In Shelley’s famous poem Ozymandias, a broken statue lies in the empty desert, its pedestal hollowly boasting, “My name is Ozymandias, king of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

The conquerors on this list boasted that they had “all the lands at [my] feet” or promised to make “Egypt taste the taste of my fingers!” But in the end, they, too, have been largely forgotten. Look upon their works and despair.

10Lugalzagesi

Civilization was born in ancient Sumeria, in the rich lands between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. But by 2330 BC, the region was in an uproar and ancient cities lay in ruins. The culprit was Lugalzagesi, the king of Umma. Before inheriting the throne, Lugalzagesi was a priest of the goddess Nisaba and he has been labeled an “ecstatic” and a “bone fide berserk” by historians seeking to explain the unprecedented destruction he unleashed.

Shortly after inheriting the throne of Umma, Lugalzagesi also became king of Uruk, probably through marriage. He then launched a series of frenzied campaigns against the kingdom of Lagash, eventually conquering the city itself. A priest of Lagash reported that he “set fire to the [temples] . . . he plundered the palace of Tirash, he plundered the Abzubanda temple, he plundered the chapels of Enlil and Utu.”

In another inscription, the defeated king of Lagash bitterly cursed the conqueror: “The leader of Umma, having sacked Lagash, has committed a sin against Ningirsu. The hand which he has raised against him will be cut off! May Nisaba, the god of Lugalzagesi, ruler of Umma, make him bear the sin.”

But the conquest of Lagash only increased Lugalzagesi’s strength. Before long, he was ruler of all Sumeria, lord of primeval cities like Ur, Zabala, and Nippur. His armies raided from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean: “Enlil, king of all lands, gave to Lugalzagesi the kingship of the nation, directed all eyes of the land toward him, put all the lands at his feet . . . from east to west, Enlil permitted him no rival.”

Enlil must have changed his mind. Lugalzagesi’s conquests soon brought him into conflict with a minor ruler named Sargon. In a stunning upset, Sargon’s well-drilled troops defeated the primitive armies of Sumeria. Lugalzagesi was paraded in chains through Nippur and was soon all but forgotten, while Sargon of Akkad went on to found the first great empire in history.

9Modu Chanyu

The horse was first domesticated on the great Eurasian Steppe, the seemingly endless ocean of grass that runs from Mongolia to Eastern Europe. Every so often, the nomadic horsemen of the plains would unite under some great ruler and erupt on the civilized world. Some of these conquerors remain famous—-Attila, Genghis, Timur the Lame—-but Modu Chanyu, who was one of the earliest, is now almost forgotten in the West.

Modu’s father was king of the Xiongnu, a people who lived in what is now Mongolia. The king preferred Modu’s brother, so Modu had him killed and took power anyway. According to the Chinese historian Sima Qian, Modu invited his bodyguards for some archery practice and told them to use his favorite horse as a target. When some objected, Modu immediately executed them. Then, he told them to use his wife as a target. Again, some objected, and Modu killed them on the spot. Finally, he told the survivors that their new target was his father. They shot him without hesitation.

After murdering his siblings, Modu launched lightning campaigns against the Donghu and Yuezhi, forming a sprawling empire that stretched across the eastern steppes. In 200 BC, he lured the Chinese Emperor Gaozu into an ambush and forced him to sign a humiliating treaty. The Chinese had to pay tribute and Gaozu agreed to give his daughter as a concubine to Modu (he sent some other girl and lied that she was his daughter instead).

In a way, Gaozu was lucky—-the king of Yuezhi had his skull turned into a drinking cup by Modu’s son. Modu himself died in 174 BC, as the ruler of an empire that rivaled Alexander the Great’s in size.

8Cyaxares

For centuries, the mighty Assyrian Empire dominated the ancient Middle East. Its influence even extended to the lands of the Medes, in what is now Iran. The Medes had mixed feelings about this and a nobleman named Phraortes led a revolt around 653 BC. But the bowmen of Assyria were justly feared, and the rebellion was crushed. Phraortes was executed and his grieving son Cyaxares swore to finish what his father had started.

This was no mean task, particularly considering that the Scythians had invaded Media in the meantime. But Cyaxares quietly submitted to Scythian rule until he was able to lure their leaders to a banquet. Once the Scythians were drunk, Cyaxares had them slaughtered. Next, he united the Medes into one kingdom under his command. He reformed the Mede army with new weapons and a focus on horsemen, which the Assyrians lacked.

In 614 BC, the Medes attacked, sacking the Assyrian stronghold at Ashur. Over the next two years, they ground closer to the Assyrian capital Ninevah, which fell in 612. Cyaxares had avenged his father and destroyed the greatest empire of the day. The Median Empire seemed destined to dominate the ancient world—-and it might have, had Cyaxares’s successor not had the misfortune to cross an young man called Cyrus, the leader of an obscure tribe called the Persians.

7Nabopolassar

But Cyaxares and the Medes weren’t alone in the great war against Assyria. To overthrow such a mighty empire, they formed an alliance with Nabopolassar, a rebel who had made himself king of the ancient city of Babylon.

Babylon was one of the jewels in the crown of the Assyrian Empire, but the Assyrians were cruel and greedy rulers, and the sprawling city always longed to regain its former independence. It revolted in 705, but the Assyrian king Sennacherib came down like the wolf on the fold and virtually leveled the city after a devastating siege. Another revolt in 651 was crushed almost as severely.

Nabopolassar himself was born to an obscure tribe of Chaldeans outside Babylon and even his monuments describe him as the “son of a nobody.” But he became a famed resistance leader, leading a guerrilla campaign centered in the marshy delta region of the Tigris and Euphrates. When the citizens of Babylon overthrew their governor in 630 BC, they invited the dogged veteran to become their king.

For 15 years, Nabopolassar fought a desperate campaign to dislodge the Assyrians from Babylonia. By 616, he had succeeded and was able to launch attacks on Assyria itself. In 612, he signed a treaty with Cyaxares and their combined forces destroyed Ninevah. Afterward, they split the Assyrian Empire between them. Nabopolassar then destroyed an Assyrian rump state in Syria, while his forces defeated an Egyptian attempt to intervene.

Nabopolassar died in 605 and the Neo-Babylonian Empire he founded crumbled when Cyrus the Great’s Persians appeared outside Babylon a few decades later.

6Piye

In the eighth century BC, the ancient kingdom of Egypt had collapsed into chaos. Minor kings squabbled over the cities, and the north was dominated by Libyan warlords, who were less than keen on the Egyptian gods. Concerned, the priests of Amun looked south to Nubia, to the “Black Pharoahs” of Kush. This powerful African kingdom was heavily influenced by Egypt (to this day, Sudan has more pyramids than Egypt itself). Now, Kush found itself keeping Egyptian culture alive.

Unlike most of the people on this list, the Kushite Pharaoh Piye was a rather reluctant conqueror. Although his influence extended over southern Egypt, he might have been happy to let the north go its own way. But Piye was a true believer and couldn’t allow Amun to be disrespected. A famous monument records his rage: “I swear, as Re loves me, as my father Amun favors me, I shall go north myself . . . And I shall let Lower Egypt taste the taste of my fingers!”

Sure enough, Piye’s armies stormed up the Nile, sprinkling themselves in holy water before each battle. The Libyan fleet burned on the Nile, while the Nubians stormed Hermopolis and Memphis. The Delta lord Tefnakht surrendered, writing to Piye that “I cannot stand before your flame, I dread your grandeur.” Then, having achieved total victory, the pious Piye withdrew and returned to his home in Nubia.

Unsurprisingly, his successor Shabaka was less retiring and returned to Egypt in 719 BC, mopping up the remaining opposition founding the 25th Dynasty of Ancient Egypt.

5 Dhu Nawas

In the sixth century AD, the last Jewish king of Arabia watched a bloody battle rage along a beach in Yemen. His name was Yusuf Al-As’ar, but due to his flowing hair, he was usually known as Dhu Nawas, “Lord of the Sidelocks.” Seeing that his enemies were victorious, he turned and spurred his heavily armored horse into the Red Sea, which was living up to its name with the blood of the fallen. Before long, the waves had swallowed him up.

In the decades before the arrival of Islam, Yemen was caught up in the struggle between Zoroastrian Persia and the Christian powers of Byzantium and Abyssinia (modern Ethiopia). In fact, Abyssinian governor had ruled Yemen before Dhu Nawas seized power. It’s possible that his conversion to Judaism was intended to assert his independence from both Persia and Abyssinia. Either way, the chronicles agree that he launched a campaign against the Abyssinians Christians in Yemen, massacring them wherever possible.

By around AD 525, Dhu Nawas was complete control of the Yemen. Unsurprisingly, this didn’t go down well in Abyssinia and the Negus (king) Kaleb soon launched a full-scale invasion from his capital at Axum. Always proactive, Dhu Nawas met the Africans on the beach they tried to land on, but the Abyssinians were simply too powerful and before long he was forced to undertake his famous ride into the sea.

4Brennus

Under Alexander the Great, the Greeks and Macedonians conquered much of the known world. But after Alexander’s death in 323 BC, his successors fell to warring with each other, and his empire collapsed. Just over 40 years later, things had deteriorated to the point that an army of Celtic tribesmen were able to sweep down from the north and plunder his old kingdom of Macedon.

The Gauls were led by a chieftain known as Brennus, who had brought together a large army from various tribes. After raiding Macedon, Brennus (which might actually be a title rather than a name) proposed heading south for the even richer target of Greece. Panicked, the Greeks threw together an alliance and decided to make a stand at the pass of Thermopylae, where the 300 of Sparta had faced the Persians many years before.

But Brennus was no fool and sent troops to raid the exposed Greek state of Aetolia. Panicked, the Aetolians abandoned Thermopylae to defend their lands, leaving the defenders reduced in numbers. Next, Brennus paid the locals to show him the same path Xerxes had once used to outflank the 300. Sensing which way the wind was blowing, the Greeks declined to make another last stand and managed to make a break for it onboard the Athenian navy.

Brennus now had Greece at his mercy and he marched on the rich oracle at Delphi. But the Gauls fell to arguing among themselves and were delayed. Just as they were about to attack Delphi, a sudden snowstorm set in. The Greeks, claiming a miracle, attacked and drove the Celts back into the north. But for many years after, there were rumors of a sacred pool in Gaul, glimmering with sacrificed Greek gold and jewels.

3Pachacuti

In the 15th century, a Peruvian group known as the Chanca were vigorously expanding their state. The Chanca had a large and experienced army and talented generals, and few dared stand against them. Around 1438, they decided to attack Cuzco, the capital of an obscure mountain people known as the Incas. The Incan ruler Viracocha and his heir, Urcon, sensibly abandoned the capital and fled. But Viracocha’s son Cusi Yupanqui refused to run.

Mustering a few loyalists, Cusi Yupanqui somehow managed to defeat the Chanca in a battle in which even the stones rose from the field and came to his aid. That boast might reflect the reality of how Cusi Yupanqui managed to defeat the larger Chanca army—-in later years the Inca had a penchant for crushing their enemies in rockslides. In any case, Cusi Yupanqui emerged triumphant and took a new name, Pachacuti, which means “Earthshaker.” His cowardly father was deposed and his brother was murdered and Pachacuti set out to make the Inca into an empire.

First, Pachacuti attacked the cities surrounding Cuzco, using the excuse that they hadn’t come to help the Inca when the Chanca attacked. Once he had established a solid power base, he struck out wider, conquering huge and ancient provinces: Vilcas, Soras, Aymaraes, Omayasos. When his general Capac Yupanki conquered the north, Pachacuti welcomed him back with open arms and then had him immediately executed, before he could become a threat.

By the time Pachacuti was an old man, the Inca were the dominant power in Peru. Finally satisfied, the Earthshaker passed the army over to his son and quietly retired to relax and tinker around with Cuzco’s architecture.

2Zenobia

Of course, very few women ruled in their own right in the ancient world, but the few who did were usually more than a match for their male peers. Take Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, who was so tough she marched on foot with her troops and often outdrank them as well. In the third century AD, Zenobia cobbled together a short-lived empire that spanned from Egypt to Turkey and seemed a real threat to the power of Rome.

Her rise to power started when she married Lucius Odaenthus, the Roman governor of Syria. The two apparently made a formidable team, although Zenobia famously refused to actually sleep with her husband except to conceive their only son. In 266 BC, Lucius was mysteriously assassinated, along with his son from a previous marriage. Instead of waiting for Rome to appoint a new governor, Zenobia gave the position to her young son and appointed herself as regent.

At the time, Rome was ruled by a succession of short-lived emperors who were too busy being murdered to challenge Zenobia. Next, she turned her gaze to Egypt. Not wanting to completely break with Rome, she sent an agent to Egypt to start a rebellion against Rome. Then her armies swooped in to crush the “rebellion” and return Egypt to Roman rule—-via Zenobia’s court in Palmyra of course. Unfortunately, an actual Roman army turned up in Egypt, forcing Zenobia to show her true colors and slaughter them.

Sensing which way the wind was blowing, the whole Roman east rapidly swore allegiance to Zenobia. But winds change, and Rome eventually did find a competent emperor in the old soldier Aurelian, who defeated Zenobia in a hard fought campaign (she escaped at least three sieges, in one case alone on a camel holding her son). The Queen of Palmyra was taken back to Rome, where she was allowed to live out her old age in quiet obscurity.

1Lord 8 Deer Jaguar Claw

In the 11th century, the Mixtec were a squabbling group of principalities on the Pacific coast of Mexico. They chronicled their history in codices that combined pictures and words in a way not unlike a modern comic books. Many of the codices tell the story of the conqueror 8 Deer Jaguar Claw, who rose to great heights and met a tragic end.

8 Deer Jaguar Claw was born into the royal family of Tilantongo, but he wasn’t in line for the throne. So at 18 he sought out a meeting with the oracle Lady 9 Grass, a terrifying figure who seems to have lacked any flesh on her lower jaw. The codices are a little unclear, but either 9 Grass advised 8 Deer to journey to the shore, or exiled him there. Either way, 8 Deer and his followers left Tilantongo and founded a coastal town called Tututepec.

Now 8 Deer’s genius really started to show through. He formed an alliance with a group of Toltec merchants, who were eager to acquire coastal goods like salt and cacao. With the profits, 8 Deer began a campaign of conquest, starting with small villages along the shore and moving on to larger cities inland. As his wealth and power grew, the other members of Tilantongo’s royal family started dying, putting him closer to the throne. Doubtless 8 Deer was shocked when a last brother was mysteriously stabbed to death, making him the new king.

8 Deer’s next move was to launch an assault on Tilantongo’s ancient enemy, a city known as Red-And-White Bundle. This was personal for 8 Deer, because he had long been secretly in love with 9 Monkey, wife of Red-And-White Bundle’s king. Tragically, 8 Deer stormed into the enemy palace to find 9 Monkey and her husband dying. In an uncharacteristic moment of weakness, 8 Deer couldn’t bring himself to execute 9 Monkey’s son. It was a mistake.

Before long, 9 Monkey’s son had escaped his imprisonment and made his way to the Zapotec Empire, which was concerned at the thought of 8 Deer uniting the Mixtec. With a Zapotec army at his back, 9 Monkey’s son returned and defeated the aging 8 Deer. The conqueror was personally executed by the boy he had spared for love.

Over the years, many artifacts with cultural, historical, and archaeological significance have been lost. What’s surprising, though, is that many of these valuable objects were not really lost but simply forgotten. Either caused by human error or plain carelessness, a number of remarkable relics have remained hidden from the eyes of the public for decades or even centuries. Thankfully, many of these valuable artifacts eventually get rediscovered, often by accident.

10A Neolithic Figurine

In the 1850s, a mysterious Neolithic figurine was discovered in Skara Brae, a UNESCO World Heritage Site located on Orkney Island at the northern tip of Scotland. Experts estimate the artifact to be around 5,000 years old. It was carved from a whalebone and measures 9.5 centimeters (3.7 in) high and 7.5 centimeters (3 in) wide. What makes this figurine interesting is that it’s one of the region’s oldest known statues depicting a person.

Dubbed “Buddo,” which means “friend” in the Orkney language, this artifact had been missing for more than 150 years. Buddo was stored in the archives of the Stromness Museum and then simply forgotten. It was only when archaeologists decided to review the artifacts from Skara Brae that Buddo was rediscovered.

At the time of its discovery, Buddo was the oldest human depiction ever found in that area. Experts aren’t sure what it is, but they think it might be a Neolithic idol or a ritualistic item left behind when the villagers moved to a different region.

9First-Edition Copy Of The Map That Changed The World

In the world of geology, William Smith is a legend. He is considered to be the “Father of English Geology” and the maker of the “map that changed the world.” Smith was the first person to create a geological map of a country. Specifically, Great Britain. During the time of its publication, Smith’s map was revolutionary. It was the first of its kind, influencing the future development of geological maps.

Records indicate that 370 copies of Smith’s geological map were produced, but only 70 exist to date. Just like Buddo, the map was stored in a safe place and then simply forgotten. The last time it was seen was between 40 and 50 years ago. It was rediscovered in the archives of the Geological Society, kept safe inside a leather sleeve case. In hindsight, getting lost for half a century was good for the map. It was not exposed to sunlight, and as such, it is in good condition and its colors have remained exquisite.

What makes this map special and valuable is that it is a first edition. Experts believe that the map was “certainly among the first 50 to come off the production line, and very probably among the first 10.” This information has led experts to estimate that the value of the map is in the six figures.

Today, maps like this can be easily created thanks to modern technology, but it probably took Smith close to 15 years to gather the data needed to create his.

8Oldest Surviving Cannonball In England

The Wars of the Roses is perhaps one of the most iconic moments in English history. The struggle involved the feuding houses of York and Lancaster in their fight over the English throne. It lasted for more than 30 years and ended when Henry Tudor of the House of Lancaster defeated Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field.

Several years ago, experts discovered an artifact that belonged to the historic Wars of the Roses. It was a cannonball used in the Battle of Northampton in 1460—one of the many battles in the Lancaster-York feud. Aside from fact that it was used during the Wars of the Roses, this particular artifact is highly prized for being the oldest surviving cannonball in English history. However, it got lost or perhaps simply forgotten. It was only rediscovered in 2014 by Glenn Foard, an archaeologist from the University of Huddersfield.

One of the mysteries involving this massive cannonball was who fired it. Was it the Lancastrian forces or the York soldiers? Thankfully, historical accounts have shed light upon this mystery. According to records, the Lancastrian forces were unable to use their cannons during the Battle of Northampton due to rain. As such, it can be safely assumed that it was the York soldiers who used the cannonball.

7Sculpture Of Cleopatra And Marc Antony’s Twin Babies

In 1918, archaeologists discovered a peculiar sandstone statue near the temple of Dendera. For decades after, the sculpture was on display in the Egyptian Museum. Visitors and museum staff would pass by the statue, not knowing its real identity and historical significance. It was only recently, when an Egyptologist named Giuseppina Capriotti examined the sculpture, that its mystery was revealed.

The sculpture depicts two naked children. One is a female while the other is a male. Both are holding a snake on one hand while the other hand is draped over the other twin’s shoulder. One eye-catching feature of this artifact are the discs sculpted on the children’s heads. They contain the udjat-eye or the eye of Horus, a common Egyptian symbol. Intriguingly, the discs are not identical. The girl has a crescent and lunar disc on her head while the boy has a Sun disc.

After conducting a thorough analysis, Capriotti discovered that the children depicted in the sculpture are Alexander Helios and Cleopatra Selene—the twin babies of Cleopatra and Marc Antony. Though the sculpture is in relatively good condition, the faces of the two children are not well preserved.

Not much is known about the twins, especially Alexander Helios, who suddenly vanished without a trace together with his younger brother, Ptolemy Philadelphus. Cleopatra Selene, on the other hand, married King Juba II of Mauretania.

6Oldest Pharaoh Carvings

In the 1890s, archaeologist Archibald Sayce discovered a few remarkable carvings in the Egyptian village of Nag el-Hamdulab. Sadly, his discovery was not deemed important during his time and was only partially illustrated in a book. Fast forward in time, and archaeologist Labib Habachi went to the site and took pictures of the carvings. For some unknown reason, he never published them.

For years, the carvings remained forgotten. It was only in 2008, when Maria Gatto of Yale University saw Habachi’s photos, that the forgotten carvings were rediscovered.

This work of art is historically valuable since it is the oldest depiction of a pharaoh that we’ve ever found. The carvings depict a white-crowned figure traveling in “ceremonial processions and on sickle-shaped boats.” Experts theorize that what the images try to convey is a pharaoh going on a tax-collecting tour throughout Egypt.

Archaeologists estimate that the carvings were created somewhere between 3200 and 3100 BC, which is the period of time when Egypt was transitioning from two kingdoms to one. This has led experts to conclude that the pharaoh depicted in the carvings might be Narmer, who unified the two regions of Egypt.

5Murals Of Crusaders And Medieval Military Orders

Thanks to a storeroom reorganization and a burst water pipe, forgotten wall murals of Crusaders and medieval military orders were rediscovered in Saint-Louis Hospice in Jerusalem. They were painted by a French count named Comte Marie Paul Amedee de Piellat, who also built the hospital in the 1800s. He named it after St. Louis IX, a French king and a crusader.

During World War I, the Turkish forces got control of the hospital. They did not destroy the building, but they covered the walls with black paint, hiding de Piellat’s murals. When the war ended, the control of the hospital was given back to de Piellat. For several years, he worked on restoring the wall murals. Sadly, he died a few years later, unable to complete the restoration.

For almost a century, his work remained forgotten. It was only in 2014 that they were rediscovered. The nuns working in the hospital were doing some reorganization in the storerooms when they found the wall paintings. Coincidentally, a water pipe also burst, revealing several sections of the murals by stripping away plaster and modern paint.

The hospital has no plans to make the wall paintings a tourist attraction since the institution is still fully functional, catering to patients with chronic and terminal illnesses.

4World’s Oldest Complete Torah

The Torah is the most important text in Judaism. As such, any discovery related to it can be considered a significant religious and historical find. In 2013, Professor Mauro Perani of Bologna University—the oldest university in the world—discovered what is considered to be the oldest copy of the Torah.

The scroll was wrongly dated by a librarian in 1889. He estimated that the text was written in the 17th century. As a result, the scroll remained ignored and forgotten in Bologna’s library for more than 100 years. It was only when Perani decided to re-examine the text that its true identity and value were unveiled.

What caught Perani’s attention was that the script used in the scroll was “from a Babylonian tradition,” suggesting that it could have not been written in the 17th century. In addition, the text had “letters and symbols that were forbidden” by Jewish scholars in later copies of the Torah. These peculiarities led Perani to consult scholars who suggested that the artifact might have been created between the 12th and 13th centuries. And the scholars were right! Carbon dating puts the creation of the scroll between 1155 and 1225.

Before the discovery of this text, the oldest known copy of the Torah was from the 14th century.

3Bear Claw Necklace From The Lewis And Clark Expedition

William Clark and Meriwether Lewis achieved legendary status after exploring the American West. During their expedition, they were given several Native American artifacts. One of these was a rare bear claw necklace—a piece of jewelry that signified bravery and has long been associated with warriors among many Native American tribes. The necklace consists of 38 bear claws, each one measuring approximately 7.5 centimeters (3 in). It’s in relatively good condition, although the original red color of the claws has faded.

The necklace got lost due to a staff member’s mistake. When Harvard’s Peabody Museum acquired the artifact in 1941, a staff member mistakenly cataloged it with the South Pacific islands artifacts. For decades, this valuable memento from the Lewis and Clark expedition remained forgotten. It was only in December 2003 that the historical artifact was rediscovered after two collection assistants working in the Oceania storage rooms realized that the necklace they were documenting did not really look “Oceanic.”

2Noah’s Skeleton

After more than eight decades, Noah’s skeleton was finally rediscovered. Unfortunately, this is not the same Noah mentioned in the Bible. However, the two shared a common experience. The skeleton, which archaeologists estimate to be around 6,500 years old, was given the name Noah after experts discovered that he survived a massive flood—just like the Biblical Noah.

The skeleton, dating back to roughly 4500 BC, was discovered by a joint expedition by the British Museum and the Penn Museum of the University of Pennsylvania. It was unearthed in the Royal Cemetery of Ur (modern-day Iraq) by Sir Leonard Woolley. Not much is known about Noah, but after conducting an analysis, Woolley postulated that he was a well-muscled man with a height of 178 centimeters (5′ 10″) and that he died at the age of 50.

For more than 80 years, Noah’s skeleton remained hidden in the basement of Penn Museum. It was only in 2014, when the museum decided to digitize all records pertaining to the joint expedition of the British Museum and the Penn Museum between 1922 and 1934, that the skeleton was rediscovered.

The rediscovery of Noah is significant since human remains during his era are extremely rare, and with new scientific techniques, experts can potentially learn a lot about the diet and lifestyle of people from Noah’s time period.

1Isaac Newton’s Recipe For The Philosopher’s Stone

It is a widely known fact that Isaac Newton is a legendary physicist. But what many people do not know is that he also dabbled in alchemy. In fact, Newton tried unsuccessfully to transform lead into gold for years.

Just recently, experts rediscovered a recipe that Newton might have used to create the philosopher’s stone—a fabled object capable of turning any base metal, such as lead, into a valuable one, such as gold. What makes this recipe remarkable is that it was handwritten by the legendary physicist himself.

For decades, the recipe was held by a private collector. It was only in 2016 that it was rediscovered and unveiled to the public. The valuable manuscript was bought by a Pennsylvania-based nonprofit called Chemical Heritage Foundation, which is working on uploading the images and transcriptions of the recipe to the Internet so that the public can view it.

Newton’s recipe for creating the philosopher’s stone would have not been lost and forgotten had his own Alma Mater, Cambridge University, decided to archive it in 1888. Back then, Cambridge University declined the opportunity to store any of Newton’s works that involved alchemy.

Paul Jongko is a freelance writer who spends his time writing interesting stuff and managing MeBook. When not busy working, Paul creates piano covers, masters his capoeira skills, and does progressive calisthenics training. Follow him on Twitter.

In June 793, an Anglo-Saxon priest wrote mournfully that “heathen men came and miserably destroyed God’s church on Lindisfarne, with plunder and slaughter.” The Viking raids had begun. But while many of the wild Scandinavian raiders remain well known, some of the most feared and powerful figures of the age have been all but forgotten.

10Hastein

The Viking chief Hastein had a long and bloody career raiding England and France. But in his day, he was most notorious for his expedition to the Mediterranean in AD 859. After raiding Algeria, the Vikings found an island to wait out the winter. To their astonishment, the Mediterranean remained warm all through the winter months.

Hastein was also surprised to learn he was near Rome. The headquarters of the Church would surely be a glittering prize, and Hastein resolved to plunder it. Sailing down the west coast of Italy, the Vikings came across the greatest town they had ever seen. It was surely Rome.

Hastein knew the walls were too mighty for him to take the city by force. Instead, he pulled ashore and had his men explain that their dying leader wanted a Christian burial. The Italians were touched and agreed to allow Hastein carried through the gates. Of course, the chieftain soon sprang from his coffin and sacked the city.

He sailed away loaded with loot. and it was apparently some time before he learned that he had mistaken a town called Luna for the great city of Rome.

9Sigurd The Stout

Sigurd the Stout was the Norse ruler of Orkney, a large island on the north coast of Scotland. He extended the power of Orkney over the Hebrides islands and large areas of mainland Scotland.

He was well known for his use of a raven banner, a mysterious pagan totem flown by several Viking raiders. The sagas say that Sigurd’s raven banner was made by his mother (a powerful shaman) and made him invincible in battle.

However, Sigurd was overwhelmed by the Norse king Olaf Tryggvason, who forced him to convert to Christianity and took his son back to Norway as a hostage. The son died, and Sigurd was able to renounce his conversion. He took his raven banner with him to the Battle of Clontarf, where he was killed by the forces of the Irish king Brian Boru.

8The Donkey-Rider

The Persian philosopher Abu Miskawayh and the Kurdish chronicler Ali ibn al-Athir both recorded a raid on the distant Caspian Sea in AD 943. According to Miskawayh, a powerful Viking Rus fleet ported overland to the Caspian and then rowed up the Kura River to attack the rich city of Barda’a. The leader of the expedition rode a donkey, but the Muslim writers apparently didn’t know his name.

After crushing a force of 5,000, the Vikings looted Barda’a and slaughtered many of the citizens after being pelted with stones. The Persian governor of the region brought up reinforcements and placed the city under siege, but his men were intimidated by the invaders and the Vikings were only forced to retreat after an epidemic of dysentery thinned their ranks.

The donkey-riding chief died in a breakout attempt, but his surviving men were able to slip away at night and made it to the safety of their ships. The locals at once dug up the graves they left behind to retrieve the valuable swords buried with the dead warriors.

7Ingvar The Far-Traveled

The Vikings returned to the Caspian in the 1040s, when the warrior Ingvar the Far-Traveled led an expedition south from Sweden. After spending a few years with the Rus, Ingvar headed off again in search of plunder.

Georgian chroniclers mention a group of Vikings who helped King Bagrat IV of Georgia in a war against some rebels. These are generally assumed to be Ingvar’s men, especially since the landscape in a saga about him matches up well with the Georgian terrain.

After that, Ingvar is believed to have headed further east, into Muslim lands around the Caspian sea. The sagas and various runestones agree that his entire expedition died of disease there, a rather underwhelming end for such a powerful warrior.

6Brodir Of Man

After Brian Boru became High king of Ireland in AD 1002, Viking power in the Emerald Island was seriously under threat. The Norse king of Dublin, Sigtrygg Silkbeard, decided to back a rebellion against Brian. He was encouraged by his mother Gormflaith, who was Brian’s estranged wife.

At Gornflaith’s urging, Sigtrygg recruited warriors from all over the Viking world, including Sigurd the Stout. He also sent word to the Isle of Man, which was ruled by two brothers named Brodir and Ospak, who were reputedly powerful sorcerers. Brodir agreed to fight, but Ospak thought that they would lose and he ducked out under cover of darkness to join Brian.

At the Battle of Clontarf, Brodir was said to have cut down dozens of Irishmen. But Clontarf was a bloodbath and Brodir sensibly ran away into the woods when the opportunity presented itself. According to Njal’s Saga, he accidentally ran into the elderly King Brian, who was waiting to hear the outcome of the battle. Overwhelming Brian’s guards, Brodir personally killed the king.

The Saga later relates that Brian’s brother Wulf the Quarrelsome later tracked Brodir down, nailed his intestines to a tree, and forced him to walk around it until they were all pulled out.

5Raud The Strong

According to the 12th-century Icelandic poet-historian Snorri Sturluson, Raud ran afoul of King Olaf Tryggvason, who was trying to convert Norway to Christianity. Raud refused to convert and openly mocked the Christians.

This infuriated Olaf, who had Raud seized. When the stubborn pagan still refused to be baptized, Olaf had him tied down and rammed a drinking horn down his throat. Then he pushed a snake into the horn and poked it with a hot iron until it crawled down Raud’s throat and into his stomach.

According to Snorri, Raud died when the snake chewed its way out through his side. Since snakes can’t really chew, the story may be worth taking with a grain of salt.

4Ivar The Boneless

According to Ragnar’s Saga, Ivar the Boneless was the son of the legendary warrior Ragnar Lodbrok, pictured above. That may or may not be true (the same saga has Ivar fighting a magical cow), but we do know that Ivar and his brothers commanded the Great Heathen Army, a mighty force that invaded England in 865.

They overran the kingdoms of Northumbria and East Anglia and did serious damage to the kingdom of Mercia. King Aelle of Northumbria was tortured to death, while Edmund of East Anglia was shot full of arrows in a church. After that, Ivar returned to York and disappears from the record, leaving command of the army to his brothers.

Ivar’s nickname has been the subject of much speculation. The sagas agree that he had to be carried around on a shield, and Ragnar’s Saga claims that he had “only the like of gristle where his bones should have been.” This has led some historians to suggest that he suffered from osteogenesis imperfecta, a condition that leaves bones fragile and easily broken.

3Imar

Before Ivar the Boneless appeared in English records, a Viking leader called Imar was active in Ireland, where he took control of Dublin and fought in numerous raids and small wars. After Ivar left England, Imar reappeared in Scotland, where he besieged the great stronghold at Dumbarton Rock.

The siege lasted four months, but the Vikings were eventually able to cut off the water supply, and the fortress surrendered. The king of Strathclyde was taken prisoner and, it took 200 ships to carry away the loot. Imar then returned to Ireland, where he died of a “hideous disease” in 873.

Most historians speculate that Imar and Ivar are the same person, although the Scotch-Irish records never make reference to the “boneless” nickname.

2Gunderedo

The earliest Viking raid on Spain sacked the Muslim city of Seville in 844. Subsequent attacks on Muslim Spain went poorly, and the largest Viking campaign in Spain focused on the Christian north.

The raid started when Richard of Normandy called in Danish assistance for a campaign in northern France. Once that wrapped up, the Danes raided Galicia, in the northwest corner of Spain. They were led by a “sea-king” the Spanish called Gunderedo.

Gunderedo’s men pillaged the great shrine of Santiago de Compostela and killed the bishop in battle. After that, no Galician was willing to challenge the Danes and they ran riot across the countryside for three years. Its not clear why they eventually left, but probably Galicia was too poor to hold their attention for longer.

1Thorstein The Red

Thorstein the Red was the son of King Olaf of Dublin and his famous queen, Aud the Deep-Minded. Aud’s family ruled the Hebrides, and Olaf had married her in the hope of gaining an alliance. But the islanders continued to raid around Dublin, and Olaf eventually sent Aud and the infant Thorstein home in fury.

Olaf’s power grew, and he took control of the Hebrides, forcing Aud to flee to Scotland with her son. Thorstein grew up into a fierce warrior, who raided across Scotland and “was ever victorious.” The desperate Scots even granted him an independent kingdom in the northern tip of Scotland.

But Thorstein wanted more, and the Scots conspired to have him murdered in AD 900. Heartbroken, Aud took her followers to Iceland, where she became the ruler of a powerful clan. She was buried on the beach, so that the tide would always wash over her grave.

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.

A lot can be forgotten in 2,000 years, and the greatest conquerors of ancient history are barely even a memory now. The men on this list were the terror of their age. Yet one is only remembered because of Bugs Bunny, while another didn’t even leave us his name.

10Tiglath Pileser I

Tiglath Pileser I rose to the throne when the power of Assyria was waning. For 40 years, he took on all comers, building an empire that stretched from the Mediterranean to the Black Sea. One of his first acts was instituting human sacrifice, which the Assyrians had never practiced.

In one of his monuments, he boasts that his enemies’ “carcasses covered the valleys and the tops of the mountains. I cut off their heads. The battlements of their cities I made heaps of, their [wealth] I plundered. Their cities I burnt with fire, I destroyed and ruined.”

When not destroying and ruining, he was a famed hunter who killed 920 lions and possibly a narwhal. He also instituted a set of laws considered brutal and misogynistic even by ancient standards. Tiglath Pileser I died in 1076 BC, at which point the whole ancient world probably breathed a sigh of relief.

9Suppiluliuma I

Suppiluliuma I was the greatest ruler of the Hittite Empire, renowned for conquering the powerful kingdom of the Mitanni and overrunning numerous Egyptian vassals. But Suppiluliuma’s downfall came at his moment of greatest triumph.

After the famous pharaoh Tutankhamen died childless, Tut’s sister/wife Ankhesenamun wrote to Suppiluliuma saying, “Never shall I take a servant and make him my husband . . . give me one of your sons. To me, he will be husband, but in Egypt, he will be King.”

This was big, and Suppiluliuma sent his son Zananza racing to marry Ankhesenamun and become pharaoh. Unfortunately, some powerful Egyptians weren’t happy with a foreign ruler and Zananza was assassinated at the border. Heartbroken, Suppiluliuma mustered his army and attacked Egypt even though a plague was ravaging the land. He soon caught the disease and died in 1322 BC.

8GDRT

GDRT was a mighty ruler, but today, we don’t even know how to pronounce his name. (Our best guess is “Gadarat.”) In the early third century AD, GDRT ruled the kingdom of Aksum in what is now Ethiopia.

Under his leadership, Aksum reached new heights of strength and expanded into southern Arabia. By the end of GDRT’s reign, the Ethiopians were the dominant power in the region. But his successors were defeated by the Himyarites and forced to pull out of Yemen.

The Greek monk Cosmas recorded an Ethiopian inscription likely erected by GDRT: “Beyond the Red Sea, [I sent] a fleet and an army and . . . subjugated their kings . . . from Leuke to the land of the Sabaeans, I led the war . . . I was the first and only one of the kings that preceded me to have subjugated them.”

7Mahapadma

Mahapadma created the first great historical Indian empire. He seems to have been of low birth, with several sources recording that his father was a barber. From this humble start, he rose to become the chief minister of a north Indian kingdom. Then he assassinated the king and took power himself.

A low-caste usurper infuriated the noble princes of the surrounding kingdoms, who formed an alliance to remove Mahapadma from power. But the barber’s son was more than a match for them, especially since he refused to observe the courtly rules of warfare. Instead, he acted with extreme ruthlessness, wiping out ancient families like the Kurus and Surasenas.

Mahapadma’s conquests created the Nanda Empire, which stretched across northern India and as far south as the Deccan. Perhaps his greatest tribute came from the Puranas, which called him the “greatest villain” and “destroyer of the princely order.”

6Antigonus One-Eye

Alexander the Great conquered one of the largest empires the world has ever known. But he made one fatal mistake: He died. Afterward, all hell broke loose as his generals furiously tried to carve out empires of their own. The most dangerous and ambitious was Antigonus Monophthalmus (“One-Eye”), who wanted it all.

After a furiously shifting series of alliances and battles, Antigonus pulled off a major coup when he captured the camp of an elite unit known as the Silvershields. In exchange for their families, the Silvershields handed over their generals, leaving Antigonus as the ruler of Asia Minor.

Alexander’s other generals quickly teamed up to stop Antigonus. But he took them all on, crushing Ptolemy’s navy at Salamis and conquering Greece from Cassander. He was now the most powerful ruler in the ancient world.

In 301 BC, he faced off against his last rivals: Seleucus and Lysimachus. But Seleucus had a secret weapon: 400 Indian war elephants. Antigonus was killed in the ensuing battle, the first one he ever lost.

5Tlacaelel

Although he was its greatest leader, Tlacaelel never officially ruled the Aztec Empire. He preferred to operate as the power behind the throne, serving as chief minister to five emperors. Tlacaelel negotiated the triple alliance between the cities of Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tlacopan, forming the basis of the Aztec Empire. He also developed the massive system of human sacrifice that remains notorious to this day.

To bind the Aztecs together, he promoted the cult of Huitzilopochtli and instituted the system of “Flower Wars” to capture prisoners for sacrifice. He reorganized the military, creating the Jaguar and Eagle warriors. He oversaw a Stalin-like attempt to rewrite history, burning all codices that contradicted the inspiring origin story he had created for his people.

Although Tlacaelel avoided battle himself, he was ruthless in expanding the empire, plotting the brutal conquest of Tlatelolco and expeditions to Mayan lands. Tlacaelel died in 1487, shortly after overseeing the sacrifice of 20,000 prisoners to inaugurate a new temple.

4Demetrius

The Greco-Bactrian kingdom was carved out by descendants of Alexander the Great’s soldiers in what is now Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and northern Pakistan. Its early years were taken up by conflict with the Seleucids, who finally gave up and recognized Greco-Bactrian independence around 206 BC.

Shortly afterward, the Greco-Bactrian king Demetrius launched an invasion of India. The Maurya Empire had collapsed after its last ruler was assassinated at a parade by one of his generals. The power vacuum was perfect for Demetrius, who sent his troops pouring through the Khyber Pass, conquering vast swaths of the Punjab.

Demetrius’s new kingdom was vast but impractical, being split by the mountains of the Hindu Kush. Sure enough, a northern governor eventually revolted while the army was south of the mountains, killing Demetrius when he returned north. His empire eventually split in two, with the southern Greco-Indians retaining Demetrius’s Buddhist faith.

3Toramana

In the sixth century AD, the Huna, or “White Huns,” were a confederation of steppe nomads who invaded India at a time when the Gupta Empire was collapsing. Under their chief, Toramana, the Huna seized control of northeastern India.

Inscriptions indicate that his control extended as far south as Madhya Pradesh. Although huge, Toramana’s empire didn’t outlast him for long. His son, Mihirakula, was forced to cede most of the territory.

The Huna are assumed to be connected to the Huns of Attila and the Xiongnu who terrorized ancient China, although the exact nature of the relationship remains unclear.

2Geiseric

Around AD 406, the river Rhine froze, allowing a great host of Vandals to pour across and invade Gaul. For 20 years, they rampaged through the Roman Empire. But when Geiseric became king of the Vandals in 428, he found his people in a bad situation, trapped between the Visigoths and the Romans.

In a bold move, Geiseric took his entire people (80,000 men, women, and children) and ferried them to North Africa. The province was unprepared, and the Vandals overran it completely. Making Carthage his capital, Geiseric built a fleet and turned his people into sailors, making Vandal pirates the terror of the Mediterranean. In 455, he sacked Rome itself.

The Romans repeatedly tried to reconquer North Africa, but Geiseric was more than a match for them. On one occasion, he attacked an invasion fleet before it had even left the harbor. Another time, he used fire ships to burn a Roman fleet.

Geiseric died in 477. The Byzantines retook North Africa 60 year later.

1Tukulti-Ninurta

Tukulti-Ninurta became king of Assyria in 1244 BC and quickly established his fearsome reputation by confronting the mighty Hittites, who sent a friendly message promising a negotiated solution. When a deserter revealed that they were secretly using the delay to prepare for war, Tukulti-Ninurta attacked at once and crushed his enemies.

Meanwhile, the Babylonians had taken advantage of the Assyrian-Hittite war to seize Assyrian territory. After his stunning victory, Tukulti-Ninurta rushed south and sacked Babylon, looting even the temples of the gods. The king of Babylon was taken to Assyria naked and in chains, where Tukulti-Ninurta “trod on his royal neck with my feet like a footstool.”

Tukulti-Ninurta is mostly remembered today thanks to Bugs Bunny. The Bible refers to Tukulti-Ninurta as the mighty hunter Nimrod. In an old cartoon, Bugs calls Elmer Fudd “poor little Nimrod” as a jibe at his hunting skills. Audiences didn’t get the reference and assumed that “nimrod” was just a mean name. And that’s how a conqueror becomes an insult.

Some battles echo throughout history. But while most people have heard of Waterloo or Stalingrad, plenty of other decisive confrontations have been all but forgotten. Here are 10 such battles that changed the course of history.

10Battle Of The Delta

From 1276 to 1178 BC, the ancient Mediterranean world was terrorized by the mysterious Sea People. Although they are often referred to as pirates or raiders, many historians now believe that the Sea People represented a major population movement fleeing from the famine and turmoil that contributed to the Late Bronze Age collapse.

The Sea People overran the mighty Hittite Empire and other regions of the ancient world. After defeating the Hittites, they turned toward Egypt. Rameses III met the invaders at the Battle of the Delta.

Aware that the Sea People had the advantage on the open ocean, Rameses allowed them to enter the Nile Delta. There, the Egyptian navy attacked, using grappling hooks to snare the enemy ships while archers on the shore raked them with waves of arrows. Victory was total, and the Egyptians avoided the fate of the Hittites.

9Battle Of Caudine Forks

In 321 BC, the Battle of Caudine Forks produced almost no casualties, which is precisely why it was so decisive. The Romans were expanding into southern Italy when the Samnites lured the Roman army into a narrow valley. With both ends of the valley blocked and the Samnites on the high ground, the Romans had to surrender.

According to Livy, the Samnites sent home for instructions. The response came back to let the Romans go with no conditions. Astonished, the Samnites queried the instructions. This time, the response said to slaughter the Romans to the last man. An elder eventually cleared up the confusion, explaining that the Samnites could earn the Romans’ gratitude or kill them all. Anything else would be disastrous.

The Samnite army didn’t listen. They forced the Roman consuls to sign a humiliating peace treaty in return for safe passage home. Of course, the Romans immediately repudiated the peace treaty and sent their army back against the Samnites. They eventually won, and Rome went on to dominate the ancient world.

8Battle Of The Camel

In the years after the death of Muhammad, the Muslims were united and achieved great feats. They were led by the caliphs, Muhammad’s successors. However, in 656, the third caliph, Uthman, was assassinated and replaced with Muhammad’s son-in-law Ali.

Muhammad’s wife Aisha was on her way to Medina when she heard the news. At once, she returned to Mecca and consulted with the prophet’s companions Talhah and Zubayr. The trio decided to oppose Ali and raised an army that fought Ali’s forces in the Battle of the Camel, named because the fight raged thickest around Aisha’s camel.

Ali’s forces won, and Talhah and Zubayr were killed. Of course, nobody touched the prophet’s wife and Aisha was sent to live peacefully in Medina. However, the battle marked the beginning of serious warfare between Muslims and a major split soon occurred between Shia and Sunni Islam.

7Battle Of Talas River

While the Abbasid Caliphate was expanding east into Central Asia, the Chinese Tang dynasty was expanding west into the same region. Local rulers allied with the Chinese for protection from the Arabs and vice versa. Something had to give, and the two sides faced off in AD 751 at the Talas River.

The Tang forces, led by Korean general Gao Xianzhi, seemed to have the upper hand. But they were betrayed by their Qarluq allies, who switched sides and attacked the Chinese from behind, shattering their army.

As a direct result of the battle, the Muslims gained control of Central Asia, including the Silk Road. They also learned how to make paper from Chinese prisoners. Meanwhile, the defeat helped spark the major An Lushan Rebellion in China.

6The Battle With The Naimans

Before the Mongols conquered Asia in the early 13th century, Genghis Khan had to conquer the Mongols. His chief rival was his childhood friend Jamukha, who built a formidable coalition to oppose Genghis. The conflict between them lasted for years, with Genghis at times reduced to a handful of followers. Finally, Jamukha retreated to the territory of the Naiman tribe.

Genghis followed, but his army arrived exhausted and outnumbered by the Naimans. To disguise his numbers, Genghis ordered his men to each light multiple campfires, making it seem like a great host had camped for the night. When battle was joined, the Naimans broke and fled. Jamukha was soon captured, and Genghis became the unchallenged ruler of Mongolia.

5Battle Of Diu

When the Portuguese arrived in the Indian Ocean, they didn’t go unchallenged. In 1509, a coalition of Egyptians, Gujaratis, and Calicut assembled a formidable fleet and defeated a Portuguese force, killing its commander, Lourenco de Almeida.

Lourenco’s father was Francisco de Almeida, who had just been replaced as the Portuguese viceroy. Determined to avenge his son, Francisco imprisoned his successor and set sail with the Portuguese fleet.

He encountered the allies at Diu, where he used the superior Portuguese cannons to destroy their fleet from a distance, filling the ocean with corpses. European control of the eastern trade routes was guaranteed.

4Battle Of Lima

The greatest challenge to the Spanish conquest of the Inca came in 1536 when Spain’s puppet Inca emperor, Manco Inca, dramatically escaped and orchestrated a huge rebellion. Manco attacked Cuzco with at least 50,000 men.

While he besieged the city, he sent his general, Quiso Yupanqui, to deal with Francisco Pizarro, who was with the main body of Spanish troops in Lima. Pizarro had sent reinforcements to Cuzco, but Yupanqui trapped them in a gorge and annihilated them in a rockslide. Then he wiped out a second relief column at Parcos. In June, he overran the city of Jauja and wiped out the Spanish garrison to the last man.

But Yupanqui, growing overconfident, made a fatal mistake. He left the mountains to attack Pizarro in Lima. On the flat, coastal plains around the city, Pizarro’s cavalry could break the Inca ranks. The defeat forced Manco to abandon the siege of Cuzco, and the power of the Inca never truly recovered.

3Battle Of Orel

When the Bolsheviks took power in Russia in October 1918, it seemed unlikely that they would hang on for long as anticommunist “White” armies mustered in the north, south, and east. In an incredible feat of organization, Leon Trotsky successfully built the Red Army into an effective fighting force and pushed back Admiral Kolchak’s attack from Siberia.

However, in 1919, General Anton Denikin pushed north with the goal of taking Moscow. At the same time, General Nikolai Yudenich led 17,000 men out of Estonia, reaching the suburbs of Petrograd (St. Petersburg). Lenin wanted to abandon Petrograd, but Trotsky and Stalin talked him out of it.

Instead, the Bolsheviks made a deal with Nestor Makhno’s anarchist “Black Army,” which attacked Denikin’s rearguard and disrupted his supply lines. When Denikin’s forces reached Orel, just 400 kilometers (250 mi) from Moscow, the Bolsheviks counterattacked.

Overstretched and undersupplied, Denikin’s forces collapsed. Meanwhile, Yudenich was defeated outside Petrograd. The Whites never threatened the Russian heartland again.

2Battle Of Warsaw

The Polish-Soviet War broke out after World War I when the borders of Eastern Europe were still unclear. Starting as a Polish land grab, it soon grew into something more serious as a Soviet counterattack pushed into Poland.

Lenin believed that the moment was right to spread revolution throughout Europe. He ordered his forces to push through Poland to the German border, where they would be positioned to support the powerful German Communist Party.

Radical dockworkers in Germany and Britain blocked military supplies destined for Poland. Marshal Tukhachevsky declared that “over the dead body of Poland lies the way to world revolution. Let us bring peace and happiness to the working people by bayonet. To the West!”

The Soviets were 25 kilometers (15 mi) outside Warsaw when the Poles launched a daring counterattack, which broke through the Soviet lines. Before long, the Red Army had been completely routed. Communist expansion was checked, with significant implications for European history.

1First Battle Of Saigon

The Binh Xuyen was a Vietnamese crime syndicate that rose to power after making a deal with the French colonial authorities to betray or murder the communist agents operating in Saigon. In return, the French officially gave the gangsters control of Saigon’s police.

By the 1950s, the Binh Xuyen was the richest and most powerful criminal organization in Asia. They controlled Vietnam’s opium exports and ran the largest casino and brothel in the world. There was serious talk of their leader becoming prime minister.

But then the communists won the battle of Dien Bien Phu, forcing the French to pull out of Vietnam. They were replaced by the Americans, who supported Ngo Dinh Diem as prime minister.

However, Diem was merely a figurehead since the French still controlled the Binh Xuyen and armed sects like the Hoa Hao and Cao Dai. In 1955, the CIA bribed the sects away from the French and Diem launched a massive attack on the Binh Xuyen in Saigon.

After a pitched battle lasting one week, the gangsters were defeated. Diem and the Americans took full control of South Vietnam, setting the stage for the conflict to come.

Ancient warfare was dominated by men, who have natural advantages when it comes to wielding a sword, drawing a bow, or dying of dysentery in some squalid camp. But every so often a powerful woman would come along to shock the ancient world by leading her armies into battle. Proud male warriors often underestimated these women, usually with fatal results.

10Cynane

Cynane was the daughter of Philip of Macedon and the half-sister of Alexander the Great. Her mother was from Illyria, a region with a tradition of female warriors, and she taught Cynane to ride, fight, and shoot. In fact, as a teenager, Cynane supposedly accompanied a Macedonian invasion of Illyria and killed the Illyrian queen in single combat.

That may not be true, but Cynane was certainly a power player at the Macedonian court. Alexander tried to marry her to a distant chief to get her out of the way, but the chief mysteriously dropped dead before the wedding. Rumors of poison ensured that nobody else would try to marry Cynane against her will.

After Alexander died, his mentally disabled brother succeeded him as Philip III and there was a scramble to see who would become the power behind the throne. Cynane raised an army and marched on Babylon, intending to marry her daughter to Philip. This alarmed the regent Perdiccas, who sent an army under Antipater to stop her. But Cynane defeated Antipater at Strymon and continued toward Babylon.

In desperation, Perdiccas sent Cynane’s old friend Alcetus to assassinate her at a meeting. But the plan backfired. The Greek army was so horrified at the murder of Alexander’s sister that they demanded that Cynane’s daughter marry Philip as she had wished. Even in death, Cynane got her way.

9Mavia

During the reign of the Emperor Valens, an alliance of seminomadic Arab tribesmen burst across the border and invaded Roman Palestine. The Arabs were led by a woman named Mavia, who personally led her troops into battle. The Romans thought this was hilarious. In fact, when the commander of Palestine summoned reinforcements, he was effectively dismissed from his post for needing help to fight a woman.

Mavia soon taught them a lesson, crushing the Roman forces in battle. According to the historian Sozomen, the dismissed Roman commander actually redeemed himself by charging into the fray and rescuing the general who had fired him.

In any case, the Romans decided that Queen Mavia had to be taken seriously and sent negotiators to reach a diplomatic solution. Mavia’s main demand was that a monk named Moses be appointed to replace the current Arab bishop, suggesting that her invasion was religious in nature.

8Lu’s Mother

Lu’s mother didn’t even leave us her name, but she certainly made her presence felt in Ancient China. Around AD 14, a minor official named Lu was unjustly executed by the local magistrate.

Lu’s mother was heartbroken at the death of her son and became determined to get her revenge. Since she came from a family of wealthy wine merchants, she was able to build up support by generously offering gifts and credit to the local peasants.

By the time she was in her sixties, Lu’s mother had built up a loyal network of several hundred local youths. She recruited more supporters from the outlaws who had taken refuge on a nearby island.

Once her forces were strong enough, she launched an outright rebellion and took control of the entire district. The magistrate who had executed her son begged for mercy. But she responded that her son had died for a petty crime, so it was only fair that his murderer should also get the death sentence.

After Lu’s mother died, her supporters joined the Red Eyebrows, a group of rebels who painted their faces and played an important part in overthrowing Emperor Wang Mang.

7Rhodogune

Rhodogune was a Parthian princess in the second century BC. According to the Greek historian Polyaenus, the fearsome Rhodogune was taking a bath one day when she heard that a local tribe was revolting. She immediately jumped out of the water and vowed not to bathe or wash her hair until the rebels were defeated.

Unfortunately, the war that followed was “tedious,” but the revolting Rhodogune eventually led her forces to victory against the revolting rebels. She immediately retired to her bath and thoroughly washed her hair. However, Polyaenus says that her statues and seals always depicted her with unkempt hair from that day on in honor of her great and smelly victory.

6The Trung Sisters

The Trung sisters are considered heroes of Vietnam for leading the resistance against the invading Chinese Han dynasty. Trung Trac was married to Thi Sach, a Vietnamese nobleman who organized a secret plan to rise up against the Chinese. When the Han got wind of this and murdered Thi Sach, Trung Trac took over as leader of the movement.

Together with her sister, Trung Nhi, Trung Trac gathered an army and put the Chinese forces to flight. In AD 39, the sisters declared themselves joint queens of an independent Vietnamese state. However, the Han empire struck back, sending a huge army which overwhelmed the Trung forces. Refusing to be captured, the sisters drowned themselves in a river around AD 43.

5Lady Trieu

When asked why she never married, Lady Trieu famously declared, “I wish to ride a strong wind and tame fierce waves, kill sharks in the Eastern sea, force back the Chinese armies, and throw off the chains of slavery. How could I possibly accept to be some man’s servant?”

Like the Trung sisters, Trieu was a Vietnamese woman who led a rebel army against the Chinese. Her rebellion was smaller and more localized that the Trung sisters’ uprising, but Trieu was every bit as fierce. In later years, she took on mythological characteristics, including yard-long breasts which she threw back over her shoulders so they wouldn’t get in the way during battle.

The brief accounts of her life indicate that she was eventually defeated and took her own life around AD 248.

4Amanirenas

In classic sitcom style, Amanirenas was a tough woman who had to fix a disaster caused by her idiot husband. The warrior queen was the wife of King Teriteqas of Nubia, who had foolishly attacked Roman Egypt. When the Romans struck back, Teriteqas died of disease, leaving Amanirenas ruling Egypt as regent for their young son.

Fortunately, Amanirenas was more than up to the challenge. Roman sources describe her as a giant of a woman, blind in one eye and tough as nails. After escaping a Roman siege of Napata, she raised an army and marched on the fortress of Premnis. The legions soon arrived, but neither side was keen on a pitched battle. Instead, Amanirenas sent ambassadors to Emperor Augustus, who agreed to her demands and signed a lasting peace treaty.

3Princess Pingyang

Princess Pingyang was the daughter of Li Yuan, who founded the Tang dynasty. When Li Yuan launched his rebellion, Pingyang was sent to the family estate for safety. Instead, she built a peasant army, known as the Woman’s Army in her honor. (Later legends claiming that it was an army of women seem to be incorrect.)

With this force, Pingyang seized control of Huxian County and defeated a Sui dynasty army sent to stop her. She then marched north with 10,000 men, destroying the Sui forces in Shaanxi. In AD 617, she combined with her father to capture the Sui capital. She became the first woman to take the title of Marshal but then suddenly died at age 23.

2Hydna

Hydna of Scione was the daughter of a Greek professional diver who taught her to swim from a young age. After defeating the Spartans at Thermopylae, the Persians marched on Athens while their navy sailed down the coast. When a storm blew up, Hydna and her father volunteered to cut the Persian anchors.

To complete this feat, father and daughter had to swim 16 kilometers (10 mi) across a storm-tossed bay and then dive down and saw through the Persian cables, all while avoiding detection. Amazingly, they succeeded and the Persian fleet was wrecked. The grateful Greeks erected a statue of the divers, which was later stolen by Nero.

1Fu Hao

Fu Hao might be the oldest and greatest female general in ancient history. She was the wife of Wu Ding, who ruled Shang dynasty China from around 1250 to 1190 BC.

While such ancient history can often be mixed with legend, it’s certain that Fu Hao served as a general because many inscribed oracle bones dated to her lifetime ask questions related to her military campaigns. Her tomb has also been found and contains weapons and other martial trappings.

According to the archaeologists who have unearthed her story, Fu Hao was her husband’s main general. Her greatest victory came against the Tu-Fang, ancient enemies of the Shang whom she defeated so thoroughly that they were never a threat again.

She led three other confirmed military campaigns, all of them great successes. It seems that she was a cunning strategist, luring the Bafang army into a deadly ambush. She died of exhaustion shortly after this triumph and was buried with great honor.

In the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church developed the concept of a holy way in which the participants would receive pardons for their sins. These became known as “crusades.” The crusades in the Holy Land are well known, and the crusades against pagans in the north at least somewhat remembered, but the Church launched a wide variety of other crusades, some of which are now all but forgotten.

10The Crusade Against Markward

The crusades arguably went off the rails with the crusade against Markward of Annweiler. A thoroughly anticlimactic and forgotten event, it seems to have been the first time a Pope declared a crusade with an obviously political motivation, rather than any religious justification.

After Emperor Henry VI died, his infant son was declared king of Sicily, which was entrusted to the care of Pope Innocent III. However, Henry’s steward Markward of Annweiler claimed that Henry had made him regent of Sicily in his will. Markward occupied the island against the wishes of the Pope, who declared a crusade against him.

This was a thoroughly unpopular move, since Markward was a non-heretical Christian who had participated in the Third Crusade. A crusader army was nonetheless raised under Walter of Brienne, but the matter was resolved when Markward suddenly died. Despite this undramatic ending, the incident provided justification for numerous other political crusades.

9Humbert’s Crusade

In 1343, Pope Clement VI organized a crusade by the Venetians and Hospitallers to capture the Turkish city of Smyrna. The expedition went badly, and Clement soon preached a more general crusade, calling on the nobles of the West to march on Smyrna. This impassioned call was met by a resounding “meh.” In fact, the only volunteer seems to have been Humbert, the young and excitable Dauphin of Viennois.

Humbert was promptly declared commander of the crusade and sailed for Turkey with around 900 men. In the Aegean, the tiny crusade was attacked by the Genoese, who suspected Humbert was planning to assault the island of Chios.

Humbert finally arrived in Smyrna in 1346, only to find that the earlier expedition had crumbled into infighting between the Hospitallers and the Venetians. Thoroughly disillusioned, the youth packed his crusade back up and returned to Europe.

8The Battle Of Nicopolis

After the Ottomans crossed into Europe, the alarmed Hungarians called for a crusade. At the time, the Catholic Church was split between feuding popes in Rome and Avignon, but they both agreed to declare a crusade, and an expedition against the Turks was duly organized.

The 100 Years War was on hiatus at the time, and many young French and Burgundian nobles volunteered to prove their mettle against the infidels. The 24-year-old son of the Duke of Burgundy was elected leader, and the expedition became something of a competition for which wealthy young crusader could outfit the most opulent retinue.

After reaching the Balkans in 1396, the crusaders attacked Muslims and Orthodox alike before encountering the army of Sultan Bayezid the Thunderbolt at Nicopolis. The Hungarians urged a defensive approach, but the westerners rejected such a cowardly strategy. Instead, the splendidly armored knights charged wildly up a steep hill at a fortified position. They were promptly slaughtered, ending the crusade at a stroke.

7The Stedinger Crusade

The Stedingers were a group of freethinking peasants from northern Germany who refused to pay tithes or perform unpaid labor for the Archbishop of Bremen. The infuriated archbishop raised an army to deal with the rebellious commoners, but the Stedingers defeated it in 1229.

The archbishop decided to escalate matters by accusing the Stedingers of heresy and asking the pope to preach a crusade against them. In fact, the Stedingers were not heretical in any meaningful sense. They just didn’t want to pay taxes to the bishop. Nonetheless, Gregory IX declared a crusade against the peasants in 1232.

Several bishops and Dominican friars were commissioned to preach the crusade, and all who fought in it were to be granted full indulgences and forgiveness for their sins. The Stedingers defeated one crusader attack, but a fresh army crushed the peasants in 1234, bringing the crusade to an end.

6The Anti-Colonna Crusade

In the late 13th century, Rome was split between three feuding families: the Orsini, the Caetani, and the Colonna. In 1294, the Orsini and the Caetani teamed up to have Benedetto Caetani elected as Pope Boniface XIII. This infuriated the Colonna, who robbed the papal treasury in 1297. Pope Boniface responded by abducting cardinals Giacomo and Pietro Colonna until their relatives returned the loot.

Although they gave back the money, the Colonna were infuriated by the incident and became increasingly vicious in their attacks on the Caetani. They accused Pope Boniface of heresy and murdering his predecessor. In response, the Pope demoted the Colonna cardinals and declared a crusade against the family.

After being driven out of Rome, the Colonna teamed up with the French king to launch an attack on the Pope at his home in Anagni. During the attack, the French had to stop Sciarra Colonna from beating the Pope to death. Boniface was soon freed by an angry mob, but the incident took its toll and the Pope died days later, ending the anti-Colonna crusade.

5The Italian Crusades

Although the Colonna Crusade was inconclusive, the Popes continued to get caught up in petty Italian politics and preached crusades against their temporal enemies repeatedly throughout the 14th century.

In 1309, a dispute over the city of Ferrara led to a crusade being declared against Venice, although the Venetians backed down before it went anywhere. In 1317, a crusade was declared against the Estensi of Ferrara and the Visconti of Milan, along with Frederick of Montefeltro. The fighting raged inconclusively for years, and the crusade was extended to the city of Mantua in 1324 and Emperor Louis IV in 1327.

In 1355 a crusade was declared against several noble families of the Romagna, who were defeated by Cardinal Gil Albornoz over the next two years. Yet another crusade was declared against the Visconti in 1363. These wars were fought mainly by mercenaries, who nonetheless were granted full forgiveness for their sins and other crusader indulgences.

4The Aragonese Crusades

Pope Martin IV was effectively a puppet of the French royal family, a branch of which also ruled Naples and Sicily. When Peter of Aragon invaded Sicily, Martin excommunicated him and ordered him to hand the kingdom of Aragon over to a French prince. When Peter disobeyed, the Pope declared a crusade against Aragon.

Although supposedly a holy war, the Aragonese Crusade was entirely a French affair. Philip III of France marched across the Pyrenees with a huge army and besieged Girona. However, the Aragonese defeated the French navy, cutting their supply lines. Then dysentery broke out in the French ranks, infecting even the king.

Terrified of dying on a latrine, Philip III ordered the crusade to retreat back across the Pyrenees. The Aragonese attacked the malnourished army in a mountain pass, slaughtering many of them. Philip himself was granted safe passage to Perpignan, where he soon expired.

3The Trade Crusade Of Alexandria

Peter de Lusignan was king of Cyprus, effectively the last major crusader state. In the 1360s, he traveled extensively throughout Europe, seeking support for a crusade against Egypt. Gaining the support of the Pope and fleets from Venice and Genoa, he attacked Alexandria in 1365.

Peter’s supposed plan was to conquer Egypt, which seems bafflingly unrealistic with the resources available to him. Several historians have since argued that he was motivated by economic concerns. Italian merchants had started buying eastern goods direct from Alexandria, and Peter may have hoped to shift the trade routes back through Cyprus by destroying the city.

In any case, after occupying and looting Alexandria, the crusaders withdrew when they heard the main Egyptian army was approaching. Venice and Genoa subsequently made full apologies to the Egyptians for participating.

2The Contra-Catalan Company Crusade

In 1303, the Byzantine Empire hired a group of mercenaries known as the Catalan Company, led by an ex-pirate named Roger de Flor. An impressive series of twists and betrayals ensued, including the murder of Roger and the failed siege of Constantinople by his mercenaries.

By 1311, the Company had crossed over into Greece, where they defeated Duke Walter of Athens and took control of his duchy. Though they had also seized Athens by force after the Fourth Crusade sacked Constantinople, Walter’s family were outraged and appealed to the Pope.

A crusade was formally declared against the Catalans in 1330, on the grounds that they had usurped the Duchy and were overly friendly to the Turks. It did not achieve popular support and the Catalans continued to rule Athens for another 50 years.

1The Waldensian Crusade

The Waldensian Crusade was a tiny and unedifying affair that was effectively the last crusade of the Middle Ages. The Waldenses were a Christian sect who emphasized the holiness of poverty and were declared heretical in the 12th century. They hung on tenaciously and could still be found in southern France and Northern Italy in the late 1400s.

In 1487, Pope Innocent VIII declared a crusade against the Waldenses in the Dauphine. The Waldenses took refuge in the Alps and fought back, leading to several crusader assaults on fortified mountain caves. Peter Lock sums up this final anti-heretic crusade as “a small-scale event [which was] characterized by violence and rapine and achieved nothing.”

In the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church developed the concept of a holy way in which the participants would receive pardons for their sins. These became known as “crusades.” The crusades in the Holy Land are well known, and the crusades against pagans in the north at least somewhat remembered, but the Church launched a wide variety of other crusades, some of which are now all but forgotten.

10The Crusade Against Markward

The crusades arguably went off the rails with the crusade against Markward of Annweiler. A thoroughly anticlimactic and forgotten event, it seems to have been the first time a Pope declared a crusade with an obviously political motivation, rather than any religious justification.

After Emperor Henry VI died, his infant son was declared king of Sicily, which was entrusted to the care of Pope Innocent III. However, Henry’s steward Markward of Annweiler claimed that Henry had made him regent of Sicily in his will. Markward occupied the island against the wishes of the Pope, who declared a crusade against him.

This was a thoroughly unpopular move, since Markward was a non-heretical Christian who had participated in the Third Crusade. A crusader army was nonetheless raised under Walter of Brienne, but the matter was resolved when Markward suddenly died. Despite this undramatic ending, the incident provided justification for numerous other political crusades.

9Humbert’s Crusade

In 1343, Pope Clement VI organized a crusade by the Venetians and Hospitallers to capture the Turkish city of Smyrna. The expedition went badly, and Clement soon preached a more general crusade, calling on the nobles of the West to march on Smyrna. This impassioned call was met by a resounding “meh.” In fact, the only volunteer seems to have been Humbert, the young and excitable Dauphin of Viennois.

Humbert was promptly declared commander of the crusade and sailed for Turkey with around 900 men. In the Aegean, the tiny crusade was attacked by the Genoese, who suspected Humbert was planning to assault the island of Chios.

Humbert finally arrived in Smyrna in 1346, only to find that the earlier expedition had crumbled into infighting between the Hospitallers and the Venetians. Thoroughly disillusioned, the youth packed his crusade back up and returned to Europe.

8The Battle Of Nicopolis

After the Ottomans crossed into Europe, the alarmed Hungarians called for a crusade. At the time, the Catholic Church was split between feuding popes in Rome and Avignon, but they both agreed to declare a crusade, and an expedition against the Turks was duly organized.

The 100 Years War was on hiatus at the time, and many young French and Burgundian nobles volunteered to prove their mettle against the infidels. The 24-year-old son of the Duke of Burgundy was elected leader, and the expedition became something of a competition for which wealthy young crusader could outfit the most opulent retinue.

After reaching the Balkans in 1396, the crusaders attacked Muslims and Orthodox alike before encountering the army of Sultan Bayezid the Thunderbolt at Nicopolis. The Hungarians urged a defensive approach, but the westerners rejected such a cowardly strategy. Instead, the splendidly armored knights charged wildly up a steep hill at a fortified position. They were promptly slaughtered, ending the crusade at a stroke.

7The Stedinger Crusade

The Stedingers were a group of freethinking peasants from northern Germany who refused to pay tithes or perform unpaid labor for the Archbishop of Bremen. The infuriated archbishop raised an army to deal with the rebellious commoners, but the Stedingers defeated it in 1229.

The archbishop decided to escalate matters by accusing the Stedingers of heresy and asking the pope to preach a crusade against them. In fact, the Stedingers were not heretical in any meaningful sense. They just didn’t want to pay taxes to the bishop. Nonetheless, Gregory IX declared a crusade against the peasants in 1232.

Several bishops and Dominican friars were commissioned to preach the crusade, and all who fought in it were to be granted full indulgences and forgiveness for their sins. The Stedingers defeated one crusader attack, but a fresh army crushed the peasants in 1234, bringing the crusade to an end.

6The Anti-Colonna Crusade

In the late 13th century, Rome was split between three feuding families: the Orsini, the Caetani, and the Colonna. In 1294, the Orsini and the Caetani teamed up to have Benedetto Caetani elected as Pope Boniface XIII. This infuriated the Colonna, who robbed the papal treasury in 1297. Pope Boniface responded by abducting cardinals Giacomo and Pietro Colonna until their relatives returned the loot.

Although they gave back the money, the Colonna were infuriated by the incident and became increasingly vicious in their attacks on the Caetani. They accused Pope Boniface of heresy and murdering his predecessor. In response, the Pope demoted the Colonna cardinals and declared a crusade against the family.

After being driven out of Rome, the Colonna teamed up with the French king to launch an attack on the Pope at his home in Anagni. During the attack, the French had to stop Sciarra Colonna from beating the Pope to death. Boniface was soon freed by an angry mob, but the incident took its toll and the Pope died days later, ending the anti-Colonna crusade.

5The Italian Crusades

Although the Colonna Crusade was inconclusive, the Popes continued to get caught up in petty Italian politics and preached crusades against their temporal enemies repeatedly throughout the 14th century.

In 1309, a dispute over the city of Ferrara led to a crusade being declared against Venice, although the Venetians backed down before it went anywhere. In 1317, a crusade was declared against the Estensi of Ferrara and the Visconti of Milan, along with Frederick of Montefeltro. The fighting raged inconclusively for years, and the crusade was extended to the city of Mantua in 1324 and Emperor Louis IV in 1327.

In 1355 a crusade was declared against several noble families of the Romagna, who were defeated by Cardinal Gil Albornoz over the next two years. Yet another crusade was declared against the Visconti in 1363. These wars were fought mainly by mercenaries, who nonetheless were granted full forgiveness for their sins and other crusader indulgences.

4The Aragonese Crusades

Pope Martin IV was effectively a puppet of the French royal family, a branch of which also ruled Naples and Sicily. When Peter of Aragon invaded Sicily, Martin excommunicated him and ordered him to hand the kingdom of Aragon over to a French prince. When Peter disobeyed, the Pope declared a crusade against Aragon.

Although supposedly a holy war, the Aragonese Crusade was entirely a French affair. Philip III of France marched across the Pyrenees with a huge army and besieged Girona. However, the Aragonese defeated the French navy, cutting their supply lines. Then dysentery broke out in the French ranks, infecting even the king.

Terrified of dying on a latrine, Philip III ordered the crusade to retreat back across the Pyrenees. The Aragonese attacked the malnourished army in a mountain pass, slaughtering many of them. Philip himself was granted safe passage to Perpignan, where he soon expired.

3The Trade Crusade Of Alexandria

Peter de Lusignan was king of Cyprus, effectively the last major crusader state. In the 1360s, he traveled extensively throughout Europe, seeking support for a crusade against Egypt. Gaining the support of the Pope and fleets from Venice and Genoa, he attacked Alexandria in 1365.

Peter’s supposed plan was to conquer Egypt, which seems bafflingly unrealistic with the resources available to him. Several historians have since argued that he was motivated by economic concerns. Italian merchants had started buying eastern goods direct from Alexandria, and Peter may have hoped to shift the trade routes back through Cyprus by destroying the city.

In any case, after occupying and looting Alexandria, the crusaders withdrew when they heard the main Egyptian army was approaching. Venice and Genoa subsequently made full apologies to the Egyptians for participating.

2The Contra-Catalan Company Crusade

In 1303, the Byzantine Empire hired a group of mercenaries known as the Catalan Company, led by an ex-pirate named Roger de Flor. An impressive series of twists and betrayals ensued, including the murder of Roger and the failed siege of Constantinople by his mercenaries.

By 1311, the Company had crossed over into Greece, where they defeated Duke Walter of Athens and took control of his duchy. Though they had also seized Athens by force after the Fourth Crusade sacked Constantinople, Walter’s family were outraged and appealed to the Pope.

A crusade was formally declared against the Catalans in 1330, on the grounds that they had usurped the Duchy and were overly friendly to the Turks. It did not achieve popular support and the Catalans continued to rule Athens for another 50 years.

1The Waldensian Crusade

The Waldensian Crusade was a tiny and unedifying affair that was effectively the last crusade of the Middle Ages. The Waldenses were a Christian sect who emphasized the holiness of poverty and were declared heretical in the 12th century. They hung on tenaciously and could still be found in southern France and Northern Italy in the late 1400s.

In 1487, Pope Innocent VIII declared a crusade against the Waldenses in the Dauphine. The Waldenses took refuge in the Alps and fought back, leading to several crusader assaults on fortified mountain caves. Peter Lock sums up this final anti-heretic crusade as “a small-scale event [which was] characterized by violence and rapine and achieved nothing.”

With all of the seemingly endless options for amusement we have today, it’s easy to forget that this hasn’t been the case for very long. Before the Internet gave us immediate access to whatever we feel like watching, listening to, or reading at the moment, those who came before us could get up to some pretty weird things in pursuit of a good time.

10Telegraph Sports

Practically as soon as the telegraph enabled instantaneous communication over hundreds of miles, local sports clubs in several major cities began using it to organize competitions with clubs in other states. For years, citizens could see scores posted in their local newspapers for the most recent telegraph sports matches.

The idea appears to have originated with bowling clubs and soon caught on, spreading to other sports. A 1905 issue of Shooting and Fishing magazine reported on the results of a telegraph shooting match between the Washington, D.C. Revolver Association and the Smith and Wesson Revolver Club of Springfield, Massachusetts. Telegraph bowling leagues in particular were very popular in the first two decades of the 20th century but largely died down by the 1920s.

9Wax Bullet Dueling

Dueling with pistols was still a popular, if prideful and lethal, pastime in America in the early 1900s. Especially in the South, taking up arms over petty slights was still seen as a way to potentially elevate one’s social status, and refusing a challenge to duel could make one a social pariah. But for a brief time, dueling became a spectator sport. Participants faced off wearing black robes and face masks, and used wax bullets.

The sport originated in France, with a “School of Dueling” being established in Paris. Wax bullet dueling was even featured in the 1908 Summer Olympics, with rules based on the honor codes of classic dueling. The duels were not completely without danger. The wax bullets could still cause some damage without proper protection, and spectators had to be wary of their eyes, as a stray hunk of wax could put one out.

8Staged Train Crashes

Humans have always been suckers for spectacle, from the Roman Colosseum to the latest Marvel film in IMAX 3-D. But in years past, spectacle could be hard to come by without putting oneself in danger. Enter “Head-On” Joe Connolly, perhaps the most famous promoter of the biggest events of their day: staged, head-on crashes between two locomotives.

Between 1896 and 1932, Connolly staged no less than 73 of these events, sending 146 trains to their fiery deaths. The first, and most infamous, of these staged wrecks ended in catastrophe. William George Crush, an executive with the Texas Railway Company, proposed the idea as a way to drum up ticket sales, and it took place outside a makeshift temporary city—“Crush, Texas”—in September 1896. Over 40,000 spectators showed up to watch, but the impact caused both trains’ boilers to explode, sending flaming debris raining down on the crowd. At least three died, and many more were injured.

7Bed Pushing

One strange campus craze, originating at the University of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and quickly migrating to Canada, was reported on by Time in February 1961: bed pushing. That is, pushing full size beds mounted on wheels over long distances and difficult terrain.

Canadian students “from Nova Scotia to British Columbia” could be seen pushing beds anywhere and everywhere, “over highways, prairies and frozen lakes.” At the time, the record for distance was an incredible 1,600 kilometers (1,000 mi), set by an Ontario University team that “kept its Simmons rolling night and day for a week.” But the standing world record was set in 1979, years after the craze peaked, by students at Pennsylvania’s St. Vincent College. The team pushed their bed in circles around a shopping center for 3,000 kilometers (1,980 mi).

6Truckin’

The phrase “Keep On Truckin’ ” originated with a Blind Boy Fuller blues song in the 1930s but seemed to really catch on the ’70s, when it seemed to appear on every other shirt practically overnight. It appears to simply be an innocent way to express that one should keep going no matter how difficult things become, but American college students—with some inspiration from artist Robert Crumb—turned the phrase into a strange and pointless activity.

Crumb’s comic strip, “Keep On Truckin’,” featured caricatures of men walking with a pronounced, exaggerated strut, leaning back while making wide, swooping leg motions. College kids—the strip’s target audience—took this immediately to heart, and began copying the cartoonish walk in real life. The phenomenon was first documented in campus newspapers in 1970 but died out by the mid-’70s. Perhaps this was because Crumb was finally granted a copyright for his original image, used without license on merchandise for years, in 1977.

5X-Ray Shoe Fittings

In the 1920s, X-Rays were a strange and wonderful invention with a futuristic name. Scientists could hardly conceive of the potential; they could also hardly conceive of the potential dangers. This explains why, during that decade, X-Ray shoe fitting machines became all the rage in shoe stores across America—though they contained radioactive material, with no protection in place to keep this radiation from leaking into the atmosphere.

They were called “Shoe Fitting Flouroscopes,” and kids and adults alike loved them. By the early 1950s, there were over 10,000 of these extremely hazardous radioactive devices in department stores throughout the land. They were banned in the 1970s once the dangers became known, and while a few scattered cases of foot cancer in older patients have been linked to the machines, exactly how many may have been sickened will probably never be known.

4Balloon Jumping

Yes, the 1920s loved futurism, and nothing was more futuristic than flight. Science fiction of the time was packed with flying cars and bizarre airships, and some rich sportsmen thought of a way to bring the future into the present: balloon jumping.

The jumper was attached by a harness to a large balloon, large enough to provide some lift but not so large (ideally) that the jumper would drift off into the sky. Participants could achieve a kind of moonwalk-type bounce, flying up over trees, fences, and even houses. Sports publications throughout the 1920s fawned over this new sport, calling it safe, easy, and fun, but it never quite caught on among the public at large—perhaps due to a 1927 balloon jumping death in the UK, in which an experienced parachute jumper died while partaking in the activity.

3Fox Tossing

Going back much further, once can imagine that the opportunities for amusement were even more scarce in the 18th century. One forgotten sport, described in a German hunting manual from 1720, was known as “Fuchsprellen”—roughly translated, “Fox Tossing.”

The idea was to lay a series of tarps over a large outdoor playing area. Then, several foxes—along with badgers and small wildcats—would be let loose. Participants would chase them around, waiting for the moment when a hapless animal was positioned perfectly on one of the tarps; two players would then grab the tarp at either end and quickly pull it taut, launching the animal as high into the air as possible.

While one might think that such ridiculous activities involving cruelty to animals are a thing of the distant past, this is not necessarily so.

2Octopus Wrestling

In the 1950s and ’60s, skin diving was a popular pastime. It was quite competitive, with divers vying to see who could dive the deepest or stay submerged the longest, but soon enough a new element was added to the competition: how large an octopus could be wrangled to the surface.

While incredibly illegal today, octopus wrestling became a popular spectator sport in the Pacific Northwest. Competitors had to find and extract an octopus from its lair and wrestle it to the surface of the water; they were judged on the weight of the animal, with extra points awarded for forgoing any breathing equipment. In 1963, over 5,000 spectators showed up to Puget Sound in Washington State for the World Octopus Wrestling Championships. Organizers guaranteed action by placing a few octopi in strategic locations along the beach, as they had to ensure an exciting match; the event was being televised.

1Auto Polo

In 1912, a Kansas Ford dealer held what he hoped would be the first of many sporting matches with an eye toward generating business. It was held between the two inaugural teams, the Grey Ghosts and the Red Devils, of America’s newest sport: Auto Polo. It was played pretty much exactly as one might expect, like traditional polo but with cars instead of horses.

As cars were initially marketed as a replacement for horses, this makes a strange sort of sense. In this first match, held in a Kansas alfalfa field, two teams of three men competed: two men to drive the car and one to swing a giant mallet at a basketball-sized rubber ball. Despite (or perhaps because of) the likelihood of crashes, injuries and deaths, the sport skyrocketed in popularity for the next several decades, with the last matches taking place in the mid-1950s.