WEIRD HISTORY
A new book finds that Hitler relied on a number of drugs to rule Germany, including “crystal meth.” By Philip Perry – Hitler’s charisma, demagoguery, and ability to mobilize Germany behind him have been much written about and discussed. His failed attempt to …
Christmas has many pagan and secular traditions that early Christians incorporated into this new holiday. Mike Colagrossi – – Saturnalia (1783) by Antoine Callet, showing his interpretation of what the Saturnalia might have looked like. Christmas was heavily influenced by the Roman festival …
Michael Irving – Researchers have traced back the evolutionary history of the cocoa tree to a single domestication event 3,600 years ago (Credit: studioM/Depositphotos). It’s kind of hard to imagine life today without chocolate, and now we have a better idea of who …
Big birds hungry for human flesh have been a problem for thousands of years. By Sarah Sloat – In 2012, a video depicting a golden eagle snatching a toddler in Montreal went mega-viral. It proved to be a doctored hoax, but it was …
This fierce all-female army was so ruthless that European colonists called them the Amazons after the merciless warriors of Greek mythology. by Fleur Macdonald – Actors Chadwick Boseman and Michael B Jordan earned high praise for their roles in the 2018 Marvel film …
by Matt Davis – Big Think illustration. Juan (Joan) Pujol García was instrumental in ensuring the success of the Allied invasion of Europe on D Day and, by extension, the Allied victory in the Second World War. But his actions during the war …
by Mike Colagrossi – The Colossus of Rhodes, Wikimedia Commons. The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World were marvels of architecture, human ingenuity, and engineering on a scale that even the greatest artists of contemporary times would have a hard time replicating today. …
Her dramatic death often overshadows her epic life, but it shouldn’t. By Brianna Bibel, Biochemistry, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory – Illustration by Matteo Farinella. The mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher Hypatia is considered the first known female mathematician and one of the “last great …
For centuries, no one could read it. by Sarah Laskow – The papyrus before conservation. University of Basel. At the University of Basel, in Switzerland, the papyrus collection contained a mystery. Most of the papyri had come to the university around 1900, for …
