History
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Read more: Milton Cooper to QAnon: How Behold a Pale Horse Shaped Modern Conspiracy Culture
On a November night in 2001, in the high desert of Arizona, a peculiar chapter of American conspiracy lore came to a violent end. Milton William “Bill” Cooper—an ex-Navy radio broadcaster turned author—died in a shootout with sheriff’s deputies on his own property, guns blazing. Cooper had often declared he would never be taken alive,…
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Read more: The History of Miniature Mt. Fuji Shrines
In a quiet corner of a Tokyo neighborhood, tucked behind the gates of a Shinto shrine stands a small mound of rocks and earth shaped unmistakably like the cone of Mount Fuji. These are miniature Mt. Fuji mounds, known as fujizuka, and they are far more than just playgrounds. They represent a link across centuries…
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Read more: How Beer Domesticated Humans
Imagine a time in prehistory when humans stumbled upon a happy accident: a mash of wild grains left in a pot that turned into a fizzy, mildly intoxicating brew. The standard story of civilization suggests that our ancestors first domesticated grains to fill their bellies with bread, and only later discovered the pleasant side effect…
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Read more: Weapons: America’s Dark Obsession with Witch Hunts
Weapons is one of biggest horror films of the year and the Junji Ito-esque picture opens up a conversation about the nature of witch hunts. The film takes place in a quiet Pennsylvania town where 17 children vanish into the cold darkness without a trace. Panic grips the community. Neighbors cast suspicious eyes at those…
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Read more: How Did Escape Artists, Strongmen and Acrobats Become Superheroes?
A crowd gathers under the bright stripes of the circus tent, hearts pounding as a man wrapped in chains struggles inside a water tank. Minutes feel like hours… submerged… entombed in impossible knots of metal. Just when it seems no human could survive even a second longer, he bursts free, arms raised in triumph as…
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Read more: Who Invented the Wheel? Parallel Thinking in the Ancient World
The wheel is so fundamental to human life that it’s hard to imagine a world without it. Wheels carry us across distances, they spin our pottery, they even form part of our metaphors for civilization and progress. We speak of the “wheels of time” and the “great wheel of life.” Yet, when we turn back…
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Read more: Lost Technology of the Indus Valley?
In the arid plains of the Indus Valley, nearly five millennia ago, a Bronze Age civilization built cities with straight streets, brick houses, and baths that rival modern pools. This ancient society – often referred to as the Harappan or Indus Valley Civilization – was remarkably advanced for its time. Yet in recent years, it…
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Read more: Buckminster Fuller: Geometry, Design, and the Imagination
Buckminster Fuller was a thinker who saw patterns where others saw only sky and stone. He became an inventor, architect, and polymath of the Space Age. Fuller famously called our planet “Spaceship Earth,” emphasizing that humanity is a crew on just one ship hurtling through space without an operator’s manual. This poetic metaphor – Earth…
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Read more: Atomic Dreams and Radiant Nightmares: Nuclear Tourism, from Las Vegas to Chernobyl
The year is 1953. In a Nevada desert, before dawn, a crowd of eager onlookers gathered on hotel rooftops and hilltops, wearing protective goggles as if they were theater-goers awaiting the rise of a curtain. The stage, stretching beyond Las Vegas’s neon glow, is a vast expanse of sagebrush and sand. Silence – then a…
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Read more: How the Wild West Conquered Imagination: Buffalo Bill’s Enduring Legacy
William “Buffalo Bill” Cody stood in the center of a grand arena, the crack of a whip echoing under canvas and sky. Around him, a spectacle unfolded: cowboys galloping with wild whoops, Lakota warriors (some of them actual veterans of Little Bighorn) circling in full headdress, and the thunder of hooves as bison charged across…
