Archive
Pieces
No, Einstein Never Failed Math in School
How many times have you heard that Albert Einstein was a mediocre student, even a failure at math, before becoming one of
The Shortest War in History Lasted Only 38 Minutes
Some records you'd rather not hold, and the Anglo-Zanzibar War is undeniably one of them. On August 27, 1896, an armed conflict
Vikings Never Actually Wore Horned Helmets Into Battle
Close your eyes and picture a Viking warrior. Odds are the image that pops up is a bearded man, axe in hand,
Cleopatra was probably not Egyptian, but Greek Macedonian
Whenever Cleopatra VII comes up, the collective imagination almost instantly conjures the image of a typically Egyptian ruler, adorned in gold, wearing
The Great Wall of China is not visible from space?
How many times have you heard that the Great Wall of China is the only human-made structure visible to the naked eye
Napoleon wasn't short — debunking the Napoleon complex myth
Few historical figures have suffered from such a persistent physical caricature as Napoleon Bonaparte, universally pictured in the collective imagination as a
The stubborn myth of the Library of Alexandria burned in a single night
Few historical stories have marked the collective imagination as much as the tale of the great Library of Alexandria being reduced to
When urine served as toothpaste and soap in ancient Rome
It's hard today to imagine brushing your teeth with urine. And yet in ancient Rome, this practice was neither exceptional nor shameful.
Fungi existed millions of years before the first trees
When we picture the first land ecosystems, we tend to imagine primeval forests full of majestic trees, with fungi quietly growing at