As ancient civilizations go, the Egyptians are by far one of the more well-known. Their pyramids still stand to this day, and their mummies and sarcophagi pepper our museums, but is there more to them?

It turns out, some aspects of our modern life found their start in Egypt.

10Mathematics

The Egyptians were remarkable at mathematics. The earliest records of geometry come from Egypt, as their geometry specialists were called “arpedonapti.” The arpedonapti used ropes to calculate the area of lands, eventually passing this knowledge to Greece.

Egyptians also worked out efficient ways of performing multiplication and division. While we have various ways to perform such calculations, Egyptians used a more computation-friendly method that involved doubling numbers, a technique we still use in modern-day computing. The above video goes into detail as to how computers and ancient Egyptians come together.

Egyptians also invented basic fractions. Most had 1 on the top (called a “unit fraction”), and more complex fractions (such as “4/7”) had to be represented by adding up several unit fractions.

9Bowling

Egyptians played a game very similar to modern-day bowling.

Archaeologist William Matthews Flinders Petrie found a child’s grave containing crude pins and small marbles and concluded it might have related to bowling, but there was no proof that they were used for such a purpose. More solid evidence can be found in a room near a residential area from the second century. It featured several balls and a lane with a hole in the middle. Some of the balls could fit through the center hole, while others were far too big.

Archaeologists believe it was a competitive game; one person tried to bowl the smaller ball into the hole, while someone on the other side of the lane tried to knock the ball off-course with the larger ones.

8Alphabets

Of course, we don’t use any Egyptian alphabets today, but the idea of a phonetic alphabet (where each symbol represents a sound rather than a whole word) came from Egypt.

Egyptian hieroglyphs used a symbol for each word, but 24 uniliuteral signs were phonetic to pronounce loanwords and foreign words. Due to the complex nature of hieroglyphs, people had to be trained to use them, so Semitic people within Egypt crafted a 22-letter alphabet based on the uniliteral signs. It’s now known as the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet. It was wholly phonetic, with each letter used to construct a larger word—like our own alphabet.

It caught on with Egypt’s neighbors, including the Phoenicians. The Phoenicians would make it their own with an alphabet, simply called the Phoenician Alphabet, which spread around the Near East and Greece through trading. This acted as the foundation for alphabets around the world.

7Paper and Writing

While the Egyptians didn’t discover the paper we use today, papyrus was a huge step up from carving words into stone, both in terms of ease of writing and being lighter to carry around. The Egyptians discovered papyrus (and the reed pen, so they could actually write on it) in 3000 BC. Still, it would take until 500 BC for papyrus to catch hold in the Mediterranean and West Asia. Papyrus would become one of Egypt’s best exports; it was very expensive, and the secrets on how it was made were heavily guarded.

Inspired by Egypt’s work, Europe would eventually move on to parchment. China would invent paper in 100 BC using mulberry bark and hemp rags, using a method that would evolve into today’s technology. While Egypt’s grand invention fell out of use, it gave the world the idea of moving away from stone tablets.

6Wigs

The Ancient Egyptians had a little bit of a dilemma. They didn’t like to have a full head of hair under the heat of the Sun, but they also didn’t want to go totally bald due to both the head skin being roasted by the Sun’s rays and for personal fashion reasons. They needed a temporary head of hair that didn’t trap heat as much as normal hair did but still looked good. The answer, of course, was the wig.

Keeping the heat away wasn’t the only reason the Egyptians adopted the wig. It also protected against head lice. As for what the wigs were made from, the rich and influential could afford to wear wigs made from the real thing—hair, either from themselves or someone else.

5Recorded Medicine

People were treating wounds with all kinds of herbs and ground-up animal parts for a long time. Due to their new and convenient writing methods, however, the Egyptians produced some of the oldest logs we’ve found of both medical procedures and medicine recipes. So far, we’ve found nine separate papyrus logs that talk about how the Egyptians performed their medicine.

One of them, the Edwin Smith papyrus, discusses myriad different wounds on each part of the body and their treatments. It’s unique, as it’s the first historical medical description that doesn’t rely on supernatural or magical forces to treat the wounds, making it scientifically sound—at least, as sound as Egyptian science was at the time. If you’d like to read some of their methods yourself, you can read a translation of the Edwin Smith scroll online.

4Surgery

To go with their new-fangled recorded medicine, the Egyptians hold the title for the civilization with the earliest discovered surgical tools. They were found within the Tomb of Qar, known as “the Physician of the palace and keeper of the secrets of the king.” Kept next to Qar’s head were several bronze surgical tools, each of which sported a hole as if intended to be hung up on a hook.

Of course, given how Egyptians were now writing down their methods and procedures, we can also see written logs of surgery. They detail the removal of cysts and tumors, but more major surgeries that are performed today were probably never performed back then. Given how it was in the very early days of human biology study and anesthetics were still very crude, it’s easy to imagine why.

3Calendar

How we divide the day into hours and minutes and the structure and length of the yearly calendar owe much to pioneering developments in ancient Egypt. Ancient Egypt was run according to three different calendars. The first was a lunar calendar based on 12 lunar months, each of which began on the first day in which the old moon crescent was no longer visible in the East at dawn. This calendar was used for religious festivals.

The second calendar, used for administrative purposes, was based on the observation that there were usually 365 days between the heliacal rising of Serpet. This civil calendar was split into twelve months of 30 days with an additional five epagomenal days attached at the end of the year. These five days became a festival because it was thought to be unlucky to work during that time. A third calendar, which dates back at least to the 4th century BC, was used to match the lunar cycle to the civil year. It was based on 25 civil years, which was approximately equal to 309 lunar months.

2Toothpaste

Methods of keeping the teeth clean of detritus have been around for a while, but the Egyptians invented the first recorded toothpaste specifically created and reported to help oral health. Some Egyptian tombs were even found with toothbrushes within, which consisted of a twig frayed on one end.

Found in papyrus documents, the recipe for an Egyptian-style toothpaste is a drachma (1/100 of an ounce) of rock salt, two drachmas of mint, a drachma of the dried iris flower, and some pepper. A dentist called Heinz Neuman gave this recipe a shot and said that while it made his gums bleed, his mouth definitely felt cleaner afterward.

1Glass

While glass can be found naturally formed around the world, the first proof that people were creating and using glass in crafts can be found back in 3500 BC, in both the Egyptian and the Mesopotamian civilizations, mainly in the form of small glass beads.

The Egyptians would go on to discover an efficient way of making vases, by plunging compacted sand molds into molten glass and rolling the result onto a cooled slab. The earliest Egyptian vases found were dedicated to Pharaoh Thoutmosis III, dating to around 1500 BC. Ancient Egyptians also managed to master the art of making red glass, which was very hard to do due to the glass having to be fired in an environment without oxygen.

Both the Egyptians and the Mesopotamians would spread their methods through trade and conquer, inspiring the Romans to take up the craft.

It’s no secret that we humans love to eat good food and consume refreshing drinks. Not surprisingly, we have made several finds at historical sites that show it’s always been this way. As we continue to uncover our past, we have found the exact treats that people enjoyed throughout time.

10 Royal Tea

Tea is one of the oldest beverages consumed by humans. But for many years, its earliest reference came from a Chinese text dating to 59 BC that vaguely referenced a drink that might have used tea. It wasn’t until January 2016 that the first definitive evidence of tea as an ancient beverage was found.

When archaeologists examined the Han Yangling Mausoleum in Xi’an, which is the tomb of Chinese Jing Emperor Liu Qi who died in 141 BC, they found a leafy substance resembling tea. When tested, the leaves showed two definitive substances in tea: caffeine and theanine.

Even by today’s standards, the tea was of high quality and may have been mostly for royalty like the emperor. Interestingly, the tomb is located far away from where tea is actually grown, meaning that it was prized enough to be both imported and buried in the tombs of important men.

9 Wine Older Than Christ

In 2013, archaeologists uncovered strange findings in the ruins of a 3,700-year-old Canaanite palace in Israel. Forty pots were discovered which appeared to contain complex wines much different from what most people had at the time.

This wine wasn’t an everyday beverage; it was for important, special occasions. Its complexity and diversity of tastes mean that it was reserved for the upper class for their banquets. The wine had long ago dissipated, but some of its residue allowed researchers to test its contents.

They discovered a variety of different flavors inside the wine—from honey and mint to cedar and tree resins. This showed that ancient wine was made with the same sophistication as today.

8 Ritual Cannabis

In 2008, Chinese archaeologists were looking through a 2,700-year-old tomb that contained some Gushi people, ancient Caucasian nomads from the Gobi Desert. Inside the tomb was a Gushi shaman who was obviously treated with much respect due to the items stored beside him—archery equipment, a rare harp, and, most interestingly, 1 kilogram (2 lb) of cannabis.

At the time, most cannabis grown was hemp, which was a useful, common crop at the time. However, this cannabis was grown to be consumed because of a high THC content similar to modern strains. Because of the absence of a pipe, the drug was most likely eaten or put into a burning fire and the fumes inhaled. It may have been used for spiritual purposes or as a medicine.

7 Bog Butter

During the Iron Age in Ireland, our ancestors must have loved butter because it’s constantly being discovered in ancient peat bogs. Over the years, turf cutters (workers who harvest peat from the bogs) have found several preserved bodies and artifacts from the distant past. Bog butter is usually found with them.

Peat bogs have unique preservative properties. Before salt was widely used as a preservative in Ireland, butter would be put into tubs and crates and then stored in the bogs for extended periods of time. This also caused it to taste better. There were even different varieties of butter, including nondairy made from animal fat.

In 2009, turf cutters discovered around 35 kilograms (77 lb) of 3,000-year-old bog butter which was exceptionally preserved, although it had long ago gained a waxy consistency. According to an article on bog butter from 1892, it tasted somewhat like cheese.

6 Mayan Chocolate

Historians now know that the use of cocoa originated thousands of years ago in Central America with the Olmec civilization and later passed to the Maya. We used to believe that the earliest use occurred at a Mayan site in modern Guatemala that dates back to AD 460, but that changed in 2002 when a Mayan “teapot” was reexamined.

Called “teapots” because of their resemblance to modern teapots, these vessels were used for distinctive rituals during elite funerals. Residue on the pots tested positive for theobromine—the chemical marker of cocoa.

According to Mayan texts, they had consumed the drink for much of their existence, but there was no proof of this until the discovery in 2002. As the pots dated to around 500 BC, it proved that the Maya had been using cocoa nearly 1,000 years longer than previously thought and that they most likely inherited this tradition from the Olmec, who died out around this time.

5 2,400-Year-Old Salad Dressing

When the wreckage of an ancient Roman vessel was found off the coast of the Greek island Chios in 2005, no one expected that two amphorae (two-handled ceramic jars) with starfish living on them contained flavoring ingredients that are still used today. Inside the jars were the remnants of olive oil flavored with oregano.

Chios was well-known for exporting wine at the time, but this showed that they may have been exporting this substance, too. Even today, older generations on the island are known to mix oregano and other spices with olive oil to serve along with foods or to use as a preservative—meaning the tradition from thousands of years ago is still alive today.

4 Peruvian Popcorn

Popcorn is a common snack around the world, but it wasn’t until 2012 that its origins were uncovered. Since corn originated from the Americas, it can be reasoned that the history of popcorn also came from there. In fact, this was proved when corn samples were discovered in several Peruvian excavation sites.

Found in different forms like corncobs, husks, and stalks, the corn (aka maize) dates from 6,700 to 3,000 years ago and was likely brought from Mexico where corn was first grown. The areas in Peru where the corn was found were the perfect place for preservation—arid and dry—so it gave archaeologists a perfect picture of how corn was consumed.

The popcorn was likely cooked by wrapping the cob and then resting it over coals, heating it over a fire, or putting it inside an oven. Other than its preparation as popcorn, corn was turned into flour. However, due to the scarcity of the corn discovered, it was not likely to be a staple of ancient Peruvian diets. It was probably a snack or delicacy that was not eaten frequently.

3 Pompeian Delicacies

The ancient Roman city of Pompeii—perfectly preserved after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79—continues to provide archaeologists with insights into the daily lives of the Romans. Even the foods of the Romans have remained, including the diet of the elite.

The difference between the classes of Pompeii can be found in the drains. In the central properties of Pompeii, the remains of some strange cuisines can be found, including fish, sea urchins, and a giraffe leg bone.

This was the only giraffe bone found in an excavation of ancient Rome, showing just how far-flung Roman trading was at the time. There were even exotic spices from the distant portions of Asia, some from as far away as Indonesia.

2 Shipwrecked Cheese

The Swedish royal warship Kronan sank in 1676, but it was rediscovered in 1980. Since then, the ship has yielded several thousand artifacts that have been preserved by the water and time.

In 2016, one of the most interesting finds came from a container pressed into clay near the wreckage. When it was brought to the surface, the divers immediately noticed a pungent smell.

Inside the container, they discovered 340-year-old cheese that had been somewhat preserved. Although it was nothing more than bacteria by then, they could examine the contents, which they described as “a mixture of yeast and Roquefort, a sort of really ripe, unpasteurized cheese.”

1 The World’s Oldest Noodles

In China, noodles have been a standard food for thousands of years. Until 2005, the earliest mention of noodles came from a nearly 2,000-year-old text from the early Han dynasty.

But when archaeologists went to Lajia, a small community in northwestern China destroyed by an earthquake 4,000 years ago, they discovered an overturned clay bowl 3 meters (10 ft) below ground. The bowl contained a pile of well-preserved noodles, making them the oldest noodles in the world.

The noodles were thin, yellow, and around 50 centimeters (20 in) long. They looked like the traditional noodle, lamian, and were created from millet, which was a standard part of the Chinese diet at the time.

Gordon Gora is a struggling author who is desperately trying to make it. He is working on several projects, but until he finishes one, he will write for for his bread and butter. You can write him at [email protected].

The Roman Emperor Nero is enjoying a newfound respect these days. At this point, it’s almost common knowledge that the stories of him playing a fiddle while Rome burned are almost certainly untrue.

Still, there are stories about Nero’s excess and depravity that go beyond anything imagined in the most gruesome horror stories. Although there’s no way of knowing how many stories are true, you don’t earn a reputation like this one without doing something people didn’t like.

10 He Burned Christians For A Source Of Light

Nero never had progressive policies when it came to Christians, but he got really hard on them after the Great Fire of Rome. When the people began turning against Nero, he used Christians as a scapegoat to get the heat off himself.

Christians were blamed for the fire and slaughtered en masse. But the really terrifying part was how they were killed. Slaughtering Christians was a spectacle that people would attend and cheer.

During parties, Nero would nail Christians to crosses and burn them alive as a source of light when the Sun went down. While his victims screamed and suffered, Nero would walk about in a chariot rider’s uniform making small talk with his guests.

9 He Trapped People In Theaters To Listen To His Music

The story about Nero playing music while Rome burned doesn’t just come from nowhere. Nero loved the arts—from music to the theater—and performed every chance he got.

He even locked the gates of the theater when he performed. Then he put on incredibly long performances, requiring the audience to listen attentively and clap. People would leap over the walls or even fake their own deaths to get out of these performances. According to the Roman historian Suetonius, one performance went on so long that a woman gave birth while Nero played.

8 He Regularly Cheated To Win The Olympics

Nero was an athlete, too. In fact, he still holds the world record for most Olympic wins, staking claim to 1,808 Olympic wreaths—the era’s equivalent of gold medals.

So how did he do it? By cheating, of course. In one ridiculous story about a chariot race, Nero allegedly ordered his competitors to use four-horse chariots and then showed up with a team of 10 horses.

Despite his massive advantage, Nero still didn’t make it across the finish line. He fell off his chariot and had to give up the race. Even though he didn’t make it around the track, the judges still declared their emperor the winner of the race.

7 He Built An Orgy Palace With A Gigantic Statue Of Himself

One of Nero’s greatest accomplishments was building the Domus Aurea, a golden pleasure palace the likes of which the world had never seen. It was a massive building overlaid with gold, ivory, and mother-of-pearl. It was guarded by a 37-meter-tall (120 ft) statue of himself. It even had panels in the ceiling that would let a rain of flowers and perfume fall on his guests.

So what was it used for? Orgies, of course! Reportedly, people in the palace would eat until they vomited and then couple for massive sex parties while rose petals fell on them from above.

All the decadence might have been forgivable—except that Nero built his sex palace right after the Great Fire of Rome when people needed aid. The Domus Aurea was viewed as a symbol of his selfishness and, shortly after his death, was stripped of all its gold.

6 His Sex Life Was Insane

Stories about Nero’s sex life show up in every Roman history book because as weird as Roman emperors were in the bedroom, none of them compared to Nero.

Tacitus told a story about Nero throwing a massive orgy that went on for days. At the end, Nero threw a mock wedding ceremony in which he married a freedman named Pythagoras—one of two men whom Nero married throughout his life.

According to Suetonius, whenever Nero wanted to let off a little steam, he would tie naked boys and girls to stakes, dress up like an animal, jump on them, and pretend to eat them. This was most likely a recreation of how criminals were executed in that time, with Nero pretending to be a vicious animal devouring a sentenced man in front of an audience.

5 He Sentenced A Woman To Death By Giraffe

In Nero’s time, there was a famous assassin named Locusta who specialized in poisoning people. According to some accounts, Nero’s mother, Agrippina, hired Locusta to murder Agrippina’s husband, Claudius, and then her stepson, Britannicus.

Sometime after Nero came to power, Locusta was made to pay for her crimes in a horrible way. According to a popular story, Nero had her publicly raped by a “specially trained giraffe” before she was finally torn apart by wild animals.

4 He Crucified The Apostle Peter

Nero didn’t just kill nameless Christians—he executed Peter, one of Jesus’s disciples. In AD 64, about 30 years after Jesus’s death, Peter was trying to spread Christianity throughout Rome and that put him directly in Nero’s path. Nero captured and crucified Peter—and, according to the popular story, hung him upside down.

This was far from an isolated event. Peter was killed in a circus that Nero almost exclusively used to publicly execute Christians. Those live murders were such a popular sport that the streets alongside the circus’s racetrack were filled with tombs full of the bones of his victims.

3 He Murdered His Own Mother

Nero killed a lot of people, but he didn’t stop at strangers. He murdered his family, too—including his own mother, Agrippina the Younger. Every historian gives a different account of how Nero killed her, but they all seem to agree that he was behind it.

According to historian Cassius Dio, Nero sent his mother off on a custom-designed ship. While she out at sea, a secret door under the ship opened up and sent her falling into the depths of the water. Agrippina survived and desperately swam to shore. But when she reached it, Nero had an assassin waiting for her.

When Agrippina saw her killer, she just said, “Smite my womb,” ordering the assassin to destroy the part of her body that had created such an abominable son.

2 He Kicked His Wife And Unborn Baby To Death

Most people credit Nero’s decision to murder his mother to the influence of his second wife, Poppaea Sabina. Poppaea was a manipulative woman who charmed the emperor, convincing him to get rid of his first wife, Octavia, and his own mother so that Poppaea could take their places.

For a while, Nero and Poppaea enjoyed a period of marital bliss, but it didn’t last. In time, they started to argue.

During one fight, Nero beat his wife bloody. He threw her to the ground and repeatedly kicked her directly in the stomach, where his unborn child was growing. According to some versions of the story, he may even have jumped up and down on her womb until she died.

Apparently, he regretted it. A few years later, he found a young boy named Sporus who looked like her and did what any grieving husband would do: He forcibly castrated the boy, dressed him up like his dead wife, and married him in front of all of Rome.

1 He May Literally Be The Antichrist

Calling somebody “the Antichrist” is a pretty strong accusation. But in this case, it’s not just a judgment call. According to one theory, Nero may literally be the Antichrist described in the Bible.

Most people know that “666” is the number of the beast, but you might not have read it in context. The Book of Revelation treats the number more as a puzzle for the reader to solve than a prophecy. It says: “Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is six hundred threescore and six.”

The twist is that if you count the numbers that represent the Hebrew letters in “Nero Caesar,” you get 666. On top of that, Revelation says that the beast will rule for “forty and two months”—which happens to be about the length of time that Nero ruled after the Great Fire of Rome.

This means that John might not have been just predicting some vague future evil. He may have been trying to tell the people of his time that Nero would be coming back.

Mark Oliver is a regular contributor to . His writing also appears on a number of other sites, including The Onion’s StarWipe and Cracked.com. His website is regularly updated with everything he writes.

History is littered with stories and anecdotes about how seemingly insignificant details changed the world. While many of these stories are just apocryphal, strange circumstances and coincides cannot be discounted. Because in the face of extraordinary events, anything could be possible.

10Joan of Arc’s Epilepsy

Joan of Arc is famous today for using divine guidance to fight against invading English armies during the Hundred Years War. However, the fact that Joan claimed that heavenly voices inspired her actions has caused many modern researchers to suggest more organic causes. Namely, epilepsy.

Joan of Arc may have suffered from a particular type of epilepsy called idiopathic partial epilepsy with auditory features, or IPEAF. She claimed to have heard and occasionally saw saints like St. Catherine and St. Margaret, which is the sort of episode common in epileptics with IPEAF. Joan also said that many of her experiences were preceded by the “sound of bells,” which is similar to other epileptics who say that certain noises trigger episodes.

Unfortunately, this diagnosis can’t be affirmatively diagnosed. Tests could be done on Joan’s DNA, but there are currently no DNA samples from Joan known to exist.

9Moses’s Burning Bush

Moses remains one of the most important figures of all time, but the Moses of tradition may actually be quite different from the historical Moses. The acacia tree, frequently mentioned by Moses throughout the Old Testament, contains the powerful hallucinogen dimethyltriptamine, or DMT, which is used in a concoction known as ayahuasca. This could mean that Moses’s famous “burning bush” may have fueled his religious experiences through hallucinogenic drugs.

During the events at Mt. Sinai, where Moses received the Ten Commandments, he may have been high on DMT, which causes flashes of light similar to the account described in the Bible. Ayahuasca’s effects have been studied extensively in the Amazon region, where it is used as part of religious ceremonies, and most data suggests that Moses may have been tripping the whole time.

8The Hatfield And McCoy Anger Disorder

The Hatfield and McCoy family feud is so famous that it has almost permanently become part of American folklore. While the violence between the two clans has long since ended, one of its causes has lived on in the form of Von Hippel-Lindau disease.

Von Hippel-Lindau disease is a rare disorder which can cause tumors on the adrenal gland. Because of the stress on the adrenal glands, those who suffer from the disease have symptoms including high blood pressure, severe headaches, and excessive production of the “fight or flight” hormones. All of this combines to make a short temper and aggression. It is found in three-fourths of the McCoy family, and past ancestors are also textbook cases.

Could this rare disorder have caused the ferocity that fueled the Hatfield-McCoy feud? It seems likely, because many of the McCoys today display similar symptoms, even down to the tumors.

7Anthony Eden’s Sickness And The Suez Crisis

Soon after Winston Churchill’s resignation as Prime Minister of England in 1955, a crisis erupted in Egypt when Abdul Nassar seized the Suez Canal, the most important route by which oil was shipped to Europe. Anthony Eden, Churchill’s successor, was forced to take on the situation, but a lingering illness could have compromised his leadership.

In 1953, Eden had undergone an operation on his gallbladder, but there was a complication when a knife cut his bile duct. This left Eden with long-term pain that he used painkillers, barbiturates, and amphetamines to deal with. Eden’s behavior was extremely erratic during much of the Suez crisis, and he made a series of poor decisions that ultimately caused Great Britain’s decline as a world power. He was eventually forced to resign in shame in 1957.

6Fashion And Tuberculosis

During the Victorian era, attractiveness and fashion were linked to many bizarre trends, but one fad was influenced by a curious factor—tuberculosis. Tuberculosis was so romanticized during the time that many considered it the standard for feminine beauty. From 1780 to 1850, cosmetics and clothing were actually made to emulate the appearance of someone dying from the dreaded disease. Things changed after Robert Koch isolated the tuberculosis bacteria in 1881 and the germ theory began to gain traction.

Widespread hysteria took over and many trends began to radically change. The iconic flowing gowns and hoop skirts worn by women in the 19th century changed to become less regal, because it was believed that the extra fabric could hold tuberculosis microbes. The bushy beards and facial hair kept by men of the time were also said to aid the spread of tuberculosis, so by the 20th century most facial hair had all but disappeared. Whether these measures actually worked is anyone’s guess.

5The Seven Day War And Divine Intervention

When Arab forces announced their intentions to invade Israel in 1967, it was widely believed that the Israelis didn’t have a chance. Through amazing coincidences—which most Israelis attribute to spiritual influence—the war was flipped on the Arabs with Israel eventually gaining three times the territory it had possessed previously.

Before the invasion was even set to begin, the commander of the Egyptian forces in Sinai was ordered to change officers, but the replacements knew next to nothing about Israel’s terrain. Three hours before the Israeli air strike that would cripple the Egyptian Air Force, Egyptian intelligence actually tried to notify forces on the ground of the attack, but for some unknown reason, no one informed the commanding officer.

When the actual presence of an Israeli fighter jet was detected by intelligence in northern Jordan, a red alert was sent to Cairo but, again for some unknown reason, the message couldn’t be decoded. Finally, when the Israeli air strikes actually occurred, no senior officers were around to do anything about it because they had spent the previous night watching a belly dancing show.

4Charles Whitman Was Influenced By A Tumor

On August 1, 1966, ex-marine Charles Whitman climbed to the top of the clock tower at the University of Texas campus in Austin. He proceeded to kill 13 people and wounded 32 others. In addition, he killed his mother and his wife. What led Whitman to commit such a senseless, destructive act? During an autopsy on his brain, a possible explanation was found.

A type of tumor called a glioblastoma the size of a nickel was found growing from his thalamus, impinged on his hypothalamus and compressing his amygdala. The amygdala is responsible for regulating emotion, and his tumor no doubt played a role in Whitman’s mental deterioration. While his actions were completely reprehensible, the finding does shine some light on how biological factors could play a role in criminal actions.

3Henry VIII’s Insanity And CTE

For much of Henry VIII’s early reign, he was a highly intelligent and capable leader, but his mental state eventually fell apart and he became paranoid, tempestuous, and deranged. Henry VIII was a well-known sportsman, and this could have led to his own demise.

In 1524, Henry received a head injury during a jousting tournament that left him with migraines. In 1536, Henry was knocked unconscious for two hours after his armored horse fell on him. It was after these accidents that he began experiencing symptoms of mental instability. While there is no way to test him any longer, the recently discovered illness Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) matches many of Henry VIII’s symptoms.

CTE, common in athletes who experience repeated head injuries, cause symptoms similar to dementia and Parkinson’s. Henry became forgetful and was prone to mood swings which could explain his infamous poor treatment of his wives, along with his inability to perform sexually despite being a womanizer in his youth.

2Sir Thomas Bludworth And The Great Fire Of London

In 1666, a massive fire destroyed much of old London. At the time, Sir Thomas Bludworth was the mayor of the city, and his desire to sleep could have caused an easily preventable tragedy.

At 2:00 AM on September 2, the house of the royal baker on Pudding Lane caught fire. Located on a narrow street and surrounded by crowded wooden buildings, the fire quickly spread. When Sir Bludworth was woken up and informed of the fire, he brushed it off and went back to sleep, reportedly saying, “A woman might piss it out.” He ignored the warnings to knock down surrounding buildings until it was too late, and by the time the fire ended, London was entirely up in smoke.

Samuel Pepys was unimpressed by Bludworth, and there are even suggestions that the mayor had been drinking the night the fire broke out. Bludworth, however, remained in government positions until his death.

1The French Revolution And Ergot Mold

In 1789, word began to spread around France that brigands were hiding in the woods, causing many peasants to take up arms. This event became known as The Great Fear and served as one of the catalysts for the French Revolution. However, the reason for the Great Fear remains mostly unexplained.

In the 1980s, Mary Kilbourne Matossian of the University of Maryland proposed that a bad crop could have been the cause of the paranoia. Earlier, in 1974, a historian announced that the rye grown throughout the late 1700s was afflicted with ergot. Ergot, a mold that grows on rye, is known to cause symptoms like paranoia and hallucinations and contains the chemical by which LSD is synthesized. Around one-twelfth of all rye crops were affected due to cold winters and wet springs, so widespread ergot poisoning could have been behind the beginning of the French Revolution.

Gordon Gora is a struggling author who is desperately trying to make it. He is working on several projects but until he finishes one, he will write for for his bread and butter. You can write him at [email protected].

Louis XVI (1754–1793) is generally known mainly as the French king who was guillotined when his country fell into chaos during the French Revolution in the late 1700s. The French Revolution was inspired by the American Revolution, Enlightenment ideals, economic problems, and conflict between the aristocracy and bourgeoisie. It resulted in mass executions, upheaval, and the end of absolute monarchy in France. But for all his faults, the weak-willed, indecisive King Louis XVI made great strides for progress and human rights—despite uncontrollable circumstances that almost guaranteed his failure.

10 Religious Tolerance

While the Catholic Church remains one of the wealthiest institutions in the world today, it was even more powerful hundreds of years ago. In France, those of non-Catholic faiths such as Judaism and Protestantism were not legally recognized or given civil rights until the late 1700s.

Louis XVI changed this with his 1787 Edict of Tolerance (aka the Edict of Versailles). His signing of the Edict granted non-Catholics in France the right to nondiscrimination based on their faith and civil status so that they could register marriages, births, and deaths and own property.

Full rights for Protestants and other non-Catholics weren’t enforced until Code Napoleon in 1804, but Louis XVI’s Edict of Tolerance was a huge step forward for their civil rights.

9 Supported The American War For Independence

Again on the right side of history, King Louis XVI gave great support to the American independence effort, and France’s backing was instrumental in the US victory.

In 1778, he backed the Treaty of Alliance, which stated that France would ally with the US if Britain declared war. He also let Britain know that France acknowledged the independence of the newly-formed US. When Britain consequently declared war four days later, Louis sent aid and arms across the Atlantic to the American rebels. French officers were also recruited to join the Americans, including the Marquis de Lafayette.

Other ways that France helped the Americans included sending uniforms, a secret loan, providing naval support, and sending troops to supplement American forces over four years from 1778 to 1782.

8 Abolished Serfdom On Royal Land

While serfs weren’t quite as low in status as slaves—they did have the right to own property—they were the lowest social rung of the feudal ladder, and when land was sold, they were sold with it. They had no freedom of movement.

There was vocal opposition to the perceived inhumanity of serfdom, particularly from famed Enlightenment writer Voltaire. In 1779, Louis XVI abolished serfdom on all land under royal control in hopes that this would encourage other landowners to do the same.

Serfdom was fully abolished in France when the feudal rights of the nobility were taken away on August 4, 1789, by the National Constituent Assembly.

7 Encouraged Exploration

Louis XVI played an important role in supporting French exploration of the world during the late 18th century.

The king was fond of the book The Voyages of Cook and wrote A History of the Exploration of the South Seas, which was published in 1791. Dissatisfied with France’s lack of knowledge of the southernmost parts of the globe, he decided in 1785 to send out an expedition with two Navy ships, La Boussole and L’Astrolabe, and chose Captain La Perouse to lead the round-the-world voyage. Louis was intimately involved with the voyage, choosing crew and setting its objectives (setting up new trading posts, meeting new peoples, and mapping the world).

The voyage came to a tragic end in 1788, when the ships sank off Australia, killing all 227 people aboard, but it was hugely important for all the data sent back from each port, which is now kept in Versailles.

6 Abolished Torture For Confessions

In another display of tolerance, Louis XVI abolished the use of torture to extract confessions in French courts.

Torture was a commonly used tool in Western criminal courts for 600 years, from around 1250 to the 19th century, but was criticized for its inhumanity and because of the consequent unreliability of confessions. John Langbein said that with torture, “no safeguards were ever found which could protect the innocent and guarantee the truth. The agony of torture created an incentive to speak, but not necessarily to speak the truth.”

Louis XVI decreed on August 24, 1780, the abolition of one kind of torture, known as la question preparatoire. Later, in 1788, he abolished torture prealable. Torture preparatoire was used to extract confessions from suspects on trial who might have been innocent, whereas torture prealable was used before executions to get the names of accomplices from convicts on death row.

5 Damage Control

While France undeniably underwent huge upheaval during and after Louis XVI’s reign, it is a testament to the unlucky king’s efforts that he managed to keep the country together for that long.

Firstly, Louis was never supposed to be king. As the third son of the dauphin of France (heir apparent to the throne), there were two people in line before him for the throne after his grandfather Louis XV—his older brother and his father. But his brother, who was always favored, died aged nine, when Louis was seven. Four years later, his father died, leaving only 11-year-old Louis to assume the throne, which he did at age 19 when his grandfather died in May 1774.

Secondly, the political climate in France was ripe for revolution, and there was little anyone could have done to change that. France’s loss in the Seven Years War under Louis XV left it in serious debt. An unexpected flurry of crop failures in the 1780s caused severe shortages of bread. The ancient tax system was deeply unfair, with the common people bearing the brunt of the cost while the nobility were free of responsibility. Finally, the ideals of the Enlightenment began to really take hold at this point and caused revolutionary thinking.

Louis XVI was perhaps the unluckiest French king in history.

4 Tried To Help The Poor

With France in debt and the middle and lower classes suffering from poor harvests, Louis XVI tried to make the tax system fairer. He tried to get the nobility to pay more taxes so that the burden wouldn’t be entirely on the poor people of the country, but the nobility refused and even managed to get some of the Third Estate (the commoners) on their side. Despite his theoretical absolute monarchy, the uncooperative nobles stopped Louis from making crucial tax reforms.

The nobles caused plenty of problems in the lead-up to the Revolution, as well. For example, they were supposed to pass up most of the tax money that they got from peasants on their land to the king, but they tended to keep most of it for themselves; only a third of the tax from the gabelle (salt tax) made its way back to the king.

3 Abolished The Labor Tax

In yet another example of the lowly status of French peasants in the mid-1700s, they were required to do 14 days of forced, unpaid labor to build and repair the country’s roads. True to form, Louis XVI and his finance comptroller, Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot (who happened to be friends with Voltaire) ended the corvee en nature and replaced it with a land tax, which angered the nobility.

Angering the nobles in efforts to please and help the commoners was a theme of Louis XVI’s reign. He wanted to be loved by his people, but the nobles were a force to be reckoned with.

2 Promoted Enlightenment

In a Europe with still-low literacy levels (approaching 50 percent for French men in the late 1700s), Louis XVI was a shining example of intellectualism, and he tried to pass it on. He reportedly had one of the most impressive private libraries of the time (with 8,000 books) and was fluent in French, English, and Italian and was outstanding in Latin, astronomy, history, and geography.

The late king founded a school of medicine in Paris in 1774, then known as L’Academie et le College de Chirurgie, (Academy and School of Surgery), now known as Universite Paris Descartes. He was also a patron of the arts, commissioning beautiful pieces like Jacques-Louis David’s Oath of Horatii and supporting US poet Joel Barlow’s epic The Columbiad.

1 Abolished The Death Penalty For Deserters

Louis XVI never could have guess how ironic the fact that he abolished the death penalty (for army deserters) would become when he was guillotined decades later during the Revolution.

In keeping with his liberal style, Louis gave unusual leniency times to army deserters and took away the threat of capital punishment. This was part of a push to instill some initiative in his soldiers rather than having an army of robots. This decision may have been influenced by the important play Le deserteur (The Deserter), written in 1769 by Michel-Jean Sedaine.

Elle blogs at elleloughran.blogspot.ie and is on Twitter @frizzyroselle.

It’s easy to forget that during the 1930s, Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist Party—though seen as radical by many—were not necessarily considered a threat to world peace. It’s even easier to forget that Hitler had more than a few sympathizers, even outright supporters, in the United States. Here are some pieces of history that are seldom discussed, but should serve as a reminder as to how extremist ideals can take hold anywhere, anytime.

10The Bund

A great portion of Nazi ideology revolved around the purity of the German “race,” and Hitler shrewdly realized early on that this could be exploited in the German migrant populations of his potential foes. A mere four months after his rise to power in 1933, an American organization known as “Friends of the New Germany” was assembled from several smaller organizations around the US. Originally made up of both German nationals and US citizens of German descent, it was restructured in 1936 into the German American Bund (“Bund” meaning “Alliance”), which admitted only German-Americans.

Since a quarter of the US population at the time had some German ancestry, membership was higher than one might imagine. The Bund’s leader, Fritz Kuhn, was even dubbed the American Fuhrer. While taking care to ensure its perception as an American organization remained solid (expressions of American patriotism were plentiful in Bund gatherings, which often took place on American holidays or on presidents’ birthdays) the fact remains that American citizens gave the Nazi salute, shouted “Heil Hitler,” and otherwise behaved much as an attendee at any German Nazi Party gathering would have. Fritz Kuhn was exposed by undercover journalists in 1937 and jailed for embezzlement two years later.

9Nazi Summer Camps

After its 1936 restructuring, the Bund began making a concerted effort to advance Nazi ideology in the hopes that the US could be made sympathetic to, or even a stronghold for, Hitler and his armies. Among its most alarming projects: summer camps for American youths. While not supported by or directly related to the infamous Hitler Youth program, the similarities were nevertheless glaring. Parents and children alike saluted the Fuhrer and wore the same armbands their German counterparts did. By the time they were shut down shortly after the start of the war, 16 of these camps existed all across the country, from New York to Los Angeles.

Anti-Semitic sentiment was at an all-time high in the US at this time, and programs like these were intended to indoctrinate America to racist, fascistic ideologies. Children from eight to 18 were taught to speak German and participated in military-style drills. Nazi ideology and German heritage were essentially presented as part of the same package, and many German-Americans were receptive to the message.

8The New York Nazi Community

The most prominent of these camps was Camp Siegfried in upstate New York, outside the small town of Yaphank. The town’s small houses were originally built as bungalows for the summer campers. Anyone seeking to purchase land in the town had to be primarily of “German extraction.” Many of its main streets were named after Hitler, Goebbels, and other prominent Nazi Party leaders.

Even after the beginning of the war, pro-Nazi sentiment would, shall we say, not get one kicked out of the town of Yaphank. Nazi-themed parades were held on its streets, Nazi and SS flags were flown side by side with American flags, and residents carved a giant hedge into the shape of a swastika.

Though the land was eventually seized by the FBI after the war, the town still stands, retaining the original tract homes built for pro-Nazi summer campers. Unfortunately, though many of its residents are unaware, its racist bylaws are still in effect. Even today, virtually all of its resident are white and of German ancestry.

7The Madison Square Garden Rallies

Friends of the New Germany, and later the Bund, were headquartered in New York, making the state a primary hub of American pro-Nazi activity. As early as 1934, the predecessor organization was holding rallies at Madison Square Garden. Participants gave the Nazi salute, chanted slogans, and bore banners with sentiments such as “Stop Jewish Domination of Christian Americans.”

The most infamous of these gatherings took place on February 20, 1939, when the Bund was at the height of its power. A Bund gathering wrapped in the title of a “Pro-America” rally at the Garden was attended by over 20,000 people that day. Four times that number protested outside the venue, attempting to storm it and shut it down. They were unsuccessful, but this was among the last such events. The Bund was dissolved after the US declared war on Germany in late 1941.

6The Bush Connection

Conspiracy theories have long examined a possible collusion between the US government and the Nazi regime. Circumstantial evidence abounds, from the similarities between the CIA’s reviled MKUltra program and similar programs developed by the Nazis, to the role of some of Hitler’s top rocket scientists in the development of NASA.

Among the many outlandish claims, a truth was revealed near the turn of this century that is somehow even more outlandish: Prescott Bush—a US senator and father of future president George H.W. Bush—had mutually beneficial business relationships with German companies that were directly involved with Hitler’s rise to power.

While the secretive nature of these dealings helped them avoid scrutiny for decades, the eventual reveal prompted speculation as to whether Bush should have been tried for war crimes. The assets of his company were seized in 1942 under the Trading With The Enemy Act. Not only may this relationship have played a substantial role in helping fund the Nazi war effort, it may have also laid the foundation for the Bush family fortune.

5Nazi Radio

As previously suggested, fascism was not as dirty of a word in the 1930s as it is today. Still, the vast majority of Americans were wary of fascist regimes and their tactics; after German paramilitary forces and citizens took to the streets on November 9, 1938—the infamous Kristallnacht—an American poll revealed that 94 percent of Americans disapproved, despite the pervading anti-Semitic sentiment of the time.

Yet throughout it all, one loud voice could be relied upon to defend and explain Hitler’s actions: Father Charles Coughlin, a Catholic priest and radio personality with an audience of millions. Coughlin had built his audience attacking “bankers” during the Great Depression, and he extended this criticism specifically to Jews in a broadcast that took place a mere 11 days after Kristallnacht. He railed against German Jews for appropriating Christian property and attempting to spread Communism.

Although his show was canceled shortly thereafter, the damage was done. Coughlin became the hero of Berlin . . . and America. The station owner reported that that, in response to the cancellation, “several thousand people encircled the block where our studios are located, denounced . . . WMCA as un-American, and shouted its slogan of ‘Don’t buy from Jews,’ ‘Down with Jews,’ etc.”

4American Roots Of Eugenics

Eugenics was a crucial component in Nazi ideology. The concept is largely thought to have originated with the Nazis or at least in Europe, but in reality, eugenics originated in America with some of the most prominent scientific and business leaders of the era.

Financed by such venerable entities as the Carnegie Institute and Rockefeller Foundation, many of America’s most respected scientists were busy working up theories of “race science” at the behest of their corporate financiers. Data was tweaked and faked to serve the premise that non-white races are genetically inferior and must be bred out of existence.

This “science” became prominent in the early part of the 1900s and became a vital part of Hitler’s ideology. The United States at this time actually had laws pertaining to eugenics on the books. Hitler was familiar with these, enabling him to frame his anti-Semitism in (completely invalid) medical and scientific terms. He once confided to a subordinate, “I have studied with great interest the laws of several American states concerning prevention of reproduction by people whose progeny would, in all probability, be of no value or be injurious to the racial stock.”

3Failure Of The American Press

After Hitler’s initial rise to power in 1933, much of the American press seemed to be confused—and even at odds with each other—over what the ramifications were and how it should be reported. The Nazis had risen from small fringe party to majority political party in just a couple years. Many newspapers seemed to think that he would calm down with his expansionist rhetoric once in office. Some reporters even thought he’d bring peace and prosperity to Germany after all.

The Christian Science Monitor, in a 1933 piece, praised the “quietness, order, and civility” observed by a visiting reporter; there seemed to be “not the slightest sign of anything unusual afoot.” Later in the decade, the New York Times reported “a new moderation” in the German political atmosphere since Hitler’s rise, with the New York Herald declaring stories of atrocities against Jews to be “exaggerated and often unfounded.”

While much of this can be explained by the Nazi regime’s deft handling of foreign press, much of it can also be explained by a deep misunderstanding on the part of Americans as to the nature of Hitler’s problem with Jews. Many US newspaper editors framed the conflict as one between ideologies of differing political views, rather than one between a race of people and those who wished them exterminated.

2Celebrity Supporters

Aviator Charles Lindbergh was an American hero of the 1930s. He performed the first solo flight across the Atlantic in 1927 and had endured the very public ordeal of the kidnapping and murder of his infant son in 1935. He was unfortunately also a proponent of eugenics, having become close with French scientist Alexis Carrel, who was a firm believer. In a 1935 interview, Lindbergh asserted, “There is no escaping the fact that men were definitely not created equal,” and discussed Dr. Carrel’s eugenics-based ideas on race. A 1939 radio address was the final blow to his weakened public image. In it, he opined that “our civilization depends on a Western wall of race and arms which can hold back . . . the infiltration of inferior blood.”

Auto manufacturer Henry Ford was also an unrepentant anti-Semite and Nazi sympathizer, allowing recruiters for the Bund to work in his factories and employing Gestapo-like thugs to crack down on those employees who might have tried to unionize. Konrad Heiden, a biographer for Hitler, stated that Ford supplied Hitler with direct financial support totaling at least $340,000. Ford even paid for the reprinting and distribution of the racist hoax pamphlet “Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion” to libraries in the United States.

1Continued Influence

In politics and culture, “Nazis” and “Hitler” have become catch-all comparisons for those who would brutalize or subjugate others. Nevertheless, the legacy of America’s brief flirtation with this poisonous ideology is all around us.

White supremacist movements and neo-Nazi groups have long flourished in the US, but Hitler’s failed attempt at world domination gave many of them a new focus and a defined ideology. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, neo-Nazi organizations still exist in every single state as of 2016.

The CIA isn’t spotless, either. Documents uncovered in 2014 indicated that as many as 1,000 former Nazis were employed by the agency as spies during the Cold War, with some still living in the United States under government protection as late as the 1990s.

Political intrigue and espionage are nothing new. But in the days before high-tech spy gear, the work of spies looked far different than it does today. The lives of 15th- and 16th-century spies were filled with intrigue, backstabbing, and bizarre machinations, though, because the human race has not changed all that much.

10 William Parry

During the reign of Elizabeth I, being a Catholic was a dangerous thing. Many Catholics fled to the continent, and William Parry was sent to spy on them. He sent regular reports back to London, telling his queen who was harmless and who might be plotting against her from the relative safety of Paris.

His troubles began in 1580 when he was put on trial for allegedly assaulting a moneylender. The queen pardoned him from execution, but he was unable to sustain the lifestyle to which he had become accustomed. By 1583, he had decided to play both sides and wrote to a Roman cardinal of his intentions to serve the Catholic Church.

It was not a wise life choice. In 1585, Parry was hanged, drawn, and quartered for his part in a plot to kill the queen.

9 Isabella Hoppringle

Isabella Hoppringle was the 16th-century prioress of the convent at Coldstream, which sat on the border between England and Scotland. At the same time that she relied on the Scots to keep her convent safe, she was writing letters to agents of Henry VIII reporting on the Scottish army.

Her favored position with Scotland’s queen, Margaret, meant that Isabella was often in Glasgow and Stirling and that she was witness to troops being mustered and equipped. In 1523, the Lords of Council decided that the punishment for talking to the English would be the death penalty, and word had gotten out about the prioress’s messages. It was only when Margaret interceded that the lords called off an attack on the convent and made it clear that Isabella was safe only for as long as she was loyal.

Isabella—and her successor, Janet Hoppringle—continued their work for the English.

8 George Eliot

There were few things that got the attention of the Tudor monarchs faster than writing a book called Ten Reasons (to be a Catholic), which Jesuit priest Edmund Campion did in 1581.

The Earl of Leicester sent George Eliot, a known con artist, after the priest. Eliot was desperate to avoid a sentence for murder when he agreed to spy on the priest, collect the needed evidence, and ultimately arrest him. Eliot ingratiated himself into an Oxfordshire parish to keep an eye on the rogue priest, finally fetching the local magistrate to oversee the arrests.

Campion managed to hide until the owner of the house at which he was staying requested that he give a sermon in the middle of the night. He finished the sermon, but the members of the household had gathered to hear it and woke those who were looking for them. The priest was ultimately hanged, drawn, and quartered.

7 Bertrandon de la Broquiere

In 1432, Frenchman Bertrandon de la Broquiere embarked on a year-long espionage mission to Palestine for the Duke of Burgundy and was tasked with gathering any military information that would assist in mounting a Crusade against the Turks.

Bertrandon wrote that the Turks were disciplined but lacking in arms, and in retrospect, it seems as though he erred on the side of optimism. He also wrote of the helpful nature of those who cared for him while he was sick and painted many of the people he met as selfless humanitarians in spite of their different religions.

His story was an incredible one, filled with near misses, traveling in disguise, and even joining a Muslim caravan to Bursa. In the end, he optimistically reported back in favor of a victorious Crusade for the Christians, but no Crusade happened as a result of his intel.

6 Petrus Alamire

Petrus Alamire is not his real name. The pun on musical notes (A-la-mi-re) was given to a spy working for Henry VIII—a spy who also made a career as a musician and scribe.

Alamire was Bavarian, and his workshop produced some of the most beautifully illuminated manuscripts of the early 16th century. They were often gifted to members of the royal courts of Europe, who would then send for the mastermind who had created them. With unprecedented access to royal houses, Alamire collected intel that he passed on to other royals whom he wanted to keep indebted to him.

Alamire supplied a massive amount of information to Henry VIII, his biggest client, on the movement of Richard de la Pole, the last Yorkist with any claim to the throne. But Alamire was also passing information to Pole and never returned to the English court after his betrayal was uncovered.

5 Francis Walsingham

Francis Walsingham, well traveled and fluent in Italian and French, was the spymaster for Elizabeth I for 22 years. Walsingham had more than 50 agents working in Turkey and other countries across Europe, but Elizabeth’s biggest threat was not far from home.

Walsingham and his spies spent much of their careers gathering evidence of plots to overthrow Elizabeth and replace her with Mary, Queen of Scots. Even after the conspirators in the so-called Babington plot were hanged, drawn, and quartered, Elizabeth still refused to sign Mary’s death warrant.

She finally signed on February 1, 1587. Walsingham oversaw Mary’s execution, the burning of her clothing, and the encasing of her body in lead (to ensure there would be no relics circulating). He also established a school for the spies under his control, where they were taught things like reading and writing coded messages.

4 Antony Standen

Antony Standen (aka “Pompeo Pellegrini”) was one of Francis Walsingham’s many spies. Based in Italy, Standen reported on the movements of the Spanish Armada, although he was living in exile because of his Catholic beliefs.

Moving from England to Scotland to France and finally landing in Tuscany, Standen was fortunate enough to get friendly with Tuscany’s ambassador to Spain. In 1587, Standen was officially on Walsingham’s payroll and began passing him regular information that ultimately allowed Sir Francis Drake to move on the Spanish fleet while at Cadiz.

Standen’s information helped to cripple the Spanish fleet. But by the time he finally returned to England in 1593, Walsingham was dead and Standen’s service was overlooked. Later, he attempted to help the Catholic Church regain a foothold in England and found himself in the Tower of London.

3 William Herle

In 1571, Philip II of Spain and Pope Pius V were in league with a Florentine banker named Roberto Ridolfi in an attempt to depose Elizabeth in favor of Mary. Ridolfi’s messenger, Charles Bailly, was arrested and sent to Marshalsea Prison. There, he met another prisoner, William Herle, who had been serving as a spy for Elizabeth I since around 1559.

Herle had been arrested for piracy in 1570 (and 1567) and was planted in Marshalsea to extract information from Bailly. After Bailly was put in isolation, Herle stepped in as a questionable, shady character who could get certain things accomplished.

Bailly began passing letters to his counterparts on the outside through Herle, who obligingly passed them along after he had copied them for his own employers. The unraveling of the plot changed the dynamic of the political spectrum in England and abroad.

2 William Stafford

To try to convince Elizabeth I to sign Mary’s death warrant, Francis Walsingham used all sorts of methods, including devising plots against Elizabeth’s life.

William Stafford, the younger brother of England’s French ambassador, was completely Walsingham’s man. In 1587, Stafford came forward with a bizarre assassination plot that he had uncovered. France’s ambassador, Chateauneuf, and his secretary had reportedly recruited Stafford to plant gunpowder under the queen’s bed to kill her.

Eventually, the French ambassador and his secretary were cleared of the accusations, and Walsingham concluded that Stafford had been using his position to extort money. Even so, Stafford remained in Walsingham’s service. It remained unclear if Walsingham was behind the whole setup or if Stafford had decided to give Elizabeth another reason to be wary of assassination attempts.

1 Madame de Sauve And The Flying Squadron

According to the memoirs of Pierre de Bourdeille, Catherine de’ Medici kept 86 (or 300) ladies-in-waiting to lure the men of the court into their beds to extract top secret information. Catherine then used the information from her “Flying Squadron” to secure her own position and that of her family.

The most notorious of these women was Charlotte de Beaune, Madame de Sauve. Catherine’s daughter, Marguerite, wrote extensively about Charlotte’s wooing of both Marguerite’s husband and her brother. Marguerite claimed that her mother had pitted the two men against each other with a maneuvering temptress in the middle, but the truth of Catherine’s manipulations of the men and women in her court is rather cloudy.

We tend to think of history as a collection of abstract facts that have no bearing on the “real world,” but everything connects across the timeline. Big, world-changing events don’t just change things when they happen; they send out shock waves that reverberate into the present. Like William Faulkner said, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

10 Espionage And Sedition Acts

When Woodrow Wilson declared war in 1917, he gave a speech before congress warning of the disloyalty of many Americans. To deal with those who wanted to undermine the war effort, Wilson advocated “a firm hand of repression.”

Thus, Wilson enacted the Espionage and Sedition Acts to prosecute people who threatened “national defense.” The acts granted the government the power to censor newspapers and movies as well as jail those who resisted the draft and made it federal crime to slander the Constitution. The government imprisoned thousands during Wilson’s administration.

Cooler heads never really prevailed. By 1919, the Supreme Court decided that the laws were not in violation of the First Amendment and freedom of speech, and their use continues to this day. They were most recently employed to imprison Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning, and they would be used to put Edward Snowden behind bars if he were to be captured.

9 Iron Harvest

Farmers in France, Germany, and Belgium are still at risk of becoming casualties due to the amount of munitions launched during World War I. When they plow their fields, they’re still dredging up tons of unexploded weaponry, and sometimes the bombs go off. Entire teams are dedicated to finding these weapons and disarming them before that happens. People like Michael Colling even have to wear gas masks, as if the war never ended.

In 2012, Belgium uncovered 105 tons of munitions, including poisonous gas. They call the haul, like a macabre crop grown in Hell, the “iron harvest.” In 2004, one site in Germany yielded 3,000 unexploded bombs. Those hauls are only a drop in the bucket. During World War I, 1.4 billion shells were launched. People still occasionally die. The Great War is still claiming lives.

8 Champagne

You may have, at some point, heard a snob proclaim, “Champagne is only champagne if it comes from the Champagne region in France.” Here’s why:

The French regions that could produce champagne were effectively destroyed during World War I. To ensure that champagne would remain exclusively French, a clause was added to the Treaty of Versailles, stipulating that the entire world wouldn’t be able to call any sparkling wine “champagne.” The countries that ratified the Treaty of Versailles agreed.

This stipulation remains at work today, though not completely as intended. If you’re in the US, you may have noticed that a lot of cheap wine is still called “champagne.” This stuff is made in the United States. In the US, you can a get terrible hangover from “champagne” instead of “sparkling wine” because the Senate never ratified the Treaty of Versailles. The US remains technically exempt from the clause.

7 The Red Zone

Some towns in France were so destroyed and contaminated that the French government seized an area of land larger than Paris and deemed it uninhabitable.

Several towns in the Champagne-Ardenne region experienced some of the war’s most devastating fighting. The people that lived there fled, and the towns succumbed to the guns of August. The ground was contaminated, and there were too many unexploded bombs. People didn’t return after the war.

On April 17, 1919, the French government bought the land and declared it uninhabitable. Henceforth, it was to be known as the “Zone Rouge,” a place fit for military training and nothing else. People have returned to some of the towns as the ground became safer, but a large strip of land is still considered impossible for human life.

6 The Hungarian Diaspora

The Treaty of Trianon was the peace agreement established between the Allies and Hungary in 1920, and like all of the treaties dealing with Central and Southern Europe, there was the messy issue of what to do with the losing side’s land. Breaking up the Austro-Hungarian Empire meant dividing the land among the various nations that used to make up the empire.

Hungary really lost hard in the deal. Roughly two-thirds of its territory was given to surrounding countries like Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. The unintended consequence of this is that millions of Hungarians are in other countries. The Hungarians who found themselves outside their borders did not assimilate into the new nations and essentially created Hungarian exclaves.

Hungary’s solution to this problem today is basically to recreate the Hungarian Empire. They’re creating countries within countries by granting full citizenship, including voting rights, to hundreds of thousands of Hungarians in places like Romania. This has brought the two countries to the brink of war as recently as 2013. It has also promoted the rise of far-right demonstrations chanting “Down with Trianon!” a century after the fact.

5 Debt

World War I was expensive, so much so that Britain went from the world’s creditor to a debtor nation in just four years. No one could have predicated just how devastatingly expensive the war was and how long it would take to pay back all the borrowed money.

Germany was famously stuck with the bill for World War I with the reparations and “war-guilt” clause in the Treaty of Versailles. The country has only recently paid off its debt. They made their final payment of $94 million to the Allies in 2010. They weren’t alone, either. Britain finally paid off its £1.9 Billion debt in 2015.

4 ISIS

ISIS wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for World War I. In fact, the organization makes of point of saying how they will be destroying all of the World War I treaties that created the modern Middle East.

Keep in mind that all of the current nation-states in the Middle East did not exist before 1914. They were (mostly) part of the Ottoman Empire. When it started to look like the Allies would win, the UK and France (again, mostly) decided how they would carve up the new land and add it to their empires. This included the Sykes-Picot agreement.

France and Britain brokered a secret treaty during World War I about who would have what in the Middle East. In the agreement, they decided to create Iraq and Syria and add these newly created territories to their empires. The trouble is that they didn’t take into account how the people living there would feel.

Destroying these borders is now a huge part of the ISIS agenda. In 2014, in one of ISIS’s first videos, they filmed a bulldozer knocking down a chuck of dirt between Iraq and Syria, and then the camera panned down to a sign that said, “End of Sykes-Picot.”

3 Divided Ireland

At the outbreak of World War I, Ireland was part of the UK, but by the end of the war, the Irish had started their own Brexit. Typically, historians have treated the Easter Uprising of 1916 as the origin of modern Irish problems and violence, and it could not have happened without the conditions facilitated by World War I.

Participation in the British military helped to widen the cracks between Irish loyalists and republicans. Northern Ireland fought and died for Britain, and they weren’t about to join Irish nationalists and republicans, who, in their view, weren’t joining or joined for the wrong reasons. Ulster loyalists also supported the conscription of Irishmen, while republicans, nationalists, and Roman Catholics violently resisted.

Things came to a boiling point on Easter 1916, when James Connolly and a group of volunteers stormed Dublin, occupied the General Post Office, and declared the Irish Republic. This event set the tone of violence that would dominate Ireland throughout the 20th century and up until the present day.

2 Pilates

Pilates, the popular fitness fad that has swept the suburbs, was actually born in a World War I internment camp. Joseph Pilates, a native of Germany, moved to England in 1912 to work as a defense instructor for Scotland Yard. Two years later, the war broke out, and the British rounded up thousands of German nationals, whom the British believed represented an enemy threat.

While interned as a potential German saboteur, Joseph developed a method of exercise that could be performed inside the camp. He rigged together what was on hand to enable others to perform effective exercise with little more than their body weight. It worked well and was a hit, and he eventually moved to the US in 1926. He brought his fitness system along with him and opened a studio in New York City. From there, it spread throughout the country.

1 Passports

Papers for travel weren’t always a common necessity. They mostly existed for sailors to pass through ports. By the end of the 19th century, railroads had made travel so popular and easy that Europe simply abolished any legal paperwork that might have been required for travel. From the 1860s to 1914, borders were essentially open.

World War I changed everything. Free and open travel was simply not a reality for nations at war, and the UK was the first to set up the system we recognize today. The British Nationalist and Status Alien Acts of 1914 gave birth to the modern passport. It was a piece of paper with a picture and other identifying criteria encased by a cardboard cover. Besides some minor changes made in the 1920s, these passports became the template for all international travel. Other than increased sophistication in technology, they haven’t really changed.

The Spanish Reconquest, also known as the “Reconquista,” is one of the most pivotal aspects of European history. The Christian attempt to recapture Spain from Muslim rule spanned centuries and was rarely a consistent effort. Owing to squabbles between the various Christian kingdoms as well as successful campaigns undertaken by the Muslim rulers of al-Andalus (the Arabic name for Iberia), the Reconquista lasted from the eighth century AD until the late 15th century.

Most writers will date the end of the Reconquest at January 2, 1492, for on that day, the final redoubt of Muslim power, Granada, fell to the allied Christian forces of King Ferdinand V and Queen Isabella I. Following this triumph, an emboldened Spain ventured forth into the New World. Along with Portugal, another mostly Christian nation that experienced Muslim rule for centuries, the Spanish crown established a global empire that peaked in the 16th century.

As with most history, the usual story about the Reconquest is too neat. For starters, Spanish Muslims continued to exist after 1492, and their eventual expulsion from Spain was due to the rebellions that followed the successful conclusion of the Reconquista. Furthermore, the Reconquest involved many more players than just the Christian kingdoms of Spain. The protracted war touched France, Portugal, North Africa, and the various ethnic minorities of Western Europe. The full story of the Reconquest is rarely told. This list hopes to shed some light on the war’s darker corners.

10 Spain Was An Invasion Magnet Before the Reconquest

Brazilian sociologist Gilberto Freyre became famous for arguing a sort of novel theory in defense of colonialism. According to Freyre, the Portuguese were better imperialists and colonizers than other Europeans because of their history of miscegenation. Called “Lustrotropicalism,” Freyre’s theory essentially claims that because Portuguese people are an amalgam of Iberian, Celtic, Roman, and Berber bloodlines, they are more willing to interbreed with their colonial subjects, be they Native Brazilians, Chinese, or Africans. As a result, the long-lasting Portuguese Empire successfully created a sort of “racial democracy,” whereby ethnic and racial identity was allowed to flourish so long as a shared sense of Portuguese culture remained.

This theory has been scrutinized and criticized since its first publication, but Freyre is undoubtedly right that Portugal and Spain have seen their fair share of population mixing. Spain, for instance, once sported both Phoenician and Greek colonies. Even the Etruscans of Italy founded merchant colonies in ancient Iberia. The Spanish port city of Cadiz has a history that is especially tied to non-Iberian outsiders, for the city itself was founded by Phoenician traders from the city of Tyre. During the Second Punic War, the modern Spanish city of Cartagena was known as New Carthage and was the capital of Carthaginian-controlled Iberia.

Before the beginning of the Reconquest, Spain, which had long been a source of horses, fighting men, and generals for the Roman Empire, experienced several invasions from the Germanic tribes of Central and Northern Europe. During the early fifth century AD, Vandal, Alan, Suebi, and Asding raiders took control of large swaths of Spain. By the mid-fifth century, the Vandals, under kings Gunderic and Gaiseric, established themselves as the chief rulers of Iberia and North Africa. When the first Muslim armies invaded Spain, the force that opposed them was primarily composed of Visigothic Christians, the Germanic rulers of both Spain and Portugal.

9 The Battle That Kick-Started The Reconquest

The Battle of Covadonga is controversial among historians. Some label it as nothing more than a minor skirmish, while others have called it the most important Christian success in Spain during the eighth century. Whatever the case, the Battle of Covadonga certainly helped to change the tide of the Muslim takeover of Spain, even if that change was small.

In the summer of 722 AD, a small band of Visigothic nobles led by Pelagius had fled to the Bay of Biscay, a mountainous and rainy region that was known for its stubborn independence. There, the Visigoths combined forces with local Iberian and Celtic fighters in order to repel a much larger Umayyad army. From their cave headquarters, which they called Santa Maria, the Christians, who numbered somewhere around 300 men, squared off against a Muslim force numbering somewhere between 25,000 and 180,000.

For their part, the Umayyad Moors were not terribly interested in occupying Northern Spain. However, given that Pelagius (sometimes spelled as Pelayo) and his men refused to pay the jiyza, the tax on non-Muslims, the Umayyad generals Munuza and Al Qama sought to rid themselves of the last Christian thorn in their sides. According to most Christian accounts of the battle, after Pelagius refused an offer to peacefully surrender, the best Muslim fighters were sent into the valley as shock troops. From their cave hideout, the Christians rushed into the valley with the element of surprise in their favor. Depending on the source, the Muslim losses were either disastrous or hardly worth noting.

Following his victory, peasants in and around the Bay of Biscay took up arms and began to attack the retreating Muslims. With Pelagius as their leader, they established the Kingdom of Asturias, the first Christian kingdom in Muslim-dominated Iberia. After a larger Muslim force failed to capture Asturias a few years later, Pelagius and the subsequent kings of Asturias began to capture parts of northern Spain and Portugal, such as Galicia, Leon, and Castile.

8 The Frankish War With The Basque

During the early years of the Muslim conquest of Spain, the chief power in Europe was France. Prior to capturing what was then called Gaul, the Franks had been feared border guards for the Western Roman Empire. They were also noted for their piracy. All told, the Franks were a fearsome force of Germanic “barbarians” who successfully captured Gaul in the late fifth century following the collapse of Rome. Amazingly, despite being a minority in a country mostly composed of Gallo-Roman citizens, the Franks managed to maintain power for centuries. In fact, it was the Franks who saved Christian Europe from further Arab Muslim conquest with Charles Martel’s victory at Tours in 732, and it was also the Frankish Merovingian Kingdom and the Carolingian Empire that saved Greco-Roman culture from disappearing during the so-called Dark Ages.

By the eighth century, Frankish power was expanding drastically under the brilliant leadership of Charlemagne. As Frankish power consolidated to the east, Charlemagne sought to achieve Frankish success in the west, namely in Spain. While Christian and Muslim armies battled for territory, Charlemagne received an offer from Sulaiman Ibn al-Arabi, the Muslim governor of Barcelona. Fearing that his city might fall into the hands of the Christian Spanish, al-Arabi offered Charlemagne an alliance. For agreeing to protect Barcelona against any Christian invasion, Charlemagne was promised territory in Spain.

Accordingly, in 777 AD, an army led by Charlemagne crossed the Pyrenees Mountains and quickly captured the city of Pamplona. Next, the Franks captured Zaragoza but met with stiff resistance from that city’s Muslim governor. Ultimately, Charlemagne abandoned Zaragoza after receiving a fortune in gold. When a Saxon rebellion began to cause trouble, Charlemagne decided to return to France. But before reaching the Pyrenees, Charlemagne destroyed Pamplona’s defenses so that the city could never be used as a base for future attacks into Frankish territory.

In August 778, Charlemagne’s army had become a long, vulnerable train. As such, Roland, the prefect of Breton March and one of Charlemagne’s best generals, was given the task of securing the army’s rear guard. On August 15, Roland’s force came under attack. Their enemies were Basque irregulars who sought revenge for Charlemagne’s assault on Pamplona, which was one of the most important centers of Basque power in Spain. The Basque attack, which became known as the Battle of Roncesvalles, was a disaster for the Franks. However, the incredible courage shown by Roland and his men inspired the epic poem “The Song of Roland,” the oldest major work of French literature. In the poem, instead of fighting Basque guerrillas, Roland and his men are set upon by Muslim fighters from Spain.

7 The Birth Of A Separate Catalonia

Despite the Basque victory at Roncesvalles and Charlemagne’s earlier alliance with al-Arabi, he still sought a buffer zone between his Christian kingdom and the Muslims of Spain. So, in the late eighth century, the Franks returned to Spain. First, Charlemagne’s army ended the Muslim occupation of Southern France and thereby created the March of Septimania. Next, Charlemagne attempted to retake Zaragoza but failed. Then, in 801, Charlemagne netted a major prize when his army successfully occupied the important city of Barcelona. From there, the Franks conquered most of Catalonia and established it as the Spanish March—a reinforced buffer state designed to stop Muslim armies from reaching France.

For two centuries, the Spanish March was ruled by Frankish or local counts appointed by Charlemagne’s court. This lasted until 985, when a Moorish force under the leadership of Al-Mansour managed to sack Barcelona. Incensed that he had received zero assistance from the Carolingian army, Count Borrell II declared the state of Catalonia independent of Frankish rule. Even before this declaration, Catalonia had enjoyed widespread autonomy, which in turn allowed a separate identity to form. Arguably, the roots of Catalan independence formed at this time.

6 The Granada Massacre Of 1066

It has long been a common conceit that during Muslim rule in Spain, Iberian Jews experienced a cultural “golden age.” Especially under the independent Emirate of Cordoba, Sephardic Jews enjoyed an almost idyllic existence on an island of religious tolerance surrounded by a sea of Christian intolerance. While there may be kernels of truth to this, for the most part, Spanish Jews were not entirely appreciated by their Muslim superiors.

More broadly speaking, Islamic Spain was no more tolerant or open-minded than Christian Europe. Underneath the Umayyads, the Emirate of Cordoba, and the Almoravids, books deemed blasphemous were publicly burned and their authors imprisoned and executed. Likewise, although Christians and Jews could attain high positions in the government, they were always considered second-class citizens and were forced to pay the jiyza if they did not convert to Islam. Indeed, many jihadist terrorists today uphold Islamic Spain not as a beacon of multicultural hope, but as a perfect example of a country ruled by Islamic fundamentalism.

No action highlights the false myth of an enlightened Spain under Muslim rule like the Granada Massacre of 1066. On December 30, 1066, an estimated 4,000 Jews were killed by a Arab mob in the important Andalusian city of Granada. What sparked this violence has long been debated, but a general consensus claims that the Jews of Granada were the unfortunate scapegoats in a sociopolitical conflict between the North African Arabs and the Berbers. As was the case in most of the Islamic world, Arabs in Islamic Spain were considered a privileged class. The Berbers, many of whom belonged to Islamic sects that were considered “heretical” by the Sunni Arabs, therefore often struck out against what they believed were anti-Berber political policies.

While it’s just as likely that a popular anti-Semitic poem by Abu Ishaq of Elvira gave breath to the pogrom, the massacre ended with the gruesome crucifixion of Joseph ibn Naghrela, the Jewish vizier to the Berber king of Granada.

5 The Involvement Of The Knights Templar

Although the Knights Templar were primarily a French military order led by and composed of French knights, other orders from different European kingdoms existed as well. One force led by a Portuguese master knight named Gomes Ramires fought alongside the Christian kingdoms of Aragon, Portugal, Navarre, and Castile during the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212. The battle, which is considered one of the more important battles of the entire Reconquista, was a massive success for the Christian alliance.

The origins of the battle start with a failed truce between Alfonso VIII of Castile and Abu Yusuf Yaqub al-Mansur. By 1209, after a series of military setbacks, Pope Innocent III was encouraging Spanish Christians to continue on with the reconquest of Spain. Exploiting the weakness of Muhammad al-Nasir, Abu Yusuf’s son and successor, Castile and its allies captured the cities of Jaen and Murcia and founded the town of Moya in 1210. Pedro II of Aragon also captured the cities of Adamuz, Sertella, and Castellfabib.

In order to stop further Christian success, especially in the Muslim province of Valencia, al-Nasir began a siege of Toledo, the capital city of Castile. Although this siege failed, Al-Nasir still managed to capture the castle of Salvatierra. The next spring, when Al-Nasir launched a second siege of Toledo, the Pope called for a crusade, which attracted knights from France, Navarre, Portugal, Leon, and other kingdoms.

In July 1212, approximately 100,000 Christian soldiers, including Templars, faced off against approximately 120,00 Almohad troops, most of whom were North African Berbers. As in the Battle of Covadonga, the Christian forces used the element of surprise to their advantage and slaughtered their Muslim foes in a valley just northwest of Jaen.

Although most of the Templars had returned to France and Portugal by this point, their small contribution to the battle helped Alfonso VIII to capture the cities of Baeza and Ubeda. Furthermore, by 1233, Almohad control over Spain was no more due to internal feuding in North Africa.

4 The Conquest Of Ceuta

The Spanish Reconquista involved much more than just Spain. As already noted, France played an important role in the centuries of warfare between Spanish Christians and Muslims. The Kingdom of Portugal was likewise a key mover and shaker in the recapture of the Iberian Peninsula. In 1415, the Portuguese king John I brought the war beyond Spain’s borders when he led an expedition to the North African port of Ceuta, which was then controlled by the Marinid Empire, a Berber dynasty which controlled much of modern-day Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia.

Along with Henry the Navigator, some 200 Portuguese ships containing about 20,000 men landed at Ceuta and caught the city’s defenders off guard. The battle was incredibly lopsided, and Portuguese control over Ceuta was quickly established. Following their success at Ceuta, the Portuguese crown decided to capture the islands of Madeira, Porto Santo, the Azores, and Cape Verde soon thereafter.

By the 1460s, the Kingdom of Portugal had established trading outposts in West Africa. Unfortunately for Portugal, due to large-scale Spanish immigration, Ceuta sided with the Crown of Spain during the Portuguese Restoration War. Eventually, King Carlos II of Spain was awarded the colony by King Alfonso VI of Portugal in 1668. Since then, Ceuta has remained a troubled possession that has been frequently fought over.

3 The Aborted Plot Against King Alfonso X

By the mid-13th century, the war for Spain was clearly being won by the Christians. The western edge of North Africa was bitterly divided between the Almohads and the Marinids, which helped to weaken the fighting abilities of the Muslim kingdoms in Spain. The only kingdom strong enough to repeatedly resist Christian advances was the Kingdom of Granada in the thoroughly Muslim province of Andalusia. However, even Granada needed to keep the sea lanes open to North Africa in order to guarantee its survival. When King Alfonso X of Castile threatened to capture and occupy the Straits of Gibraltar, Mohammad I ibn Nasr, the founder of the Nasrid dynasty in the Kingdom of Granada, decided to fight.

Specifically, Mohammad I decided to use subterfuge in order to keep the Castilian crown from gaining a strong foothold in Southern Spain. Along with Ibn Hud, the Muslim ruler of Murcia and a vassal of Castile, Mohammad I readied a revolt among all Castilian Muslims. Sometime in 1264, the Muslim inhabitants of Seville were supposed to capture Alfonso X, but they failed to do so because the king was not in the city when the revolt erupted. Nevertheless, in May 1264, a full-fledged Muslim revolt against Castilian rule was underway and was bolstered by the addition of 3,000 Almohad warriors from Morocco.

The revolt managed to successfully capture several Andalusian cities until Alfonso X decided to act. Along with his Aragonese allies, Alfonso X’s Castilian army captured and annexed Murcia. Although a future revolt in 1272 forced the Castilian crown to concede some autonomy to Granada, Alfonso X’s successes in 1264 helped to secure much of Southern Spain for future Christian conquest.

In 1309, the Kingdom of Castile won Gibraltar for the first time after a siege. Then, in 1497, the North African port of Melilla was conquered by King Ferdinand II and Queen Isabella.

2 The Rise Of Castile And Aragon

Although many countries have regionalistic divisions, few are as deeply divided as Spain. In modern Catalonia, the separatist position is especially strong, with one poll in 2014 indicating that 80 percent of Catalans prefer independence. While a large portion of this sentiment is based on economics (Catalonia is Spain’s richest region, and some feel that it has to constantly bail out underperforming provinces), an even greater chunk stems from Spain’s long history of regional autonomy. Like Catalonia, Spain’s Basque region is likewise a hotbed of separatism. Interestingly, during the Reconquista, many of today’s Spanish provinces ruled separately as independent kingdoms. As such, cultural and linguistic differences between Spanish regions deepened.

That being said, the age of the Reconquista also saw the first steps toward Spanish unification. The main drivers of this push were the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon. For the latter, independence came after breaking away from the Kingdom of Navarre and pushing the region’s sizable Muslim population further south. During the medieval period, Aragon became a major European empire that stretched from Spain to Greece.

While Aragon expanded eastward, the Kingdom of Castile (later the Crown of Castile) remained the most active proselytizer of the Reconquista. Through marriage and conquest, Castile became the most powerful Christian state in Europe by the 16th century. To this day, the influence of Castilian power during the Reconquista can be seen in the fact that the Castilian dialect of Spanish is the standard form of Spanish used by television stations and newspapers to this day.

1 The Last Muslim Revolts

The capture of Granada in 1492 certainly ended the offensive phase of the Reconquista, but the establishment of a fully Christian Spain was far from complete. Pursued by the Spanish Inquisition, a policy of forced conversions was adopted. Jews and Muslims were converted en masse, sometimes willingly but more often by force. The Muslims of Spain became Moriscos, or “Little Moors,” who outwardly practiced Christianity.

Despite this sweeping campaign of religious pacification, many Spanish rulers continued to distrust their formerly Jewish and Muslim neighbors. Even though most Spanish Moriscos outside of Andalusia couldn’t speak Arabic and had few solid attachments to the larger Muslim world, the rulers of Castile, Aragon, and the other Christian kingdoms continued to question their loyalty. Making all of this worse was the fact that by the 16th century, Catholic Spain had two major enemies in Europe—the Protestants and the Ottoman Empire, who could find ways to support a Morisco rebellion if they decided to do so.

Beginning in 1499, the Muslims of Granada openly rebelled against Christian rule. While the city itself was easily reconquered, the Andalusian countryside remained in rebellion until the forced baptisms of 1501. Over 60 years later, the Moriscos of Granada revolted again after the inquisitor Pedro de Deza forbade the use of Andalusian Arabic in public and private and required all Moriscos to speak only Castilian Spanish.

Beginning in the Albaycin neighborhood of Granada in 1568 and spreading to the mountains of Alpujarras, this second rebellion was far bloodier than its predecessor. It was also far more frightening to the Christian Spanish, for the revolt’s leader, a Morisco named Aben Humeya, was not only related to the former emirs of Cordoba, but also publicly renounced Christianity and sought the return of Muslim rule in the South. More troubling still, while the rebellion had its roots in Morisco discontent, its was economically supported by Algiers and the Ottoman Turks.

By 1570, the war had become a guerrilla campaign of international proportions. A year later, Christian forces led by Don Juan of Austria had killed the remaining rebels, expelled all Moriscos from Granada, and encouraged Christians to settle in the newly abandoned mountain villages.

Benjamin Welton is a freelance writer in Boston. He currently blogs at literarytrebuchet.blogspot.com.

These days, much of the history of the Americas before Europeans arrived has been lost or forgotten. This is a shame because the great civilizations of Central America hold stories as epic and intriguing as those of Ancient Greece and Rome. Take the cities of Tikal and Calakmul, which spent four centuries locked in a titanic struggle with twists and turns straight out of Game of Thrones.

10The Rise Of Tikal

The classic Mayan civilization stretched from the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico through Belize, Guatemala, and northern Honduras. This was difficult terrain, prone to drought and soil erosion. Yet here the Maya built one of the great civilizations of ancient America, mastering writing and mathematics. (They arguably invented zero before anyone else).

Unlike the Aztecs or Toltecs, the Maya were never united in one empire. Instead, they formed a squabbling network of city-states, not unlike ancient Greece. Warfare was limited and somewhat ceremonial. Trade was extensive.

The cities of Calakmul and Tikal grew particularly wealthy. Both dominated large areas of fertile territory and had access to chert mines. They traded in jade, obsidian, feathers, and other tropical luxuries, and their priests and merchants grew rich on the profits. During the reign of King Chak Tok Ich’aak, Tikal surpassed Calakmul and reached new heights of splendor and prestige.

Yet Chak Tok Ich’aak’s success was also at the root of his downfall. Even as Tikal’s palaces and monuments rose more splendid than ever before, the city’s wealth attracted attention from far beyond the Mayan lands. In the distant highlands of central Mexico, powers vast and cool and unsympathetic regarded Tikal with envious eyes and slowly drew up plans against it.

9The Invasion

Over 1,000 kilometers (600 mi) from Tikal in the Valley of Mexico near what is now Mexico City, an immense and mysterious city rises. We still don’t know who built it or how to read their language. We don’t even know its real name. The Aztecs, who wandered awed through the ruins a millennium later, dubbed it Teotihuacan, “the place where men become gods.”

It’s understandable that the Aztecs were impressed because Teotihuacan was huge. Its population was well over 100,000, making it easily the largest city in the Western Hemisphere at the time. Its monuments were gargantuan: The Pyramid of the Sun is one of the largest ever built, and the Pyramid of the Moon is only slightly smaller. The Street of the Dead runs for 2.5 kilometers (1.5 mi) between the main temples. Its warriors roamed far and wide, distinguished by their unusual shell goggles and the obsidian mirrors strapped to their backs.

Immigrants from all over Central America flocked to Teotihuacan, turning it into a melting pot of different cultures and languages. From atop the pyramids, a priestly class occasionally carried out human sacrifices. The city’s political structure remains subject to debate, but by the AD 370s, it seems to have been under the control of a powerful figure known as Spearthrower Owl. In 378, he watched as his army marched out of Teotihuacan and headed east for Tikal.

8‘Fire Is Born’

Spearthrower Owl didn’t accompany the army himself. Instead, it was commanded by a general the Maya called Siyaj K’ak’ (“Fire Is Born”). They also dubbed him “Ochk’in Kaloomte” (“Lord of the West”), reflecting his origins in Teotihuacan. Mayan cities quailed as his army passed, and at least four of them seem to have recorded the event in murals depicting elaborately costumed and heavily armed Teotihuacano warriors. They easily stand out compared to the Maya, who are depicted in simple breechcloths and headdresses.

In January 378, Siyaj K’ak’ appeared in Waka’, a town just west of Tikal. Exactly eight days later on January 14 (8.17.1.4.12 on the Mayan calendar), he arrived in Tikal. In their helmets and goggles, the warlike Teotihuacanos must have been a fearsome sight and Chak Tok Ich’aak was apparently unable to mount any meaningful resistance. Siyaj K’ak’ forced his way into the palace that very same day, and King Chak Tok Ich’aak “entered the water” of the Mayan afterlife. We can assume that he was either quietly murdered or encouraged to commit suicide.

Siyaj K’ak’ presumably had the dead king’s family murdered as well. (They certainly disappear from the historical record immediately afterward). His soldiers also broke or damaged all of Tikal’s preconquest monuments and inscriptions. A year after the invasion, Spearthrower Owl’s son came down from Teotihuacan and was crowned the new king of Tikal.

7Building An Empire

While Spearthrower Owl’s son sat on the throne, Siyaj K’ak’ continued to expand his new empire. Shortly after the conquest of Tikal, the city of Uaxactun seems to have been overrun and made part of the Tikal kingdom. Stelae in the city depict heavily armed Teotihuacan warriors, and historians believe these show Siyaj K’ak’ conquering the city. Archaeologists found five murdered noble women and children buried beneath one of the stelae—the slaughtered family of Uaxactun’s last king.

In 393, Siyaj K’ak’ marched into Rio Azul, a city in what is now Guatemala. Clearly, the Maya remained no match for his goggled warriors. An altar depicts the sacrifice of eight members of the city’s old ruling class, and Rio Azul became subject to Tikal. This was a huge victory since Rio Azul lay on the River Hondo, a crucial trade route to the Caribbean coast. The city’s conquest secured this route and allowed Tikal to suck trade away from rival cities like Calakmul.

At some point, Siyak K’ak’ also seems to have installed a new ruling family in the famed Mayan city of Palenque. As a new Mayan calendar cycle approached (the year 9.0.0.0.0 was in 435 AD), it seemed that Teotihuacano-Tikal was poised to dominate the entire Mayan world.

6Tikal Consolidates Power

Spearthrower Owl’s son died in AD 411, and Siyaj K’ak’ presumably passed away a few years earlier. The new king of Tikal was Spearthrower Owl’s grandson, Siyaj Chan K’awiil II, who tried to consolidate the new kingdom by appealing to his Mayan subjects. His monuments and murals depict him in Mayan dress and emphasize his Mayan mother. Even his name was taken from an earlier Mayan ruler of Tikal rather than his Teotihuacano ancestors.

But that doesn’t mean he tried to hide his central Mexican roots. While Siyaj Chan K’awiil had himself depicted in Mayan costume, he kept Spearthrower Owl’s glyph on his crown. In several monuments, Siyaj Chan K’awiil sits in Mayan dress while the spirit of his father looks on wearing full Teotihuacan military gear. This must have been an effective propaganda campaign: “I’m one of you,” the monuments declared, “but remember the power I have behind me.”

Meanwhile, “New Tikal” continued to expand. In 426, Siyaj Chan K’awiil raised a warrior known as K’inich Yax K’uk’ Mo’ to the rank of king and sent him to seize the city of Copan in what is now Honduras. K’inich Yax K’uk’ Mo’ also conquered the city of Quirigua, giving the Tikal-Copan entity control of the entire Motagua Valley. Under Siyaj Chan K’awiil’s immediate successors, Tikal continued to expand and consolidate its dominant position. And it seemed the other Mayan cities could only look on in fear and jealousy.

5The Star War

Today, the temples of Calakmul rise like icebergs out of the immense jungles of Campeche. But in its heyday, the city ruled one of the largest and most powerful Mayan kingdoms. It was the home of the Kaan dynasty, a particularly long-lasting and resourceful family of priest-kings who had relocated to Calakmul after their ancient power base at El Mirador went into decline.

After the Teotihuacanos arrived, the Kaan watched helplessly as they were eclipsed by the rising power of Tikal. (The conquest of Rio Azul was a clear attempt to cut Calakmul out of the rich Caribbean trade routes). But as time passed, the Maya began to master central Mexican weapons like the spear-thrower and Tikal’s warriors began to lose their mystique.

But Tikal remained too large and powerful for Calakmul to challenge head-on. So a Kaan ruler known as Sky Witness decided to outflank it instead. Doubtless appealing to Mayan solidarity and jealousy of the Teotihuacanos, Sky Witness constructed a delicate alliance of Mayan cities surrounding Tikal. The noose was complete by 556 when Tikal’s most powerful vassal, the huge city of Caracol, betrayed it to join the alliance. Between Calakmul in the north and Caracol in the south, Tikal was caught in a pincer.

After years of strangling Tikal, Sky Witness decided to finish it. In 562, Calakmul and Caracol launched a “Star War.” This was basically the Mayan equivalent of total war: The aim was to completely crush the opposing state. Their combined armies overran Tikal, defaced its monuments, and ritually sacrificed its king. It was a huge victory. But things weren’t over yet.

4The Wrath Of Kaan

The Kaan were unimaginably ancient and power-hungry. From the great city of El Mirador, they had been at the forefront of the preclassic period of Mayan history, and now Calakmul looked set to dominate the classic period. After defeating Tikal in 562, they installed a puppet king and an onerous peace agreement. For the next century, no new monuments were permitted in Tikal and much of the city’s wealth was siphoned off to Calakmul.

Shortly afterward, the Kaan destroyed Rio Azul, cementing their control of the Rio Hondo trade. They also probably attacked Copan, whose monuments were destroyed or defaced during this period. The Kaan ruler Scroll Serpent lead a huge expedition to distant Palenque where he executed the king, a descendant of the ruler put in place by Siyaj K’ak’ all those years ago. No challenge to Sky Witness’s alliance was allowed. When the city of Naranjo tried to leave the alliance to attack Caracol, the Kaan ransacked it and tortured its king to death.

But Tikal’s size and resources meant it remained a potential threat, and the Kaan watched it like a hawk for any sign of defiance. In 629, Tikal tried to found a new city at Dos Pilas. In response, the Kaan invaded and forced the ruler of Dos Pilas (the king of Tikal’s own brother) to become a vassal of Calakmul instead. But they were never able to fully destroy Tikal, which remained a sleeping giant waiting to be awakened.

3Tikal Turns The Tide

In 682, a new king rose to the throne in Tikal. Jasaw Chan K’awiil was possessed by an iron determination to restore Tikal’s power. As a child, he had seen his father humiliated by Calakmul and Dos Pilas. But he also sensed that the Calakmul alliance was weakening. As soon as he took the throne, he began work on giant monuments and inscriptions, the first in Tikal for over a century.

Tikal’s situation was precarious: The city was still surrounded by the great ring of the Calakmul alliance, including El Peru in the west, Naranjo in the east, Dos Pilas and Caracol in the south, and Masaal and Calakmul in the north. Faced with this formidable league, Jasaw Chan K’awiil decided on a bold roll of the dice. Bypassing the smaller cities, he launched a surprise attack on Calakmul itself. In 695, his army “brought down the flint and shield” of Calakmul and won a dramatic victory.

Jasaw returned to Tikal covered in glory and held a great triumph on the anniversary of Spearthrower Owl’s death. A carving of the event from Tikal’s royal palace shows Jasaw bedecked in full Teotihuacan military gear, looming triumphantly over an imprisoned Kaan lord being prepared for sacrifice.

With Calakmul on the back foot, Tikal’s rulers set about dismantling the alliance that hemmed them in. Jasaw himself subdued Masaal in the north while his son, Yik’in Chan K’awiil, defeated El Peru and Naranjo in a single year-long campaign. Yik’in Chan K’awiil also launched another attack on Calakmul itself, capturing and sacrificing the Kaan ruler.

However, Dos Pilas in the south remained stubbornly defiant, defeating a Tikal invasion force in 705. That must have particularly hurt because Dos Pilas was still run by a distant branch of Tikal’s ruling family.

2A Tropical Cold War

With the alliance broken, Calakmul watched jealously as Tikal’s wealth and power grew. But neither city was ever able to completely destroy the other. This period of Mayan history has been compared to the Cold War, with the two superpowers warily watching each other and engaging in numerous skirmishes and proxy wars.

For example, Tikal had been allied with Copan since it was conquered by K’inich Yax K’uk’ Mo’ (see entry 6). K’inich Yax K’uk’ Mo’ had also conquered the city of Quirigua and made it a vassal of Copan. But in 738, the Kaan encouraged Quirigua to revolt. With support from Calakmul, the Quiriguans seized and decapitated Copan’s king, severely weakening Tikal’s most important ally.

Such proxy wars became increasingly common as Tikal and Calakmul repeatedly invaded neighboring cities to put friendly rulers on the throne. Without confronting each other directly, their fortunes ebbed and flowed and the records of neighboring cities are full of nervous mentions of the two titans. Teotihuacan had long since declined, and Spearthrower Owl was forgotten in the Valley of Mexico. But in the Yucatan, his descendants fought on against the ancient snake glyph of the Kaan.

Warfare became increasingly common and frantic across the region. As Calakmul’s sphere of influence receded, Dos Pilas lost control of its vassals and the Petexbatun region descended into complete chaos. The people of Dos Pilas tore down their temples to build defensive walls while the ruling family (still distant relations of Tikal’s kings) fled to the fortress of Aguateca, guarded by a mighty ravine. At Punta de Chimino on Lake Petexbatun, the people built a formidable network of walls and moats. But the fighting was terrifyingly intense, and both Aguateca and Punta de Chimino were stormed and destroyed.

Meanwhile, both Calakmul and Tikal continued to grow. The city of Calakmul alone now housed more than 120,000, with larger numbers in its surrounding kingdom. But there were already signs of decline. As the centers struggled to hold on, things were falling apart.

1The Great Collapse

Beginning at the start of the ninth century AD, the classical Mayan civilization dramatically collapsed. The great cities of the lowlands lost most of their population or were abandoned entirely, to be swallowed up by the jungle. The great dynasties vanished, and monuments and temples fell into ruins. Mayan civilization continued in the north in trading towns like Chichen Itza, dominated by merchants rather than autocratic priest-kings. But the era of sprawling cities and huge building projects was over.

The reasons for this collapse remain one of the great mysteries of history. We now know that it coincided with a period of sustained drought, which almost certainly played a role. Probably the land could no longer sustain the huge population. Tikal, for example, built huge reservoirs to keep the city going through the four-month dry season. But years of low rainfall would have defeated even Mayan ingenuity. However, drought alone can’t explain the collapse—the cities of the north lasted far longer than those of the lowlands, even though the north was much drier.

Whatever the reason, the collapse finally ended the 400-year conflict between Tikal and Calakmul. Locked in their titanic struggle, the two cities probably never saw it coming. The war almost certainly sapped the Mayan ability to respond to the catastrophe facing them. Calakmul was one of the first cities to go, losing all cohesion by about AD 810. Tikal held on for another 50 years, but eventually, it was abandoned, too. The sons of Spearthrower Owl and the Kaan dynasty disappeared from history.

After the collapse, a small population hung on in Calakmul and occasionally erected crude monuments in imitation of their ancestors. But the writing inscribed on them was nonsensical. They no longer remembered how to write.