Finding the delicate balance between trusting everyone and being distrustful — Have you ever been in a situation where you weren’t sure if you could trust someone, but it turned out that you could? In this day and age, we are taught how important networking is. But how many people in your network can you trust? …

The first European king to set sail for the Holy land was from Norway — In the summer of 1110, the crusaders who were fighting to protect the Kingdom of Jerusalem were worn out. Since the success of the First Crusade, there were few reinforcements. In the scorching summer heat, the Christian defenders at the Acre, a city in present-day Israel, saw a dreaded sight…

Would you dare to try these dishes? — The Romans were responsible for many innovations we take for granted today, like toilets, sewers, concrete, and an extensive system of highways. As strange as it sounds, they also invented many bizarre food dishes that you may find unappetizing. I will walk you through them. Here are seven weird delicacies…

There was a fifth river civilization along with Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, and China — In 1979, just before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, a struggling archaeologist made a spectacular find. He found huge piles of gold in the graves of nomads in Northern Afghanistan. The burials were over four thousand years old, dating from the second and third millennia B.C. It would be a…

The clue lies in the fossils of dead fishes — Scientists have finally found pieces of the asteroid that caused the mass extinction of the dinosaurs. Fossilized fish and a tree from Hell Creek Formation in North Dakota shed light on the mighty lizards’ last days before they died out. NASA scientists described the findings as “mind-blowing.” Until now, we…

A Bronze Age rites of passage in the Steppes involved a gruesome ritual — In the early 1990s, archaeologists, Dr. David Anthony and his wife, Dr. Dorcas Brown, made a shocking discovery in Russia’s Volga region. They found the bones of seven wolves and 51 dogs. There was something strange about them. The archaeologists were shocked to find that someone had cut the canine…

Rags to riches story of a grammar teacher who became the Roman emperor — In Ancient Rome, your birth determined your destiny. Children of the ruling class rose through the ranks to become consuls, senators, and emperors. Commoners had little chance of upward social mobility. But one man defied the odds. He was a grammar teacher who was the son of an ex-slave. In…

Tracing the origins of money — Money is like a sixth sense — and you can’t make use of the other five without it. W. Somerset Maugham Money. We can’t live without it, yet some can’t get enough of it. Somerset Maugham, one of the highest-paid novelists of the 1930s, has a point. …

Was the notorious gangster a do-gooder? — Have you ever paid attention to the expiry dates on milk cartons? I’m sure you have but have you thought about why we need them in the first place? Or where do these dates come from? The answer to these questions concerns a notorious gangster. He is none other than…