Ever wonder when a hill becomes a mountain? Well, it turns out that language, like the universe, likes to resist simplicity… So the answer is- it’s complicated. But that’s not very interesting, so let’s dive into it shall we? To begin with, turning to our trusty Merriam-Webster Dictionary we have the following definition of a mountain: “a landmass that projects […]
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2700 years ago or so, the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal was initiating a program to gather copies of all books in his empire to his library. ‘Bookworm’ would be an apt description for him, had books not been made out of clay making them slightly undesirable to worms… Anyway, back to good old Ashurbanipal, he liked to boast about having the […]
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There are very many things in this world that may kill you – in fact, there is almost nothing that cannot – but can your own senses be a danger to you? Is there a noise loud enough to kill you or can you be so assaulted by a bad smell that you never recover from it? The answer to […]
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Ever wonder why the Nazi dominion over Germany was called the “Third Reich” and who the first and second were? Well, wonder no more. To begin with, the phrase “Third Reich” was first mentioned as the title of a book published by Arthur Moeller van den Bruck in 1923. As you might expect given the moniker for the regime caught […]
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Depending on the country you live in, political opinion may be varied, or biased in one direction. In democratic countries, you obviously have the option to actually decide what direction your state should move towards via voting. And while a lot of political parties may opt for a safer middle ground usually more relatable for a wider demographic, there will […]
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We’ve all heard of him. Alexander the Great has been for many centuries a household name in much of the world- an impressive feat for a king who’s been dead for two millenia and reigned only for a little over a decade. In western countries, his defeat of the Persian Empire in the 320s BC has often been depicted as […]
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Inheriting is rarely as fun as films and books would have you believe. Instead of a previously unknown great-aunt who just so happens to deem you the sole heir to her surprisingly large fortune, it usually comes with the death of a close relative and more often than not, strife among the surviving parties. The age-old ‘motive for murder’ trope […]
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The subject of what a political leader in a democracy does after his term has ended and the merits of gracefully resigning from power has been on the news recently. Enter the subject of today’s story which takes place in ancient Rome, at the dawn of the Republic Era. The person in question was Cincinnatus, whose actions in terms of […]
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The American Revolution is one of the historical events that together with things like the French Revolution, among other things, helped usher in the modern era. Americans, on the whole, tend to be proud of this event and focus on it heavily in their school curriculum, as it heralds the birth of their nation and the triumph of a handful […]
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The Crusades are seen as a milestone in European history. Especially through romanticizing eyes, they are often viewed as a heroic age, with legendary tales of pious folk, honor-bound knights, and even epic narratives imbued with mystical and semi-mythological elements, such as the search for the Holy Grail. Modern historians, however, tend to view the crusades more than a little […]
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Regarding the reception of World War II, especially within the educational system of countries that participated in the war, one would expect that many broad facts are common knowledge and, as happens with most all wars in history, each nation biases things a bit to make themselves look better in their own history books, regardless of what actually happened. As […]
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Joseph Stalin was born in December 1878 to a Georgian family and served as the general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union between 1922 and 1952. After the death of Lenin, he initially shared power over the Soviet Union with other officials, but he managed to gradually consolidate his position and by the 1930s became the country’s […]
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After World War II, the German state was utterly destroyed. It was split in four parts, and to top it all, coming face to face with the scale of the atrocities their government and armies committed through public events like the Nürnberg trials. This in combination with the process of de-nazification, which can be seen as a large-scale rehabilitation program, […]
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