A Day In History

The Prison of Alcatraz was well renowned as being the toughest prison in the world. From its opening in 1934 to its closure in 1963, it became infamous for its brutal conditions and being impossible to escape from: the life of a prisoner at Alcatraz was tough to say the least. But unlike other maximumsecurity prisons, Alcatraz had a reputation for its brutality. Many prisoners complained that life...

On January 28th, 1986 the world watched in horror as the televised launch of the space shuttle Challenger ended in tragedy when the ship broke apart just 73 seconds later, killing everyone on board. To this day, it remains one of the worst space accidents in history. When the Challenger launched in 1986, there were 7 people on board who had been tasked with deploying a large communications orbital...

A Brief History Of The Man Who Brainwashed America: Edward BernaysWhile no single man can take full credit for the rise of American advertising, Edward Bernays certainly deserves more than most. Known today as “the father of public relations”, Bernays was responsible for campaigns that changed the lives and minds of the American citizen forever: having a hand in everything from political leaders,...

Srinivasa Ramanujan was a self taught mathematical genius who relied on intuition to achieve his success, believing that an equation “has no meaning unless it expresses a thought of God.” While his colleagues meticulously reached their results via proofs, Ramanujan made significant contributions to the theory of numbers, infinite series, continued fractions, elliptic functions and many more based...

A Brief Demonizing History Of Shell Shocked SoldiersShell shock can take many forms but is a reaction to the helplessness felt by those in a war zone and can manifest in many different ways, including panic, violence, anger or an inability to perform basic tasks like sleeping, walking or talking. Now classed as a type of PTSD, the term has been retired in medical circles; but it is still understoo...

A Brief History Of Punishment In Ancient JapanNot much is known about Japan’s history before 4th century AD. Historians have concluded that the ancient Japanese lived in small chiefled villages and were selfsufficient, having little contact with others outside their clan. This changed as the population grew and, by the Kofun period, the earliest murmurings of government were established. Our earli...

A Brief "Dark" History Of Freak ShowsFreak shows were traveling carnivals of people with physical disabilities and abnormalities. They would traverse the country, usually under an exploitative ringmaster, as acts for people to gawk and marvel at. Typical performers in a freak show would include: a bearded lady, conjoined twins, dwarves, heavily tattooed or pierced individuals, or anyone with an ex...

A Brief "Dirty" History of Personal HygieneDid you know that Egyptians invented toothpaste and mints? Or that the Ancient Chinese believed bathing daily would invite sickness? Or even that the peasants of medieval Europe weren’t quite as gross as you might think? Hello and welcome to today’s video where we get down and dirty with the history of personal hygiene. Let’s go back through the centuries...

A Brief History Of Punishment In Ancient PersiaAlthough the Persians are often seen as the kings of creative punishment, in reality across the ancient world, there was similar brutality in all civilizations. Ancient Persia has seen brutal punishments like Scaphism, Flaying, curicifiction etc. Unfortunately, the Ancient Persians just weren’t that big on writing stuff down. Which means we have to re...

A Brief American History of "The Perfect" Woman Body typeWomen’s bodies and beauty have been scrutinized across centuries, with each culture having different opinions on what the ideal woman would look like. Although the most real and most ideal version of beauty is being happy in the skin you’re in, historically, changing trends of physical appreciation can tell us more about the culture of the t...

A Day In The Life Of Alexander The "NotSo Great"Alexander the Great: tutored by Aristotle, undefeated in battle, creator of one of the largest empires in history, and one of the best leaders the world has ever seen. And all this by age 32.If you are forever immortalized in history as Alexander the Great, then you must have done something pretty good. But although Alexander the Great achieved some...

A Day In The Life Of Rome's Craziest EmperorCaligulaToday we are going to be talking about the tyrannical and brutal rule of the third emperor of the JulioClaudian dynasty: Caligula. Caligula’s real name was Gaius Julius Caesar Germanicus. The name sounds familiar because Caligula was the namesake of the great general Gaius Julius Caesar and Germanicus was the name of his father who had achieved v...

When the Allied forces entered the camps at Auschwitz on January 27, 1945; what they found was a tragic scene of mass extermination the likes of which our world had never witnessed before. After Germany sparked WW2 and invaded Poland, the Schutzstaffel more commonly known as the SS would convert Auschwitz 1 into a prisonerofwar camp. Later on, the construction of Auschwitz 2Birkenau started which...

Throughout history, China has been known as one of the most brutal places to suffer punishment for crimes committed. For examples of the brutality of the Ancient Chinese dynasties, you need to look no further than its code for criminals named the Five Punishments for Slaves. Make sure you don’t miss a single revelation—hit Follow on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Don’t let these echoes fade: turn on n...

Long before Homo sapiens populated the earth, the Neanderthals lived in Eurasia. Now, paleoanthropologists in England and France are using new archeological methods to shed light on some previously unexplained Neanderthal mysteries. Many years before in history, before homo sapiens lived on this planet, the neanderthals populated the earth. Due to the advancement in Paleoanthropology, we more of l...

The Roman Empire ran on slaves. Slavery was such a necessary part of its ecosystem that a massive 1 in 5 citizens in the Roman Empire were enslaved. It was so common in fact, that Emperor Nero was once told by his advisor Seneca that “a proposal was once made in the senate to distinguish slaves from free men by their dress,” but “it then became apparent how great would be the impending danger if o...

The TransAtlantic Slave Trade is one of the most horrific and shameful parts of human history. From 1525 to 1866, an estimated 2.5 million African people were forcibly taken from their homes and shipped halfway across the world to endure lives of brutality and abuse as slaves in the New World. Before they even reached the New World, however, 1 in 5 died because of the horrific conditions aboard th...

In April and May of 1940, thousands of Polish prisoners of war were taken far from their homeland to a secret police prison and a nearby slaughterhouse and shot in the back of the head. The killing was done in an organized and meticulous fashion: most people were taken into a cell that had been padded to prevent sound from escaping, shot in the back of the head, and their bodies taken out through...