Discover the major people, places, civilisations, wars, cultures, and events that shaped world history from ancient times to the modern era.
Few stories in the history of Christianity are as extraordinary as that of Saint Denis of Paris, a Christian missionary traditionally regarded as the first bishop of Paris. According to a centuries-old Christian tradition, Denis was arrested by Roman authorities because of his preaching. He was tortured and eventually taken to a hill outside ancient…
Imagine living in ancient Rome and hearing that the emperor was preparing to give one of the most important political positions in the empire to a horse. It sounds like a joke. But more than 2,000 years ago, Roman writers recorded a remarkable story about Emperor Caligula and his beloved racehorse, Incitatus. According to the…
Few natural forces are as unpredictable and frightening as lightning. A single strike can cause severe burns, cardiac arrest or death within seconds. For most people, being struck once would be an extraordinarily rare event. Roy Cleveland Sullivan experienced it seven times. An American park ranger from Virginia, Sullivan became known as the “Human Lightning…
On December 14, 1650, a 22-year-old woman named Anne Greene was led to the gallows at Oxford Castle in England. She had been convicted of infanticide and sentenced to death by hanging. In the eyes of the law, her fate appeared certain. Greene was hanged in front of a crowd. She remained suspended for around…
On April 15, 2013, thousands of runners and spectators gathered in Boston, Massachusetts, for the annual Boston Marathon. What began as one of the city’s biggest sporting celebrations ended in tragedy when two bombs exploded near the race’s finish line. The attack killed three people, injured more than 500 others and triggered a massive investigation…
On July 20, 1973, the world lost one of its most influential martial artists and film stars. Bruce Lee was only 32 years old when he died suddenly in Hong Kong, just as his international fame was reaching extraordinary heights. His death shocked fans across the world and quickly became surrounded by rumours, conspiracy theories…
In 1926, Italian writer and poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the founder of the Futurist movement, travelled to South America as part of a highly publicised lecture tour. He arrived not simply as a literary celebrity, but as one of Europe’s most controversial cultural figures, a man whose artistic movement celebrated speed, technology, violence, masculinity and…
To modern people, the idea of washing clothes with urine sounds bizarre, even disgusting. Yet in ancient Rome, urine was a valuable household and commercial product. Roman laundries, known as fullonicae, used urine as part of the process of cleaning wool and other fabrics. Far from being a strange ritual, the practice was based on…
Islam is one of the world’s major religions, followed by more than a billion people across every continent. Its origins can be traced to seventh-century Arabia, where a merchant from Mecca named Muhammad began receiving revelations that would eventually form the Quran. Within just a few decades, the religious movement that began in Mecca had…
On November 24, 1971, a man using the name Dan Cooper boarded a Northwest Orient Airlines flight in the United States, bought a one way ticket, and disappeared into history. He would later become known around the world as D. B. Cooper, although that name was actually the result of a media error. What made…