What happens when the awesome - and occasionally awful - power of nature snatches light away from those who depend on it to feel safe? This question was answered in a most dismaying way in July 1977 when New York City was plunged into darkness for over 24 hours following a thunderstorm. New Yorkers across the city quickly learned that without the light, they could fall prey to looting and violence of just about every kind imaginable.

While the Lincoln Administration and most Northerners were preoccupied with trying to capture Richmond in the summer of 1861, it would be the little known Ulysses S. Grant who delivered the Union’s first major victories, over a thousand miles away from Washington. Grant’s new commission led to his command of the District of Southeast Missouri, headquartered at Cairo, after he was appointed by “The Pathfinder”, John C. Fremont, a national celebrity who had run for president in 1856. 

To many, the quest to obtain the secrets and truths of the universe is one nearly impossible to complete. More importantly, this broad topic comes with an unending assortment of answers. For some, the secret to life is success. To others, it is conquering one's innermost fears. While there are those who simply do not care enough to venture an answer, there are also those who believe they, and they alone, knew the real meaning behind life.

What made Masada qualitatively different from most of the battles Rome fought was not just the difficulty the Legions had in retaking control of it with incredibly disproportionate military equipment and numbers, but also the actions of the Judean defenders. In the final hours of the battle, just as the Romans were about to breach the walls of the city, the defenders gathered together and committed mass suicide, rather than being killed or taken captive by the Romans.

For millennia, people considered dragons to be real, and the vivid lore of dragons has touched societies from Central America to Europe, and from Egypt to China. The popularity of dragons can easily be assessed by the number of motion pictures that include them as an integral part of their narrative, from the friendly dragons of children’s cartoons to the monsters being bred underground to unleash their horrors on humanity. 

When people think about unidentified flying objects (UFOs), they tend to think of flying discs piloted by gray beings with large heads and enormous eyes. They tend to think that these sightings only started relatively recently and that belief in UFOs is some sort of modern religion brought on, perhaps, by the very justifiable fears of a nuclear age. But a study of the phenomenon quickly reveals that humanity has been seeing UFOs since the beginning of recorded history and perhaps a lot longer than that.

Project Gemini is a neglected part of the US space program. Sandwiched between the excitement of Project Mercury and the sending of the first American astronauts to space and the euphoria of the Apollo Moon landings, Gemini was a step forward rather than a dramatic leap. However, this project achieved many important firsts, including the first spacewalk, the first rendezvous and docking between two spacecraft, the first flights of more than one week’s duration, and many more. 

The 19th century saw the rise of one of the largest, most powerful empires of the modern era. The sun never set on the British Empire, whose holdings spanned the globe, in one form or another. Its naval supremacy linked the Commonwealth of Canada with the colonies in South Africa and India, and through them trade flowed east and west. An integral but underutilized part of this vast trade network included China, a reclusive Asian kingdom closed off from the Western world that desired none of its goods.

Do you know the WHOLE story of the State of New York, from the first human inhabitants to the years it was a Dutch colony? The state produced four presidents, was the first in many areas, and created its own state of mind. What made New York into the state it has become? Was there something unique about Manhattan Island? Was there something about the people that made them so successful? Why is it called the Empire State? Why was the Erie Canal so important?

When people think about unidentified flying objects (UFOs), they tend to think of flying discs piloted by gray beings with large heads and enormous eyes. They also might believe that these sightings only started relatively recently and that belief in UFOs is some sort of modern phenomenon brought on, perhaps, by the very justifiable fears of a nuclear age. But a study of UFOs quickly reveals that people have been reporting the existence of unidentified flying objects since the beginning of recorded history, and perhaps a lot longer than that.

Thanks to countless written sources and corroborating archaeological evidence, the chronology of the ancient Near East is fairly well-known by modern scholars, but as with most periods in history, there are exceptions. In ancient Mesopotamia’s otherwise well-documented history, there were two dynasties that historians and archaeologists are only now beginning to understand: the Sealand I, or First Sealand Dynasty (c. 1742-1460 BCE), and the Sealand II, or Second Sealand Dynasty (c. 1025-1005 BCE).

One of Hitler’s most notorious henchmen, Hermann Göring was the bulldog who obediently followed orders while destroying countless lives. In his early career as the leader of the SA, also known as the Brownshirts or Stormtroopers, Göring played a pivotal role in suppressing any and all opposition to the Nazi Party. He was also implicated in the Reichstag Fire of 1933, an event that resulted in the suspension of civil liberties in Germany and greatly aided in the consolidation of Nazi control.

Few ideas have been as influential in the development of moral, political, legal, and economic thought in the broad Western tradition as the idea of natural law. It is also true that the understanding of natural law and its influence on specific norms and institutions—rights, justice, private property, rule of law, limited government—is not anywhere near as widespread in the 21st century as it was just 100 years ago.

There exists, an indispensable subculture based within a 500-mile radius of the coastal South Atlantic states and Sea Islands. These culture bearers, who refer to themselves as the Gullah Geechee, or the “Gullah” for short, are the descendants and rightful heirs of the once-shackled slaves who resided in these parts. As the guardians and torch holders of the incredible legacy left behind by their persevering ancestors, the modern Gullah spare no effort in preserving the inherently unique customs and traditions, complete with their own creole tongue.

The Pleistocene spans a period from around 2.5 million years ago (mya) to just over 12,000 years ago, and it was an epoch of enormous change on Earth, mainly characterized by climate changes involving fluctuations between periods of extreme heat and long periods of glaciation. This period is commonly known as the Ice Age, despite the fact there were actually a number of separate periods of cold. The Pleistocene Era: The History of the Ice Age and the Dawn of Modern Humans looks at the development of the era, what life on Earth was like, and the origins of archaic humans.