So you and your significant other have been dating for a while, and you’ve finally decided to pop the question. Well the first thing you’re going to need is a ring, right? Preferably diamond, and costing the equivalent of three months’ salary? After all it’s traditional, isn’t it? Never mind that this so-called ‘tradition’ is less than 100 years old, invented by diamond giant DeBeers in the 1930s to sell more surprisingly common diamonds – that’s good enough for you, damn it! But now comes the tricky part: what cut of diamond to buy? Oval? Pear? Cushion? Heart? Princess? And what mounting? An ..read more

On Christmas Day, 1914, the guns of the Western Front suddenly fell silent. All along the line, tens of thousands of soldiers lay down their weapons, climbed out of their trenches, and wandered into no-man’s land. Men who just hours ago had been actively trying to kill each other suddenly began fraternizing like old friends, exchanging food and gifts, recovering and burying each others’ dead, singing Christmas carols, and even playing football matches. But as the sun came up the following morning, the troops returned to their trenches and the shelling and fighting resumed once more. The Chris ..read more

In the heart of Rome stands one of the Eternal City’s most famous and well-preserved ancient monuments: the Pantheon. Constructed during the reign of Emperor Hadrian in the Second Century C.E, the building has been in near-continuous use for two millennia, first as a temple dedicated to the Olympian Gods, and then as a Catholic Basilica. Home to exquisitely preserved Roman architecture and the tombs of such luminaries as the artist Raphael and King Vittorio Emanuele II, the Pantheon has inspired the design of buildings around the world and remains one of Rome’s most popular tourist attraction ..read more

When we think of Sparta, the first thing that comes to mind is the Spartan warrior. Unlike other historical warrior peoples like the Samurai, the Spartan warriors were pretty close to our imagined conception of them. They were manly warriors who were very muscular, fought wearing red capes, and holding big shields. They were the face of Sparta, to the point that we often don’t realize that Sparta is not a state, but the capital of the region of Lakedemonia and the only city in which the warriors were permitted to live, hence their description as Spartans. Today, the Spartans are remembered as ..read more

On the first of September, 1939, nearly 1.5 million troops, 2,750 tanks, and 2,300 aircraft of Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich stormed over the border into Poland. We all know what happened next: despite declaring war in solidarity, Poland’s allies Britain and France stood by and did nothing as Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union overran and occupied the country in only five weeks. What followed was a seven-month period of relative calm known as the “Phoney War”, which was finally broken in the spring of 1940 when the Germans overran Denmark, Norway, France, and the Low Countries in quick succession ..read more

Grosse Île lies 50km east of Quebec City, one of 21 islands in the middle of the St. Lawrence River. Though its name means “Big Island” in French, Grosse Île is barely two kilometres square, home to a small collection of buildings from its days as a quarantine station for Irish immigrants arriving in Canada. Designated a National Historic Site in 1974, today the island is open to tourists and hosts a museum, guided walking tours, and other activities. Yet this seemingly idyllic little island holds a dark secret. During the Second World War, a team of Canadian scientists used Grosse Île as a s ..read more

In the mid-19th century, the Austrian Empire, which stretched for over a thousand miles (1600 km) from Italy to Ukraine, was a place of contradictions. The ruling patriarch, Minister of the Interior Baron Alexander von Bach, was on the one hand something of a despot, abolishing public trials, reducing the freedom of the press and imprisoning political opponents. Conversely, his rule also saw the relaxing of economic laws, the demise of internal custom duties and peasants freed from their feudal obligations. It was during this time, in the small village of Smiljan, situated within the Emp ..read more

If you are like many parents watching your children’s booster seats slide around while they hop into the vehicle and otherwise wonder what precisely is the way you’re supposed to incorporate the seatbelt around the bits so it’s properly positioned on the kids (we’ll get into how to always do this one correctly later in this video), or lord help you if you have your kids buckle themselves and watch as they somehow find a completely different way to position things each and every time, you may have found yourself wondering if this more complicated and expensive way to get children safely secure ..read more

History often remembers the great men of each era, their very public accomplishments, and the trials and tribulations they may or may not have gone through to get there, sometimes to the extreme. What’s often forgotten in many cases is the men generally didn’t do any of it alone. For most, there was their partner in life beside them supporting them through it all. Beyond such aphorisms as “Behind every great man, you’ll find a great woman”, as Ben Franklin noted in his June 25, 1745 “Old Mistresses Apologue”, “It is the Man and Woman united that make the complete human Being. Separate, she wa ..read more

If ever there was a living embodiment of the Roaring 20s, it was Eben Byers. The scion of a New York steelmaking fortune, Byers indulged in every hobby and luxury his wealth and social status allowed. He kept luxury homes across the United States, collected fine art, owned stables of racehorses, held titles in trap shooting, and even won the national amateur golf championship in 1906. He was also an infamous ladies’ man, earning the nickname “Foxy Grandpa” from his classmates at Yale University. But in October 1930, this charmed life came to an abrupt end when Byers began losing weight and su ..read more