst his neighbors in Ireland. No one would talk to him, no one would sell to him, and no one would work for him. He was so disliked that his very name became synonymous with refusing to do business wit…
Every year, around this time, one of the largest entertainment events is held. Wrestlemania. However, this isn’t just a wrestling show. How it came about is a story of business consolidation, modern media, and celebrity culture. Even if you aren’t a fan of pro…
At 9:30 am on July 2, 1881, at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington, D.C., James Garfield, President of the United States was fatally shot. It is an event that, quite frankly, doesn’t really get the attention that other political assassinat…
Located in the middle of Rome, the capital of Italy, is what many people consider to be the smallest country in the world: Vatican City.
The ancient world created many incredible wonders. The Pyramids of Giza, The Great Wall of China, and the Colosseum are just a few of the great wonders which are still standing.
In 1776, 13 British colonies in North America declared their independence. If you got a brand new country with that new country smell, what’s the first thing you need to do? Well, you need to come up with a name for the country. Believe it or not, The United S…
If you think of Spain, you probably think of a predominantly catholic country with major cathedrals and churches in every village. However, most of the Iberian peninsula for almost 800 years was under Muslim control. The legacy of the Moorish occupation can st…
I’m a podcaster who makes podcasts. You are a podcast listener who listens to podcasts. This is a podcast by a podcaster about podcasts for people who listen to podcasts. Because a podcast about podcasting is the ultimate podcast for podcasters. Learn more abo…
Hedy Lamarr was one of the most beautiful women in the world. She was a Hollywood star who appeared in films with the likes of Clark Gable and Spencer Tracey. But she was much more than just a pretty face. She was also an inventor who created one of the techno…
On December 11, 1941, Nazi Germany declared war on the United States. The interesting thing about this decision is that they didn’t have to do it. In fact, it would have been far better had they not done it. This decision has been one of the biggest mysteries …
Every day on April 1st, you have to be careful what you read and hear. This day, known to accounts as the beginning of the second quarter, is known to most people as April Fool’s Day.
In northern Greece, lying off the larger Chalkidiki peninsula is a place that is unique on planet Earth. It only has a population of about 2,400 people scattered across 20 settlements and some random people living by themselves. What makes this area unique is …
About 1500 years ago, a group of people that we would now call Vikings landed in what we now call England, and created a language we now call Old English. Fast-forward to today, and people from 140 countries are listening to a podcast in a dialect we call Amer…
If you think of Spain, you probably think of a European country which has its arm around Portugal and the eat tapas and paella. However, what if I told you that Spain is also an African country? In fact, it is the smallest country in Africa, and no, I’m not ta…
There is an old adage about warfare that says “amateurs talk about strategy, whereas professionals talk about logistics”. There is a great deal of truth to this statement. While history books have given a great deal of attention to the D-Day landing at Normand…
Isaac Newton is one of the most important scientists in the history of the world. His discoveries have impacted almost every aspect of physics, and a huge part of the first two semesters of any physics course is dominated by his discoveries. It raises an inter…
The internet is often considered to be an open environment where no one really controls anything. A company or a person might have control over a particular website but in the big scheme of things you can set up whatever websites you want without anyone’s perm…
One of the unique things about track and field is that you don’t just compete against your immediate competitors, but you are also competing against the clock or the tape measure. That means you can compare achievements with people in the past, and that means …
William Shakespeare is widely considered one of the greatest poets and playwrights in the history of the English language. However, over the last two centuries many people have begun to wonder if William Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon, England was indeed the…
I’ve done several episodes pertaining to Ancient Rome. The reason is that so many of the foundational things in our world, from our alphabet to our calendar, to the names of our months, all can be traced back to Rome. During these episodes, I’ve often talked a…
Soccer, aka football, is the most popular sport in the world. Of all the professional leagues in the world, there is one that has achieved a level of success and competition above all others. Spain’s Campeonato Nacional de Liga de Primera División, otherwise k…
Far above the Arctic Circle on the Norwegian island of Spitzbergen, built into the side of a mountain which is permanently frozen, is humanity’s greatest insurance policy. There lie genetic backup copies for much of the world’s agricultural crops. These seeds …
Even if you aren’t a fan of classical music, you are probably at least familiar with what an orchestra is. But have you ever wondered why orchestras use the instruments they do? Or why they have them in that combination, or why it is even called an orchestra a…
World War II was the first major conflict that saw the use of strategic bombers. In the months immediately after the war, the US saw the need for an advanced bomber to replace the bombers which were developed during the war. Moreover, they wanted something big…
In 1967, war broke out between Israel and Egypt. It was the beginning of what would be known as the Six-Day War. As Israeli forces raced across the Siani Peninsula, Egyptian forces took measures to ensure that the Suez Canal wouldn’t be captured. They scuttled…
Every March 17th, St. Patrick’s Day is celebrated. Everyone wears a lot of green, there are parades, shamrocks, and a whole lot of drinking. But who exactly was St. Patrick? Why do we celebrate his day? And what does any of this have to do with shamrocks, drin…
The United States Constitution spells out a very specific process for how to amend the document. First, Congress must vote to approve the amendment. Then the amendment is sent to the state legislatures for ratification. Most amendments never make it through co…
Every so often, you see lottery jackpots that grow to enormous levels. Lotteries such as Powerball and Mega Millions have on occasion grown to have prizes over $1 billion dollars. However, they all pale in comparison to the annual lottery which takes place in …
Every year, around this time, people who live in northern latitude countries turn their clocks ahead one hour. Then, months later, we do the exact same thing in reverse, setting all of our clocks back. Why do we do this? Is there a good reason for it? Should w…
According to most history books, the United States Civil War ended on April 9, 1865, when General Robert E. Lee surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia. This is a truth, but it really isn’t the truth. At best it could be des…
Australia is what I would call a sporting country. Cricket, rugby, and Australian Football are all incredibly popular sports. Australia has also really punched above its weight in the Summer Olympics, earning an oversized number of medals given its population.…
The country of San Marino is one of the smallest countries in the world. It is completely surrounded by Italy, is about 24 square miles in area, and has a population of about 33,000 people. The most interesting thing about San Marino is the fact that it exists…
Right now vaccinations are all over the news. There are many companies that have developed vaccines for COVID-19 and there is a good chance that most people in the world will wind up getting a vaccine in the next year or two. Many of you may never have given m…
In the early hour of March 18, 1990, two police officers enter Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. The problem was, they weren’t police officers. They were thieves. In a little over an hour, they stole 13 valuable works of art which had a combined value …
In the late 1950s, NASA recruited military test pilots to become the very first American Astronauts. They underwent an extensive battery of tests to find the very best astronauts for the Mercury program. These men became the Mercury 7. However, at the same tim…
In 1973, 34 mushers and their dog teams lined to take part in a race that recreated a 1925 event where the medicine was delivered by dog sled to the remote town of Nome, Alaska. Since then, the race has become a global phenomenon and is the best-known dog sled…
In the spring of 1940, the German war machine rolled over the nations of Western Europe so quickly that it surprised everyone, including the Germans. With France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, and Denmark conquered, there was only one more country left to …
From December 27, 1831, to October 2, 1836, the HMS Beagle set out on a scientific survey expedition in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. On the ship was a young man named Charles Darwin. That expedition exposed him to ideas that would develop his theory of nat…
At 12 noon on March 4, 1849, the presidential administration of James Polk ended. 24 hours later, at noon on March 5, President Zachary Taylor took the oath of office to become president. During those 24 hours in-between, who was the president? According to so…
Imagine taking all of the trees, grass, animals, insects, fish, coral, and bacteria on the surface of the Earth and in the sea. Basically, every living thing on the planet. If you were to add it all up, all of the biomass, it would be quite a bit. Yet accordin…
Airplanes were not the first type of aircraft. Lighter than air airships were flying decades before the Wright Brothers flew their first airplane. Of all the airships, there was one company that became so successful in airship development and construction that…
Throughout history, there have been many causes for wars. Surprise attacks, broken marriages, unpaid debts, and even, of course, good old greed. However, an 18th-century war between Great Britain and Spain had perhaps the oddest genesis of all: a severed ear. …
In 1483, the King of England, Edward V, and his brother were taken into custody by his uncle Richard the Duke of Glouster and placed into the Tower of London. Both the king and his brother were never seen again. They just….disappeared. It is probably the great…
In 1917, British Intelligence intercepted a diplomatic telegram between Germany and Mexico. The contents of the telegram contained information that had the potential to change the course of the first World War. Not only was it an important turning point in Wor…
If you have ever traveled in Europe, odds are you have visited at least one major cathedral. These massive religious buildings were and still are, the architectural centerpieces in most cities. Yet, most visitors to a cathedral will usually walk around, gawkin…
Copyright is what protects creators from having someone copy and make money off of their work without compensation. However, there are some things like directories or maps which have information that can be difficult to copyright. It’s just presenting informat…
Ever since humans looked up at the stars they noticed that a few of them were different from the others. They moved. These moving points of light were planets. One of those points of light was, of course, the planet Mars. This first observation of Mars by earl…
Early 19th century London was a dangerous, dirty, dingy place with tons of poverty and a lot of drinking. Alcoholism was common and excessive drinking, especially amongst lower-income people in London, was the norm, not the exception. All of that alcohol had t…
Every day we are constantly using measurements. We have ways of measuring distance, temperature, time, light, pressure, energy….everything. Yet, why do we measure everything the way we do? Why is a second, a second, and why is a meter, a meter? Learn more abou…
On January 1, 1987, a paper was published in the journal Nature which rocked the world of anthropology. Researchers Allan Wilson, Mark Stoneking, and Rebecca Cann used the then-new science of genetic analysis to analyze the DNA in human mitochondria. What they…
Some of the things we use every day were invented in the distant past. Other things were invented quite recently. However, there is a category of inventions that have been known forever, but no one ever had any practical use for it until recently. Learn more a…
Jeff Bezos, the founder, and CEO of Amazon was recently named the richest person in the world. This is primarily a function of the stock he owns in the company and the company’s valuation in the stock market. How would Jeff Bezos stack up against other wealthy…
Everyone loves french fries. It is one of the few things which most people can agree on in the world today. The average American consumes over 16 pounds of them every year, and they have become a staple part of the cuisine in countries all over the world. Yet,…
In 1957, Sputnik was launched into orbit as the world’s first artificial satellite. Today, 64 years later, there are more than 1,000,000 objects larger than 1 centimeter floating around the Earth. Almost all of those objects in orbit were not put there intenti…
Of the 193 countries in the United Nations, exactly three haven’t adopted the widespread use of the metric system: Myanmar, Liberia, and the United States of America. Of those three, the US is the country that really stands out. It has the biggest economy in t…
You are probably familiar with the term decimation. The word is usually used in English to mean “to cause great destruction or harm”. However, to ancient Rome, the word had a very different and very specific meaning. It was one of the most devastating and brut…
You are probably familiar with the four basic types of musical instruments: strings, woodwinds, brass, and percussion. However, is it possible to have an instrument that doesn’t fit into one of these families? In the early 20th century, Russian inventor Leon T…
Every February 14, people around the world celebrate Valentine’s Day. It is a day for everything heart-shaped, flowers, flowers, candy, and romance. Why is this day the day dedicated to romance? What’s with the hearts? And who or what is a valentine? Is this a…
Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, known to history as just Nero, was not the best of Roman Emperors. In fact, on most lists of Roman Emperors, he would rank somewhere near the bottom. In no small part, this is due to how he reacted after the greatest f…
In the middle of World War II, a small island in Scotland’s Hebrides Islands was suffering through war shortages like most of the country. However, on February 5, 1941, a very fortunate disaster struck the island, and the island’s residents couldn’t have been …
In 1901, Swiss archeologists Gustave Jequier discovered a large stone stele in what is today western Iran. That large stone was 2.25m or 7.5 feet tall and was covered with cuneiform writing. After it was translated, it was found to have been a list of 282 laws…
For over 30 years, Monty Hall was the host of the game show Let’s Make A Deal. In the show, they played a very simple game where you would choose one of three doors. This simple game has led to one of the most controversial and public kerfuffles amongst mathem…
On May 19, 1946, André René Roussimoff was born into the world in Coulommiers, France. At birth, he weighed 13 pounds or 6 kilograms...and from there, he only got bigger. He eventually topped out at 7 feet, four inches tall, weighed 520 pounds, and became a wo…
In 1888, the city of London was terrorized by its most infamous serial killer. Anywhere between 5 and 11 murders were committed over a three-year period in the Whitechapel area of London, and the crimes have never been solved. In the decades since then, a cott…
One Sunday every year, the United States celebrates its biggest non-official holiday: Super Bowl Sunday. The championship game of the National Football League is almost always the biggest television audience of the year, and one of the most expensive tickets f…
For over 100 years, radio has been one of the biggest mediums for communication, information, and entertainment. It was the first true broadcast medium. However, recent technical and demographic changes have made the future of radio, or at least some of the ba…
In the 17th century, the Netherlands was struck by the world’s first investment bubble. They weren’t investing in stocks or bonds or real estate. They were investing in…..tulip bulbs. Tulip bulbs became a mania and even common people were spending money on tul…
How small can a country be and still be a country? In theory, there is no lower limit on the number of people to be a sovereign state. However, in reality, there are costs associated with being an independent country. The fewer the number of people, the higher…
In 1936, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin determined it was time for the Soviet Union to have another census. They hadn’t conducted one since 1926 and he wanted some actual numbers to show the world the success of the Soviet system. Needless to say, the numbers wer…
A common misconception that many people have is that embassies are part of the territory of the country that owns the embassy. For example, the American embassy in Canada is part of the United States. This is not quite true. The theory covering how an embassy …
Multiple births happen very infrequently. The odds decrease dramatically the more children are born at once. The odds of twins is 1 in 250 pregnancies. The odds of triplets are about 1 in 62,000. The odds of quadruplets are one in 15 million. And the odds of q…
In 1957 the United States embarked on its most controversial series of nuclear tests. These tests took place on US soil in the state of Nevada. They detonated 29 devices and tested a wide number of things, including how blasts would damage builds, pigs, and so…
150 years ago, an American inventor by the name of Christopher Latham Sholes developed a machine to allow people to easily put text onto paper by pressing mechanical keys. He called his invention the “type writer”. After years of tinkering and adjusting, he fi…
The National Football League is big business. It earns more money than any other professional sports league in the world. All of the NFL teams are own by billionaires or consortiums of multi-millionaires….except for one. One team, has no billionaire owner, is …
According to the old adage, what goes up must come down. Unless you are talking about a satellite, which can go up and never come down. However, sometimes satellites do come down. When they are not expected to. Where they are not wanted. Such was the case in 1…
The Earth takes a year to go around the sun, and a day to turn on its axis. It is tilted 23.5 degrees which is what causes the seasons. All of these facts which you learned in school are true, but they are not permanent. They change, very slowly, over time. On…
After the end of World War II, the newly created Central Intelligence Agency investigated anything and everything which could give the US an advantage in the Cold War. They looked into anything and everything which might possibly give their side an edge, even …
Every so often, the series Dr. Who would have a special episode where multiple versions of the time-traveling Doctor would appear on the same episode. I think they probably ripped the idea off from the Roman empire, where they had several years with multiple e…
As long as the Roman empire lasted, they never created a set method of choosing successors to emperors. This inability to have an idea of who would be next in line caused numbers problems during the history of the empire. The first major succession crisis occu…
In 1844, the Philological Society of London began investigating the creation of a new English dictionary. This initial foray would lead to a dictionary that would be unlike any other dictionary ever created. It would not just give the definition and spelling o…
Normally, if a foreign country has you totally surrounded, that isn’t a good thing. However, in some parts of the world, it is a normal, everyday occurrence. Due to historical quirks in drawing maps, there are parts of some countries which are separate from th…
Every four years on January 20th, the United States holds a ceremony for the inauguration of the President of the United States. There are traditions for the inauguration, some of which have been passed down since the very first. Why do we use January 20th as …
In 1896, the United States was experiencing what we now call a recession. The Panic of 1896 had made life tough on everyone, and many of the companies in the highly competitive railroad business were looking for new ways to make money. One man, William George …
Humans and rats have lived in an uneasy relationship for millennia. Rats have spread diseases like the bubonic plague, destroyed grain harvests, and stolen our pizzas. In return, rats have given humans…...pretty much nothing. As such, humans have waged a relen…
If you visit a different country you might need to get some of the local currency. You might get Ringgit in Malaysia, Pesos in Mexico, Kip in Laos, or Tala in Samoa. However, there is one country where you have to be careful what currency you get because there…
Since the year 1790, New York City has been the largest city in the United States. Given the population density of the city, the vast majority of the people there rent apartments. Now imagine if everyone in New York who switched apartments had to do so on the …
The printing press is considered to be one of, if not the greatest invention in history. The printing press allowed for an explosion in information and it ushered in the renaissance, the enlightenment, and the scientific and industrial revolutions. As such, Jo…
There is a number, a very special number, which is inside all of us. It is inside you, inside me, and inside every person on Earth. It dictates our social interactions. It has determined the size of communities, Christmas Card lists, and has implications for s…
On November 24, 1971, a man who identified himself as Dan Cooper purchased a $20 ticket for a short 30-minute flight from Portland to Seattle. He had with him a briefcase filled with dynamite and wanted $200,000. After getting his money, the plane took off aga…
There are many foods that are considered an acquired taste. Foods that might not be very palatable the first time you try it, or something that just doesn’t sit right with most people. It could be something as simple as blue cheese, or something like the Filip…
Before Spain became Spain, it was part of the Roman province of Hispania. To understand the language, and geography of not just Spain but of the entire Iberian Peninsula, you have to understand Hispania. Learn more about one of the greatest provinces in the Ro…
Odds are, if you have ever seen a photo of the president of the United States over the last 60 years, there has been someone in the background or walking a few steps behind, who had in their hand a leather satchel. In that bag was everything the President woul…
The musical Brigadoon is about a Scottish village which appears for one day every 100 years. The village can be thought of as a metaphor for things that are fleeting, or why we must take advantage of opportunities when they appear. Brigadoon doesn’t exist in o…
In the year 1184 in the Dutchy of Thuringia, in what is today the country of Germany, a conflict raged between the Count of Thuringia and the Archbishop of Mainz. To resolve this dispute, the German King Henrich VI called the parties to the city of Erfurt to s…
In the 1970s NASA embarked on a mission it had never attempted before. Due to a fortunate alignment of planets, they were going to attempt to send robotic probes on a flyby mission to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, before being sent to deep space, out o…
Wars often start with a bang but end with a whimper. Often an attack or an invasion will begin a war, but even one when one side surrenders, it can take days, weeks, or months for word of the capitulation to get out to everyone. While the European theater of W…
I’m sure all of you have heard the 12 Days of Christmas song. It is the holiday equivalent of 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall, and no one ever sings it to completion because it’s so long. But it does raise the question, what are the 12 days of Christmas? Why ar…
If you think of Spain as the country on the Iberian Peninsula which is sandwiched between France and Portugal, you are not wrong, but you are also not totally right. There is also a significant part of the country which is located in the Atlantic Ocean, off th…
On Christmas Day, 2020, Reginald Foster passed away at the age of 81 in a nursing home facility in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He had been diagnosed with COVID-19 a few days before. This episode is not necessarily about his passing however, it is about his life, and…
In the waning days of the 19th century, a passenger steamer crossing the Pacific Ocean en route from Australia to Canada did a particular thing, at a particular place, at a particular time. If it wasn’t for a last-second decision of the captain of the ship, we…
New Year’s Day is not only the day we turn over a new year on the calendar, but also a day where people start resolutions, companies begin new budgets, and everyone screws up writing checks. While documenting our trips around the sun makes perfect sense, why d…
Located approximately 100km east of Rotterdam, the city of Nijmegen is a mid-sized Dutch city situated on the Waal river that few people outside of the Netherlands are familiar with. For the last several years, every single day regardless of the weather, the p…
Many people think that politics and elections in the United States are the most controversial they have ever been. History, however, begs to differ. Perhaps the oddest and most controversial presidential election in American history was the election of 1824. I…
If there is one song almost everyone knows it is Happy Birthday to You (yes, that is the actual title of the song, even though everyone just calls it Happy Birthday). Not only has the song been sung at countless children’s birthday parties, but it has also bee…
One of my dirty secrets is that I’m a fan of pro wrestling. Whenever I tell people this the first thing I inevitably hear is, “you know it’s fake right?” This idea that people think professional wrestling is real comes from the concept that wrestling insiders …
If you look at the list of officer ranks in the United States armed forces, there are 10 ranks listed which are held today They go from Second Lieutenant all the way up to the rank of General, which is the four-star variant of the rank. There is a rank above g…
In the aftermath of the horrors of WWI, many people in Europe wanted to find a better future going forward. A future of peace and prosperity, where energy, food, and jobs would be available for everyone. One man from Germany named Herman Sörgel had a VERY ambi…
This episode is the story of a man, who if you don’t know his name, you probably should: Joe Medicine Crow. Joe Medicine Crow was a scholar, an author, a historian, a spokesperson, and a warrior. In fact, he was the last person to have earned the title of War …
Question: Who is the most dominant athlete of all time? It’s an interesting question and one which has started endless pub debates. Is that a basketball player like Michael Jordan, a baseball player like Babe Ruth, or a soccer player like Lionel Messi? Or mayb…
The Byzantine Empire was one of the greatest empires in world history, yet at no point was there ever an empire that went by that name.
Every year, people around the world celebrate Christmas on December 25. In many countries, it is the biggest single holiday of the year. Why is it celebrated on December 25? Is there any historical basis for this date and if not, then why do we celebrate it on…
Catalonia is a unique region. They have their own Romance language, their own customs, and cuisine, and when it comes to the Christmas season, they have their own traditions.
Standards make everything easier. When everyone can agree on a standard way to do things, regardless of how it is done, it can reduce confusion and facilitate progress. You’d think if there was one thing that would be standardized everywhere, it would be the s…
Over the last several centuries, there have been many unsolved questions that scientists have put their minds to solving. Most of them were eventually resolved. However, there are some questions that are still outstanding and we aren’t really any closer to sol…
The Apollo 11 mission to land humans on the moon was one of the most complex things ever undertaken by humanity. They had to prepare for any and every eventuality, including the failure of the mission. To cover that eventually, President Nixon’s speechwriter w…
The ancient Egyptian civilization was one of the oldest civilizations that we know of on Earth. While there is much we know about them, knowledge of their system of writing, known as hieroglyphics had become lost by the middle ages. Where there were different …
On the week of July 1, 1946, there were two explosions that shook the world. One was a physical explosion and the other was cultural. These two events, seemingly unrelated, are now linked forever due to the circumstances of that week. Learn more about what an …
Back in the day, sending letters was slow and potentially confusing. Nothing could travel faster than the speed of a horse or a ship, and addressing letters could be confusing if there were multiple people in a city. Over time, the postal system developed syst…
If you happen to be in Valencia, Spain, on a Thursday, at noon, in front of the cathedral, you might be able to witness the oldest surviving democratic tradition on Earth. For over 1000 years the Valencia Water Tribunal has been adjudicating water disputes amo…
Born in 1849 in Poitiers, France, Balance Monnier was a beautiful young woman who was born into an aristocratic family. When she was 25 she suddenly disappeared. When people inquired as to her whereabouts, her family told them she had moved away. That was not …
Hundreds of years ago gold and silver were rare and valuable, and today they are rare and valuable. Iron and tin were cheap and plentiful and today they are cheap and plentiful. However, there is one metal that was once the rarest and expensive metal in the wo…
Have you ever heard a science story on the news where they mention how old something is then ask yourself “how do they know that?” How is it possible to tell the age of something with any degree of certainty when there was no one around millions or billions of…
On February 10, 2013, in what began as a rather innocuous assembly, Pope Benedict the XVI stunned the world by announcing that he would be retiring. Not only were people stunned, but to paraphrase King George in the Musical Hamilton, most people weren’t even a…
There are lots of stories about lost technologies and techniques of the ancients which have been lost to us through history. In reality, most things were figured out independently by modern people, and we have better modern versions of almost everything the an…
Have you ever looked at a map and said to yourself “Wow, Greenland is really big!”, only to then look at a globe and realize, that Greeland wasn’t actually that big? If so, then you have discovered the Mercator Projection. A map that was originally created in …
He has been called the most famous artist of the 20th century. His work single-handedly defined an artistic style. He was more loved and criticized than any other artist in history. He created over 20,000 works, and legend says that he could pay for a meal wit…
What do you get when you take one part religious cult and one part Harlem Globetrotters and one part Troy Polamalu’s hair and put them all together? You wind up with the House of David Baseball Team. One of the most popular baseball barnstorming acts of the ea…
In 1776, an obscure Bavarian professor of philosophy created a society for like-minded individuals who upheld the values of the Enlightenment. Fast forward over 200 years, and that organization is now the basis for conspiracy theories and fantastic stories of …
In 1912, a Polish rare book dealer purchased an extremely old codex that contained an unknown system of writing. Since then, the best and brightest minds in cryptography, linguistics, and artificial intelligence have not been able to decipher what is written i…
In the 120 year history of the Nobel Prize, there have been four people who have been given the award twice. One of them is not Albert Einstein. Yet, when you look at his list of accomplishments and the fields of physics which he has touched, he arguably deser…
In 1943, the Italian government surrendered to the Allied forces. The Germans, not wanting to cede such a larger part of Europe to the Allies, quickly occupied northern and central Italy. However, as the Germans occupied Rome there occurred an outbreak of what…
Have you ever thought something and everyone else said you were crazy? Have you ever been called crazy and then have the thing you were called crazy for turn out to be absolutely true? This not only happened to one woman, but she was institutionalized, had a p…
Radiation or radioactivity is one of the scariest words in the English language. While radiation can indeed be very dangerous, most people don’t really understand how it works and it is often treated as magic death cooties which leads to unwarranted fear. Lear…
Whenever lists of the world’s great cuisines are published, there is one country which is always at or near the top: Spain.
One of the greatest battles in Roman history was one of its greatest losses. It was a defeat that shook the city to its core and could have very well ended the Roman Republic. ...but it didn’t. The reason why it didn’t is a story of determination and the diffe…
In June 1940, with the conquest of France, Nazi Germany and Italy had conquered almost all of Western Europe. The map of Europe was one solid color reflecting the domination of the Axis Powers. Except for one small hole in the donut: Switzerland. Switzerland’s…
Clair Patterson was a geochemist who worked at CalTech from the 1940s through the 1990s. His work involved studying the age of rocks and the age of the Earth. His greatest discovery, however, was one that was totally by accident and ended up directly impacting…
Although you probably never heard of him before, American George Eyser is one of the most decorated Olympians in history. At the 1904 Olympics in St. Louis, he put on one of the greatest single-day performances of the modern Olympics. Yet, his real claim to fa…
On the fourth Thursday in November every year, American’s celebrate the holiday of Thanksgiving. It is a holiday that originated in the Americas but has subsequently spread to many countries around the world. It is a holiday that is actually secular, but with …
For centuries the Holy Grail has been a metaphor for ultimate achievement. The quest for the Holy Grail is likewise considered a metaphor for an unobtainable goal. However, the Holy Grail might be more than a metaphor. It might really exist and you can go see …
Let’s say you have a brand new country. You want to take it out of a spin and make some new laws. What is the first thing you do? Maybe ratify a treaty? Perhaps something about the economy. Well, if you were the United States back in 1789, you didn’t do anythi…
Of all the world’s co-principalities, there is one which stands out due to its sheer size. This enormous co-principality dominates all other co-principalities in every measure: land area, population, and GDP. Every other co-principality could fit inside this c…
At some point in the future, a phone call will be placed by the private secretary of the Queen to the British Prime Minister. In this call, he will utter the phrase “London Bridge is down”, which will set off a preplanned series of events following the death o…
I’m sure everyone has heard of such famous places as the Great Pyramids, the Colosseum, the Great Wall of China, and the Taj Mahal. Besides all being famous landmarks, they have something else in common. They are all UNESCO World Heritage Sites. What is a UNES…
In October 1984, nine members of the Pintupi Tribe in Western Australia met some long lost relatives they hadn’t seen in years. The significance of this event is that those nine people, two women with four boys and three girls, were the last aboriginal people …
I’ve done several episodes on close and interesting US presidential elections throughout history. Mainly they were to put current events into perspective, so you can realize that the controversies of today are really not all that new. However, there was one el…
Many communities around the world hold local festivals. They might have some food stalls, a stage for musical acts, and some rides for the kids.
Every so often, adults may be asked to perform a civic duty by sitting on a jury. Usually, the commitment might be nothing more than a few hours or a few days. Occasionally, some juries might get a case that lasts years. Why do we have juries, and where did th…
Sometimes you might sit down to watch a sporting match and it is over before you know it. However, there are some games that seem to take forever. A rare few games last an extraordinarily long time, as no one can seem to win. Learn more about the longest games…
On April 27th, 1865, just weeks after the end of the American Civil War, a steamboat carrying former Union prisoners of war sailed up the Mississippi River from Vicksburg. At 2 am, the boilers on the steamship exploded, killing 1800 people in what is still the…
Professional sports have become a multibillion-dollar industry with millions of fans who will live and die based on their favorite team’s performance. Occasionally, soccer hooligans and Raiders fans will take their exuberance a bit too far. Rioting after a tea…
Scientists have coined a term called the Butterfly Effect, where small changes in one thing can lead to enormous changes in systems later on. Nothing in history exemplifies this more than the series of unfortunate coincidences that occurred on June 28, 1914, i…
Since the dawn of time, humans have looked up at the night sky to watch the stars. ...and then nothing happened for hundreds of thousands of years until a guy by the name of Galileo Galilei point a telescope at the stars and saw a bunch of stuff that everyone …
Every year, more than three million visitors will line up and buy a ticket to visit the most popular attraction in all of Spain: The Sagrada Familia. It is a stunning modernist architectural achievement and the crowning design of local architect Antoni Gaudí. …
In 1913, a young man from the city of Madras in British India sent a letter to one of the world’s preeminent mathematicians, G.H. Hardy, in Cambridge Univerisity in England. The young man had no formal education in advanced mathematics, yet that letter would e…
Bread is one of the most important, most commonly consumed, and oldest food products in the world. It’s been called the Staff of Life. It even gets a prominent mention in the Lord’s Prayer. But how did this fundamental food, which ultimately comes from wild gr…
Over the course of history, humans have fought over land, honor, wealth, and religion. But perhaps the oddest, and dumbest war which almost ever broke out between two major world powers….was over a pig. A single pig. Learn more about the British-American confl…
Presidential elections in the United States are a very big deal. The entire process can take over a year with all the primaries, campaigning, debates, and finally the election itself. Once the election is over and the votes are counted, most people’s attention…
Democracies have elections, and when you have elections sometimes you have close elections. Sometimes very close elections. Sometimes very very very close elections. I’m not talking about vote differences of a tenth of a percent, I’m talking about vote differe…
Jeff Bezos, the founder, and CEO of Amazon was recently named the richest person in the world. This is primarily a function of the stock he owns in the company and the company’s valuation in the stock market. How would Jeff Bezos stack up against other wealthy…
The Camino de Santiago is one of the most significant and popular pilgrimage routes in the World. For over 1,000 years pilgrims have traveled to the tomb of St. James in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Some do it for religious reasons and some just to have an a…
On January 15, 1919, the city of Boston suffered its greatest disaster when a storage tank filled with over 2 million gallons of molasses burst and killed 21 people and injured 150 more. Researchers have been studying the unique circumstances surrounding this …
On October 31 every year, we celebrate Halloween. It is especially popular in the United States where we use the holiday as an excuse for kids to dress up and ask for candy, and for adults to dress up and drink. But why do we dress up, and what’s the deal with…
Everyone knows that Neil Armstrong was the first person to step foot on the moon. But who was the last person on the moon? And why haven’t we ever sent anyone back to the moon? Learn more about the last person to set foot on the moon and the future of lunar ex…
Antarctica has been an object of fascination since it was first discovered by explorers in the early 19th century. Despite never having had a permanent human population, or as far as we know even a temporary population, Antarctica does have a history. Perhaps …
In the year 2000, people in Japan were polled and asked what the greatest Japanese creation of the 20th century was. They didn’t pick the walkman, digital cameras, or the compact disc. Nor did they pick any even any cultural achievements like the works of Akir…
In 1970, scientists in the Soviet Union set out to drill the deepest hole in the world. They weren’t drilling for oil or gas, they were just drilling for the sake of drilling to see what they could find. They actually found out quite a lot. Learn about the Kol…
How many continents are there? That sounds like a really easy question. After all, there are only so many giant landmasses on the planet and we can easily count them with our fingers. Yet, for something seemingly so simple, the answer to the question can be su…
I’m sure everyone is familiar with the word outlaw. It mostly used as a synonym for “criminal”. However, if I can paraphrase Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride, “that word does not mean what you think it means.”. Learn about the ancient punishment of outlaw…
On October 30, 1961, the Soviet Union detonated the largest explosion the world had ever seen, before or since. The explosion was so large, that it permanently changed the course of nuclear weapons development. Learn more about the Tsar Bomba, the world’s larg…
If you have ever taken out a loan, you are probably familiar with the details of taking on debt. You have an amount that is borrowed, an interest rate, and a term over which the debt is paid back. However, sometimes, a term might be extremely long. In a few ca…
Every four years, citizens of the United States sit down for one or more nights to watch something which is called the Presidential Debates. The debates have become a centerpiece of US Presidential elections, but it wasn’t always that way. Learn more about the…
In a previous episode, I talked about how you can win by not losing. That is called the Fabian Strategy named after Roman general Quintus Fabius Maximus. However, the opposite is true as well. You can lose by winning. Here too, ancient history has examples for…
If you think the current American political climate is contentious, then you need to take a step back and take a close look at American history. The most controversial, divisive, and probably corrupt election in US history was the election of 1876. It’s an eve…
In 1867, United States Secretary of State William Seward signed a treaty with the Empire of Russia to purchase the territory of what would be called Alaska. The United States purchased it for 2 cents an acre. At the time it was called one of the worst deals in…
On April 30, 1943, a Spanish fisherman came across the floating body of Major William Martin of the Royal Marines. Handcuffed to the corpse was a satchel with top-secret plans for the Allied invasions of Greece and Sardinia. With the information gathered from …
On May 28, 1828, a 16-year-old boy mysteriously appeared in Nuremberg, Bavaria. He had a letter in his hand and could only speak a few words. No one knew where he came from, who his parents were, or why he was there. Five years later, just as mysteriously as h…
It the one of the world’s most commonly used condiments. Even though it is most often associated with the United States, it has a pedigree that is extremely ancient and global. I am of course talking about ketchup. Learn more about this common condiment, and i…
History remembers the rulers and the leaders. We know of Napoleon, Caesar, Elizabeth, Ghengis Khan, and Captain Picard. However, for every one of the people I just listed, their success was due in large part to the people who worked underneath them. The ones w…
Every so often you need to step back and take an assessment of where you’ve been and where you are going. This is the 100th episode of the podcast, so I figured now is a good time to take a one episode break from the normal content to give you the backstory of…
Earth is a big place. Really big. And on it are mountains, deserts, rivers, and swamps.
The Lockheed SR-71, nicknamed the Blackbird, holds the record for the fastest airplane ever. A record which it set in 1976 and has held for 44 years. It also set a record for the highest altitude ever recorded for a sustained flight. Even though the plane hasn…
The US one-cent coin has been a part of American currency since the country started issuing money in 1793. As inflation has continued to creep up, the cost of making a one-cent coin is now more than it is worth. Unsurprisingly, people have been starting to que…
In the late 50s and early 60s, the US space program wasn’t doing great. The Soviets had beaten the US to almost every major first in space, and American rockets kept blowing up on the launchpad. According to declassified CIA documents, one night the American’s…
Sometimes the best way to win is simply not to lose. This strategy is called the Fabian Strategy and was given its name from an ancient Roman General and has been used throughout history, not just in warfare, but in many other areas as well. Learn more about t…
Sometimes the smallest things can make the biggest impact. There is no better example of this in the modern world than the Intermodal Container, aka the shipping container. You’ve probably seen them on ships, trains, and trucks, and believe it or not, these re…
Here is a question I’m pretty sure no one listening to this has ever bothered to ask: Who is the current Roman Emperor? Obviously, the Roman Empire doesn’t exist, but if it did, who would be the claimant to the Imperial throne? Explore with me the very convolu…
On March 23, 1989, two electrochemists from the University of Utah, Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, took part in a press conference where they announced to the world that they had achieved sustainable, tabletop nuclear fusion. The events which followed we…
In most sports, there are always debates about who is the greatest of all-time. Baseball can argue about Babe Ruth vs Willie Mays. Basketball can argue about LeBron James vs Michael Jordan. However, there is one sport where there is absolutely, positively no d…
If you are from Hungary, you have probably heard the story of Károly Takács. If you aren’t from Hungary, you probably haven’t, but probably should.
On May 8, 1980, officials from the World Health Organization announced that smallpox, the disease which had ravaged humanity across the world for millennia, had been eradicated. Over the last century before the eradication of smallpox, it is estimated to have …
In 1908, in the middle of the Siberian wilderness, near the Tunguska River, an explosion took place which was equivalent in size to the detonation of a 5 megaton nuclear bomb. But it wasn’t a nuclear bomb. Such things didn’t even exist then. It was a mystery t…
The Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, Turkey is one of the largest, oldest, and most significant buildings in the world. It has served as a holy place for three different religions and has been the focal point for two different empires. Almost, 1,500 years after its c…
The Electoral College is a lot like figure skating. People only care about it every four years. Unlike figure skating, people tend to have a lot of opinions on the subject. Learn more about the past, present, and possible future of the Electoral College on thi…
Robert Smalls was born a slave in 1839 in Beaufort, South Carolina. From that humble beginning, he went on to become a war hero, a ship captain, a presidential advisor, and a member of the US House of Representatives. However, he is best known for one of the m…
If you ask most Americans what makes up the United States, they would tell you the 50 states plus the District of Columbia. They would be right. Mostly. Ever since the founding of the country, the United States has also had territories. Territories have often …
There are many things which have been called ancient mysteries. These are products or techniques which were used in the past which have since been forgotten or lost. Most of these things have been rediscovered, and usually in a way that was better than what or…
In 2002 the BBC did a poll where they named the top 100 Britons in history. It had many people you have probably heard of, including Isaac Newton, Princess Diana, John Lenon, and Queen Victoria. The person who was ranked #2, however, is someone that many peopl…
Have you wanted to get away from it all? I mean really, really, really, REALLY get away from it all? Then I have got the place for you. Point Nemo. Point Nemo is literally the most remote place on planet Earth. Learn more about Point Nemo and other poles of in…
Once again it is time to investigate the stories which are interesting, but not big enough to justify their own show. It is time for another potpourri episode. This time the common theme is cold, ice, and frozen temperatures. These stories may seem unbelievabl…
Today, GPS devices that can determine where you are in the world have become ubiquitous. In fact, there is a very good chance that the device you are using to listen to this podcast has a GPS receiver in it. GPS is used for a wide variety of applications all o…
You have probably heard the expression “All roads lead to Rome”. Well, it isn’t just a pithy saying to reference how you can take many paths to reach the same goal. It has a very literal meaning and its origin comes from a monument that still, sort of, exists …
In 1978, a Soviet helicopter pilot flying over the forests of Siberia made an incredible discovery. Not far from the border of Mongolia, up the side of a mountain, he saw a clearing and signs of human habitation. The location was far removed from any other hum…
Located approximately 100km east of Rotterdam, the city of Nijmegen is a mid-sized Dutch city situated on the Waal river that few people outside of the Netherlands are familiar with. For the last several years, every single day regardless of the weather, peopl…
When we think of what made human beings into humans beings, one of the first things which come up is the discovery of fire. The control and use of fire is one of the earliest things which our ancestors did which separated us from other apes and began us on the…
In the course of doing research for shows, I often come across interesting facts that wouldn’t really make for an entire episode. They are really interesting, but I’m not sure how I could turn it into even a short daily podcast like this one. So, the solution …
The currency in the United States is the dollar. You probably already knew that. It is also the name of the currency in over 20 other countries including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore. What is a dollar exactly, and why is that the name of the c…
For the last 300 years, a debate has raged between mathematicians about who should be credited with the invention of calculus: Sir Isaac Newton or Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz. The sides of the debate have mostly been based on geography with English mathematicia…
We are often told that schools are where you learn how to think, not what to think. Sadly, almost no school curriculum deals directly with logic and the closely related subject of logical fallacies. Fallacies are all around us. Just read something online or wa…
At the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, Dick Fosbury won the Gold Medal in the men’s high jump. He did it by jumping an Olympic record 2.24 meters or 7 feet, four inches. What was remarkable about his accomplishment wasn’t the height he jumped, but how it did it.…
Thomas Edison is often credited with the invention of the light bulb. Yet, nothing could be further from the truth. If there is any modern invention that really can’t be attributed to a single person, it would be the incandescent lightbulb. Learn about the his…
Eliud Kipchoge is unquestionably the greatest marathon runner in history. He’s won an Olympic Gold Medal, holds the world’s record, and has won 12 of the 13 marathons he has ever entered. However, there was one accomplishment that had been out of reach for Kip…
Today the world can communicate with text, images, audio, and video at the speed of light. Most of this is done via undersea fiber optic cables which connect the various continents to each other. All of this modern long-distance communication has its start wit…
Many people think that politics and elections in the United States are the most controversial they have ever been. History, however, begs to differ. Perhaps the oddest and most controversial presidential election in American history was the election of 1824. I…
People didn’t travel much in the ancient world. But, for those who did they developed the ancient equivalent of guidebooks. These were often lists of manmade sites and attractions which any traveler should take the time to see. Over time, one such Greek list w…
The Roman Catholic Papacy is one of the oldest institutions in the world, second only to the Chrysanthemum Throne in Japan. Since its inception, there have been 266 popes, and a couple of anti-popes as well. The pope is not only the head of a religion but also…
Here is a question you’ve probably never bothered to think about before….What is the oldest man made object orbiting the earth? Which, if any, of the really early satellites are still whizzing around up in space? It turns out, the fourth satellite ever put in …
Our ability to measure time is one of the fundamental things which makes us human. We’ve gone from very crude and inexact measures of time to time measurements which are so accurate that it would take billions of years to lose a single second. This increased a…
Pandemics can be world-changing events. The aftermath of a pandemic can shape societies and topple empires. Whether it's the flu, smallpox, cholera, or the bubonic plague, these pandemics have killed more people than all the wars in human history. However, pan…
Everyone is probably familiar with Murphy’s Law which says that “Anything which can go wrong will go wrong.” However, there are many such laws, known as eponymous laws, which are sayings, adages, or truisms, which have been attributed to people over the years.…
While different countries may debate as to what sport should really be called ‘football’, the reality is that the word football describes a broad family of sports all of whom have a very similar background and origin. Just like species with a common ancestor c…
The Latin Alphabet has become the most widespread system of writing in the world. Its origins can be traced back thousands of years to Ancient Romans and to civilizations before that. It is probably the single biggest thing that we use today which originated i…
Everyone loves french fries. It is one of the few things which most people can agree on in the world today. The average American consumes over 16 pounds of them every year, and they have become a staple part of the cuisine in countries all over the world. Yet,…
On May 31, 2020, Irene Triplett passed away at the age of 90. Her life was rather unremarkable save for one important fact: she was the last person who received a pension from the United States government from the US Civil War. Find out how a woman who died tw…
If there is one song almost everyone knows it is Happy Birthday to You (yes, that is the actual title of the song, even though everyone just calls it Happy Birthday). Not only has the song been sung at countless children’s birthday parties, but it has also bee…
The border between the United States and Canada is the longest border between any two countries in the world. The total length of the land border is 8,891 kilometers or 5,525 miles long. In addition to being the longest border in the world, it is also the long…
The longbow was one of the most devastating weapons in medieval Europe. It was a weapon that could launch projectiles hundreds of yards and pierce the heaviest of armor. It was the battlefield trump card to heavy armored cavalry. No country adopted and mastere…
Which person can be credited with having saved the most human lives in history? There might not be a direct answer to that question, but one person whose name always comes up is that of Normal Borlaug. Borlaug has been called “Humanity’s Forgotten Benefactor” …
Of the 193 countries in the United Nations, exactly three haven’t adopted the widespread use of the metric system: Myanmar, Liberia, and the United States of America. Of those three, the US is the country that really stands out. It has the biggest economy in t…
In the Roman Republic, men of senatorial rank could compete for political offices which were placed in a set order and had to be earned sequentially. This hierarchy was known as the Cursus Honorum. The Cursus Honorum was the basis of political and social life …
North America and Europe have much which separates them culturally as well as geographically. One of the biggest differences is in the area of sports. Not just which sports we play, but in how sports are organized. Many people on either side of the Atlantic ha…
Lis Hartel was a Danish equestrian competitor in the 1940s and 1950s. She competed in the 1952 Olympics and the 1956 Olympics and she won medals at both. However, her Olympic medals are just the starting point of her fascinating and inspirational story. Learn …
Each of the 50 states in the United States has a unique history. 13 of them were originally British Colonies. Some of them were former Spanish or French territory. Most of them were officially US territories before they became states. A few, however, were actu…
Ask most Muslims what the holiest site is in Islam, and they would all obviously tell you it is the Kaaba at the Great Mosque of Mecca. Ask most Christians what the holiest site is in Christianity, and you might get a blank stare or at least several different …
For eight seasons, the TV show Dexter showed the fictional life of a crime solving forensics expert who just so happened to have been a serial killer who killed serial killers. This got me wondering, has there ever been a real life Dexter? A killer, or even a …
The ancient Romans had a practice called Damnatio Memoriae, which was to banish someone’s memory from public life. It was also sometimes known as oblivion. It called for the complete deletion of the person’s name or image from all statues, inscriptions, coins,…
Sports history is littered with really bad teams. The 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers didn’t win a single game and wound up losing 26 in a row. The 2012 Charlotte Bobcats went 7-59 for a .106 winning percentage. The 1899 Cleveland Spiders set a record for futility i…
One of my dirty secrets is that I’m a fan of pro wrestling. Whenever I tell people this the first thing I inevitably hear is, “you know it's fake right?” This idea that people think professional wrestling is real comes from the concept that wrestling insiders …
Pablo Escobar was the biggest drug lord the world has ever known. At the height of his power, he had a near-monopoly on cocaine trade in the United States. He had a peak inflation-adjusted net worth of $60 billion dollars. He was personally responsible for tho…
Traditionally, the royal families of Europe would arrange marriages amongst their children to establish alliances and bonds between their houses. While this really isn’t done that much anymore, it also wasn’t that long ago that it was done. One monarch, in par…
Boxing used to be one of the most popular sports in the world. A world championship bout would draw millions of people to their radios or televisions and could pack the largest stadiums. Since then, it has waned in popularity in no small part due to the confus…
Have you ever been told to follow the chain of command or else? In most organizations with a hierarchy or with a bureaucracy, there is a set way in which things have to be done. If you have a suggestion or a complaint, you have to go to your immediate superior…
For many people, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is the measure of the health of the overall stock market. In reality, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is really just the performance of a collection of 30 blue-chip stocks. The index was created in 1896 and ba…
The highest and most prestigious award in the United States military is the Medal of Honor. It is awarded for only acts of extreme valor and bravery. Established during the Civil War in 1863, it has been awarded 3,506 times. If you read through the list of Med…
The greatest fire in American history, in terms of loss of life, occurred in the town of Peshtigo, Wisconsin in 1871. Most people haven’t heard of it, and even people who live in the region today aren’t aware of the disaster which happened in their own backyar…
At its peak, the British Empire covered 23% of the world’s population and 24% of the Earth’s landmass. By either measure, it was the largest empire in the history of the world. Since then…..well, let’s just say the Empire has seen better days. While the vast m…
For years a story had circulated that the rock and roll group Van Halen had a contract that required that a bowl of M&Ms be left backstage wherever they performed, with all the brown M&Ms removed. If there were any brown M&Ms in the bowl, they would use it as …
In 1927, Professor Thomas Parnell of the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia created an experiment to demonstrate to his students the concept of viscosity and how some substances which appear to be solids are actually liquids. That experiment is st…
In a single 6 second period in 1968, Bob Beamon completely rewrote the record books in track and field. His gold medal-winning long jump at the Mexico City Olympics not only set a world’s record, but it added a new word to the English dictionary.
Nigel Richards is unquestionably the greatest Scrabble player in history. The 52-year-old Kiwi is a five-time world champion, and the only player ever to win more than once. He is a five-time United States Champion and has won more major tournament titles than…
After the end of WWII in Europe, General Dwight Eisenhower was appointed the military governor of the American Zone in Germany. During his travels around Germany, he noticed that the German autobahn was really good. His respect for the German highways later be…
Poor Pluto. It was totally unknown, then it was a planet, and now it’s not a planet anymore. This change in the status of planets isn’t the first time such a thing has happened. Since the dawn of history, the number of things we call a planet has gone up and d…
What would happen if a world leader were to totally disappear? As in, the leader of a major country was to just vanish into thin air, without a trace? Such a thing actually happened 50 years ago when a nation’s prime minister disappeared and his body was never…
If you answer that question, most likely you are giving an answer based on a calendar that goes all the way back to one put in place by Julius Caesar. Caesar’s calendar, aka the Julian Calendar, was pretty good, but it developed problems over time, so it was m…
In the aftermath of the horrors of WWI, many people in Europe wanted to find a better future going forward. A future of peace and prosperity, where energy, food, and jobs would be available for everyone. One man from Germany named Herman Sörgel had a VERY ambi…
In a previous episode of the podcast, I touched on how it was difficult to pin down the date in which the United States actually became independent. In the case of the United States, it was a matter of pinning down when we wanted to define independence. Was it…
Everyone knows who Neil Armstrong is and why he is famous. Being the first person to set foot on the moon has placed him in a unique position in world history, and he is a name that people will probably remember for thousands of years. But Apollo 11 was not hi…
In the world of sports, most people enjoy very close fought, exciting games that go down to the wire. If you were to take a poll on what the best games or matches in history were in any given sport, it would probably involve a close score with a last-second vi…
The British Crown is unquestionably the best-known monarchy in the world. As with all monarchies, there is a strict line of succession featuring many names you’ve probably heard of: Prince Charles, Prince William, and little Prince George. However, the rules r…
If you look at the list of officer ranks in the United States armed forces, there are 10 ranks listed which are held today They go from Second Lieutenant all the way up to the rank of General, which is the four-star variant of the rank.
There have been 5 acknowledged presidential elections in US history where the winner of the popular vote did not win in the electoral college. However, there is a very good argument to be made that there is a sixth election that should be added to that list. T…
Jessie Ownes was the world record holder in the men’s 100m dash and won the gold medal at the 1936 Olympics. Usain Bolt is the current world record holder in the men’s 100m and won 3 gold medals in the event. This episode is going to try and answer an impossib…
This episode is about nothing.
Bluffing is one of the most important aspects of playing poker. In any strategic game, in fact, deception can be critical to success. Warfare is no different. Deceiving an enemy can often mean the difference between winning and losing. Between life and death. …
Before we created time zones, every village, town, and city had their own local time. You’d set the town’s clock according to when the sun was at its highest point each day, and everything was fine. Eventually, life got faster. Trains began moving between town…
Rutherford Birchard Hayes was the 19th president of the United States. He is famous for being the second person to win the presidency without winning the popular vote, and he won in the electoral college by a single vote. The whole election was so shady, he ea…
This episode is the story of a man, who if you don’t know his name, you probably should: Joe Medicine Crow. Joe Medicine Crow was a scholar, an author, a historian, a spokesperson, and a warrior. In fact, he was the last person to have earned the title of War …
Major League Baseball has a long history of bad marketing ideas. From 10 cent beer night to baseball bat night, to giving fans balls they can throw on to the field as they entered the stadium, baseball has a long list of horrible ideas to bring people into the…
Every so often, an idea comes along that is so simple, yet so profound that you smack yourself in the head for not having thought of it yourself. Even more rare is such an idea that can have global implications. An idea that can create empires, topple kingdoms…
The Mona Lisa is unquestionably the most famous painting in the world. Heck, it is probably the most famous work of art in the world. Yet the reason why it is so famous is due to an event which happened on the 21st of August 1911. It was wasn’t for the events …
2,000 years ago the Han Empire in China and the Roman Empire in Europe were the two greatest empires in the world. Between them, they covered an enormous amount of the Earth’s land and a large percentage of the world’s population. But were these two great empi…
You probably heard the expression that something is “the greatest thing since sliced bread”. Well did you ever wonder what the greatest thing was before sliced bread? Or why we measure greatness in terms of sliced bread? Well, there's an answer to these questi…
If you wanted to know how many countries there were in the world it should be a pretty easy thing to find out. Go to a map, count all the countries, and voila! However, it isn't even remotely close to being that simple. Defining what is a country is extremely …
You probably couldn’t think of two things which are further apart than the character James Bond and the vegetable broccoli. Yet, in a not so roundabout way, there is a very direct connection between the two. In fact, if it wasn’t for broccoli, we might never h…
The 3rd Olympic Games held in 1904 in St. Louis, Missouri was unquestionably the greatest train wreck of an Olympics ever held. In fact, the Olympics in ancient Greece were probably better organized and better attended than the 1904 Olympics. Nothing quite exe…
Every year on July 4th Americans celebrate their independence. The fireworks, parades, and cookouts have been a tradition for over 200 years. But why do we celebrate it on July 4th and did America really even become independent on July 4th, 1776? Have we been …
Question: Who is the most dominant athlete of all time? It's an interesting question and one which has started endless pub debates. Is that a basketball player like Michael Jordan, a baseball player like Babe Ruth, or a soccer player like Lionel Messi? Or mayb…
How a man born 230 years ago still has living grandchildren in the year 2020.
The Byzantine Empire was one of the greatest empires in world history, yet at no point was there ever an empire which went by that name.
Content, Artwork and advertising within this podcast is not owned or affiliated with Sound Carrot.
No similar shows for this age just now.
Sound Carrot is your source for Family Podcast Discovery. Verified awesome, 0% boring.
Distraction free website, no flashing banners or adverts to steal your attention.
(Some shows do contain their own ads however).
At first I made this site for my kids, but like any dad I got a little over excited. I hope you find it as useful as they do.
Whether you want to listen to them together in the car, or alone in your room - the content is all safe for younger ears.
