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…
On the morning of November 1, 1755, one of the most devastating natural disasters in European history struck Lisbon, Portugal. A powerful earthquake destroyed large parts of the city, while fires and a massive tsunami followed, turning the catastrophe into a disaster of unprecedented scale. The event became known as the Great Lisbon Earthquake of…
Few diseases have changed modern society as profoundly as HIV/AIDS. Since AIDS was first recognized in the early 1980s, the epidemic has claimed millions of lives, transformed public health, challenged governments, and changed how the world thinks about infectious diseases, sexuality, discrimination, and medical research. But HIV did not suddenly appear in the 1980s. Its…
Sexually transmitted infections have existed for thousands of years, long before modern medicine understood bacteria, viruses or how infections spread. Ancient physicians described unusual genital symptoms, painful urination, sores and discharges, but they often interpreted them through the medical beliefs of their time. This raises an important historical question: What was the first sexually transmitted…
Condoms are among the oldest forms of birth control in human history. Today, they are widely recognized as a simple and effective method of preventing pregnancy and reducing the transmission of sexually transmitted infections. But the modern condom is the result of centuries of experimentation. Who invented the first condom? The answer is not as…
Nigeria’s history of armed robbery contains the stories of several notorious figures whose names became deeply associated with fear, violence and insecurity. Among the lesser-known names remembered in accounts of Nigeria’s robbery era is Babatunde Folorunsho, a figure associated with the wave of armed robbery that troubled parts of the country during the decades after…
Fraud has a long and complicated history in Nigeria. Long before the rise of the internet, mobile phones and social media, Nigerian fraudsters were already using letters, telephones and personal networks to deceive people and obtain money. One of the most famous forms of Nigerian fraud became known internationally as “419,” a reference to Section…
Cultism in Nigerian universities is one of the country’s most persistent and controversial social problems. What began in the 1950s as a student movement associated with intellectual ideals, brotherhood and resistance to oppression eventually evolved, in some cases, into secret societies linked to violence, intimidation, rivalry and criminal activity. The transformation did not happen overnight….