History Fix

Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived. Henry VIII went down in history, not so much for what he accomplished as king of England but for one tantalizing fact - he had six wives. Cathe…

The year is 79 AD. A bustling Roman port city sits nestled at the base of a mountain. Ships bob in the harbor, their nets heavy with fish and crabs to sell at the markets. Already the vendors have ga…

Musket fire, soldiers yelling, chaos. It’s the summer of 1782 and Robert Shurtleff lies groaning on the ground, clutching a gash in his forehead. He’s been shot at least twice. He can feel a musket b…

It’s April 1986. Alarms at the Forsmark Nuclear Power Plant in Sweden start going off unexpectedly, warning of high levels of radiation. Operators are confused. The power plant is fully operational. …

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” or so they say. But, honestly that’s just not true. For all of known history beauty has been defined by society, not the beholder, and the standards have been …

The lost city of Atlantis was said to be an ideal, utopian society, flourishing under the noble leadership of 10 princes who swore an oath to the gods to never let greed, arrogance, or hate interrupt…

Genghis Khan, the man, the myth, the legend was undoubtedly a fierce and ruthless warrior. The New York Times called him “the original bad boy of history” and tales of his conquests have inspired sho…

Abolitionist Olaudah Equiano was captured from his home in Africa as an 11 year old boy while his parents were out working one day. He was stuffed below decks of a slave ship, shackled together lying…

Kings, and queens, monarchs and emperors often rise to the throne by birthright alone. There’s no campaigning, no election, no popular vote, no competition whatsoever. They are simply born with the r…

Towering 450 feet above the Egyptian desert lies the Great Pyramid of Giza, its rugged, crumbling facade a mere ruin of its former glory. It was once clad in blinding white limestone, fit so tightly …

Nikola Tesla was one of the greatest scientific minds of all time. He developed machinery that allowed us to harness the alternating current which is still our main form of electricity to this day. H…

It’s a summer day in Strasbourg, France. The year is 1518. A woman named Frau Troffea steps into the city square and starts to dance. There’s no music and yet she twists and turns for hours while onl…

In 1911 Shipbuilder magazine featured an ocean liner under construction in Belfast, Ireland. It was called Titanic and it was the largest moveable object ever built. With new state of the art technol…

“Downton Abbey” is a popular period drama set in Edwardian England that details the life of the Crawley family, their motley crew of servants and of course Dame Maggie Smith playing the ever witty an…

“Murder is murder whether committed by the villain skulking in the dark or by uniformed men stepping to the strains of martial music. Murder is murder and somebody must answer.” Those are the words o…

In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue. I’m sure you’re familiar with the singsong mnemonic meant for remembering the year Christopher Columbus stumbled upon islands in the Caribbean. This set off a …

Computer science is a field completely dominated by men. Charles Babbage, Alan Turing, Tim Berners-Lee, Steve Jobs, the list goes on and on. But on that list, pretty high up on that list is Ada Lovel…

He was said to embody the devil himself - extraordinarily tall with a wild black beard and hair tied up with lit fuses. His eyes, like embers, burned with a demonic glow and even the fiercest of men …

Roughly 5 stories beneath the streets of Paris you’ll find the bones of over 6 million people stacked in neat rows and arranged in grotesquely intricate designs. The Paris Catacombs attract over 500,…