A Day In History

Not much is known about Japan’s history before 4th century AD. Historians have concluded that the ancient Japanese lived in small chief-led villages and were self-sufficient, having little contact with others outside their clan. This changed as the population grew and, by the Kofun period, the earliest murmurings of government were established. Our earliest written records come from Chinese travellers during this part of the Yamato period.

Shell shock can take many forms but is a reaction to the helplessness felt by those in a war zone and can manifest in many different ways, including panic, violence, anger or an inability to perform basic tasks like sleeping, walking or talking. Now classed as a type of PTSD, the term has been retired in medical circles; but it is still understood to be specific to those who have been involved in active warfare and combat. Like many mental health disorders, humans have a poor history with how we’ve treated those with shell shock. The term first arose during World War 1 when it was published in an article written by Psychologist Charles Myers for the British Medical Journal ‘The Lancet’, after seeing the effects of combat in the soldiers at his war hospital post.

Srinivasa Ramanujan was a self taught mathematical genius who relied on intuition to achieve his success, believing that an equation “has no meaning unless it expresses a thought of God.” While his colleagues meticulously reached their results via proofs, Ramanujan made significant contributions to the theory of numbers, infinite series, continued fractions, elliptic functions and many more based on inspiration from dreams and visions.

While no single man can take full credit for the rise of American advertising, Edward Bernays certainly deserves more than most. Known today as “the father of public relations”, Bernays was responsible for campaigns that changed the lives and minds of the American citizen forever: having a hand in everything from political leaders, to smoking culture and what Americans ate for their breakfast. His infamous book Propaganda gave rise to the many rules and regulations of public relations.

On January 28th, 1986 the world watched in horror as the televised launch of the space shuttle Challenger ended in tragedy when the ship broke apart just 73 seconds later, killing everyone on board. To this day, it remains one of the worst space accidents in history. When the Challenger launched in 1986, there were 7 people on board who had been tasked with deploying a large communications orbital satellite to monitor Halley’s comet, retrieving a payload specialist from the International Space Station and launching the Teacher in Space Project. Let's look at how these tragic events unfolded on today's video.

The Prison of Alcatraz was well renowned as being the toughest prison in the world. From its opening in 1934 to its closure in 1963, it became infamous for its brutal conditions and being impossible to escape from: the life of a prisoner at Alcatraz was tough to say the least. But unlike other maximum-security prisons, Alcatraz had a reputation for its brutality. Many prisoners complained that life there was inhumane, the punishments cruel and that its conditions were causing many inmates to go insane. Today let's go back in history as we take a look at the Day In The Life Of A Prisoner In Alcatraz.

The last Ice Age was during the palaeolithic and early Mesolithic periods of human history, beginning 100,000 years ago and ending 25,000 years ago, By the time it was over, homo sapiens were the only human species to have survived its brutal conditions.

The Ottoman Empire is one of the largest and longest running Empires in history, spanning 623 years from 1299 to 1922; and 3 continents including the Balkans in South-Eastern Europe, Arabia and Central Asia, and coastal Northern Africa. Like many great empires that came before it, the Ottoman Empire was based on slavery, but unlike most examples of slavery, in the Ottoman Empire, slaves were white.

On the 23rd August 1942, the Axis Powers led by Nazi Germany entered the Soviet city of Stalingrad. Hitler expected a quick victory, but almost 5 months of fighting later, the Battle of Stalingrad proved the beginning of the end for Hitler’s Nazi Germany, and was one of the bloodiest in the entire Second World War. At its end, there were almost two million casualties across both sides, and the average lifespan for a Soviet soldier in the battle was just 24 hours. But for the Nazis, who in the final months were forced to endure horrific conditions as temperatures plummeted and food ran out, they may have envied this quick death, and longed for it instead.

One of the most commonly held misconceptions about ancient Egypt is that slaves were used to build the pyramids. But recent archaeological evidence has found that this is not true, and it’s now suggested it was either farmers who built the pyramids when flooding meant they could not work on their own lands or that a workforce of labourers dedicated their entire lives to the task. That’s not to say Ancient Egypt didn’t have slavery. It did. It was just a little different to how we imagine it today….

In the year 536 AD, a major global event saw the world plunged into darkness and despair. Temperatures plummeted, crops failed, people starved, and the colder climate became the perfect breeding ground for disease. Modern scholars have called 536, not just a terrible year in human history, but perhaps the worst year to ever be alive. It began the coldest decade in 2500 years and its effects were still felt over a century later. Prior to the year 536, life for the average citizen in Europe, the Middle East or Asia was already a struggle. Toiling in the fields day and night, they had to contend with almost constant warfare and disease rampaging through their villages.

While remembered today simply as the katana-wielding Japanese warriors of old, the life of a samurai was actually far more complex. For 700 years, the samurai were the ruling political power in Japan, serving as a noble military class, embracing their culture as a strict lifestyle on and off the battlefield. Experts in martial arts, swordsmanship, horseback riding, and archery, an honourable samurai was educated, brave, and ruthless, following their strict code of conduct to the last. The way of the warrior was one of loyalty, indifference to pain, fearlessness, and a desire to die with honour on the battlefield to a worthy opponent. Although the term samurai has existed since the 8th century, it was during the Shogunate Era, roughly from 1192 to 1868, that the samurai class truly emerged in society.

Long before other human subspecies like the Neanderthals, Denisovans and homo sapiens came the homo erectus, the first real example of a human species. Although homo erectus could be split into multiple subspecies categories due to the length of their existence it’s not incorrect to refer to them all simply as homo erectus, so for ease in this video, we will be referring to the species as a whole under the homo erectus umbrella. 1.9 million years ago the earth was in the Pleistocene period and the first homo species was born – the homo erectus, which is Latin for upright man. Homo erectus is the longest surviving relative of the modern-day human, having managed to live for approximately 1.5 million years. To compare, homo sapiens have only been around for about 400,000 years so far.

The Roman Empire, in some form or another, existed for around 1500 years, rising from the Ancient Italian capital and going on to dominate Europe and the Mediterranean. Stretching from Britain in the West to Iran in the East and North Africa in the south, the empire was forever at war maintaining and expanding its gigantic borders. This made the life of a Roman soldier a tough and dangerous one, trampling all over the world hoping to see out their service and reap the rewards of glory. And while the politics of Roman life was often complicated and ever-changing, no Roman Emperor was ever stronger than his army: the success, and often life, of an emperor depended on his popularity with the legions and their successes abroad.

Beyond the courts and castles of the lords, kings and emperors, life in the medieval period for most was tough and gruelling. Keeping the higher classes rich, and the bigger cities fed, the peasants toiled from sunrise to sunset, often little more than slaves. With long days of backbreaking work, oppressive masters, barely enough food to survive, terrible living conditions, and waves of disease, the peasants’ life was a simple, miserable, and thankless one that remained virtually unchanged for centuries. But while the medieval period was the slow evolution from the old world into the new, as empires rose and fell, and epic warfare was waged, for those at the bottom rung of society’s ladder, centuries passed by with little change. To the peasant, rather than paying tax to a Roman provincial governor for living on and working their land, they paid it to a local noble instead.

For 3000 years, Egypt was a titan of the Mediterranean region. Ruled by a King or Queen, using the title of Pharaoh, they enjoyed almost limitless power and wealth. But by the time Julius Caesar dominated the Roman Republic as dictator, Egypt was a shadow of its former glory. As Rome stretched its influence over the country, civil war and a vicious power grab erupted. Aided by the Pharaoh Cleopatra, one rival to the Roman throne conspired and claim it all for himself, but in failing, inadvertently brought an end to Egyptian independence, and the end of the Pharaohs forever.

During the medieval period, imposing castles were scattered all over Europe and the Middle East, overlooking the towns or villages they controlled, and housing a powerful king or noble. To any invading force or envious rival, a strong castle was essential in projecting the force its occupant held. Before the medieval period, the Western Roman Empire had long enjoyed power across the continent thanks to the strength of its highly trained, professional military. But when the empire fell in 476 AD, and local kings and lords filled the space they left behind, despite the constant warfare that followed a standing army was not deemed essential. Medieval warfare was focused around the siege of a castle, with the plan of invaders to either try and take it for themselves or pummel it into terms of surrender. From around the eleventh century, castles became more prominent and far harder to breach by normal means, and in return, that led to more effective and destructive siege technologies.

Wife Selling in Victorian England Remember the show wife swap? Well, that was basically Victorian England. Even now in some communities and religions, divorce is looked down upon as unsavoury, or wrong, and great lengths are taken to avoid it. So go back a few hundred years and add on the British sense of propriety, traditional values and the belief that women were property and you can imagine the pearl-clutching that suggesting divorce would induce (unless, you know, you were the King of England or something). Referencing Henry VIII here. Traipsing your wife around like a side of beef, however, was totally fine. Women sold as possessions at market places was a practice that began in the 17th century and persisted right through the Victorian era till approximately the early 1900s, with the last recorded instance occurring in 1913.

From the lowest slaves to the highest-ranking ministers, for almost four thousand years eunuchs were a presence in courts across the world. As a social class of trusted servants, eunuchs served Egyptian pharaohs, Chinese emperors, middle-eastern kings, caliphates and sultans, and in many places became well-respected confidants, advisors, generals and patriarchs. But their unique position often led to their ability to amass great power. At their height in Imperial China during the Middle Ages, the eunuchs were the kingmakers. They became feared masters of court intrigue, open to corruption, interfering with politics, selecting successors, and able to destroy their enemies to keep themselves strong.

The Aztecs were a civilisation who lived in Central Mexico from 1300 to 1521. History has painted the Aztecs as a strange civilisation, one capable of great intelligence and architectural marvels, who simultaneously worshipped a bunch of strange, angry gods and routinely ritually sacrificed each other to them. A lot of our beliefs about the Aztecs trace back to 1519 and the Spanish conquerors of the time and although we accept that human sacrifice was a part of their culture and religion, the extent of it is still debated today. The fall of the Aztec Empire and our subsequent beliefs on human sacrifice in their culture, can be traced back to 1519 and the expedition of Hernán Cortés that culminated in the conquest of the capital Tenochtitlan and the fall of the Aztec Empire by 1521. Upon arrival in Tenochtitlan, Cortes reported discoveries of the practice of human sacrifice, horrifying the general public and lending credence to the conquest.

Throughout history, the word plague has invariably been used to describe any infectious disease, but today it refers specifically to the bacterial infection of the strain Yersinia pestis: commonly known as bubonic plague. As human populations in the Middle Ages expanded but medical knowledge failed to progress from the times of the Ancient Greeks, great sweeping outbreaks of infectious disease were allowed to flourish unchecked.

Once upon a time, our species of humans – homo sapiens were not the only ones to walk the earth. The homo genome has been found in multiple subspecies and the estimations on how many other human species there were changes with new evidence found. But there is an accepted 9 to 12 subspecies of humans most archaeologists and scientists agree on. They are included but not limited to homo habilis, homo Erectus, Denisovans, Neanderthals, and homo Rhodesians. So how did homo sapiens survive where all others failed, and what happened to all our homo-genome cousins?

The Trail of Tears refers to the forced displacement of what white American colonizers called “The Five Civilised Tribes”. Over twenty years between 1830 and 1850; somewhere around 60,000 to 100,000 Native Americans were forced from their homes into the land the new Government had decided would be “Indian Territory”. During their removal, countless died from exposure, disease, and starvation. Their unnecessary deaths are now seen as a near-genocidal event, and the route they walked and died upon is forevermore known as The Trail of Tears. Who were the Five Civilised Tribes? The five civilized tribes refers to the major Native American nations that originally lived in America’s Deep South. These were the Cherokee, Chicasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee Creek and Seminole tribes.

Denisovan is the term for a group of Hominins that thrived in the middle of the Pleistocene and covered some of the most populated areas in modern history. From frozen mountains to tropical islands, blizzards to beaches this group lived throughout Eurasia, Australia, and many Pacific Islands. Using mitochondrial DNA scientists can track past migrations of Denisovans and even tell us where their legacy lives on. You see, same as with Neanderthals, Denisovan DNA lives on in certain populations. But, Denisovans haven’t really been well defined yet. Despite DNA profiles, several fragments of bones, and one debatable wonderfully intact skull, the group referred to as Denisovans isn’t officially classified as a species of Homo, or even a sub-species. They are for a lack of a better word, a mystery. One of the discoveries was a hybrid Neanderthal-Denisovan, named Denny because scientists recognize a square peg for a square hole as far as naming conventions go.

In recent years historians have established that slavery during the Viking era was far more common than once believed. And it is during this era that for the first time, Scandinavians made the capture and use of slaves a key part of their economy and military campaigns. In fact, some historians now argue that the Vikings were responsible for more human trafficking in the period 750-1050 C.E, than any other civilization. Although slavery existed in some form in Scandinavia long before the Viking era, it is during this period we see a sharp uptake in the number of slaves.

“Hold the cross high, so I may see it through the flames” – these are the haunting final words uttered by our cross-dressing female patron saint of France. The notorious ‘Maid of Orléans’ - or more widely known as Joan of Arc - is perhaps one of the most controversial characters in all French history, her story, shrouded in mystery and still finds us questioning more than 600 years later. Was she merely a mentally ill young girl whose delusions led to her tragic end, or was she a true visionary who received information from the divine resulting in her becoming the prolific hero of the French nation, altering the very fabric of this nation’s history forever? On this day in History, we take a closer look, what conclusion does her story provide?

History is truth - echoed through the hallways of time, breathing in the memories of many, living on in through the shape of present-day society which it has chiseled, the past resonating in the present. History contains the experiences of many, it is our stories – the essence of which make us human. Today we will be going on a journey, back into the Gulag of the Soviet Union, we will allow the prisoners of the Gulag to speak to us, to help us understand their plight. The GULAG is an acronym in Russian, which when translated into English means “Chief Administration of Corrective Labour Camps”. The Gulag consisted of a network of hundreds of labour camps and prisons, whose inmates were political prisoners of the Soviet Union from the 1920s until the mid-1950s. These camps can be compared in some ways to the Nazi Concentration Camps of the Second World War.

When Did Slavery Start? The Origins of Slavery. The history of slavery is as long as the history of humanity and spans almost every single culture and ethnicity. As long as humans have had civilisation, we’ve had ways to subjugate each other. Basically, we all suck. Welcome to A Day In History!

Homo Naledi – does it form part of our earliest ancestors or is it simply a different species, a close relative alongside our ancestors? Can we with any credibility and surety say that Homo Naledi formed part of the evolution process of modern humans or was it merely a different species within the Homo genome, which followed its own parallel branch? These questions lead to a far greater question, one about the very origins of our species and the credibility of human evolution as we have come to know it – have we in fact evolved at all in the way that scientists claim that we have, or is the story of our origins vastly different to anything that has been propagated? As we learn about Homo Naledi, we will attempt to formulate some answers to these questions, or at the least theories that could hopefully one day lead us to those answers. Let us commence our journey of discovery by unveiling who/what Homo Naledi is.

The Great Depression in the United States of America, commenced very suddenly with the crash to the stock market in 1929. This sent the country into a severe economic crisis which lasted from 1929 until 1939, the effects of which saw people suddenly losing their jobs, income, homes and overall livelihoods. Up to one quarter of the population became unemployed and for others, wages were cut up to 60% or hours were significantly reduced. This crisis affected the middle-class as well as the working-class as it affected urban and rural areas alike, even the upper-middle class employment suffered, with professions in medicine or law (amongst others) dropping incomes by up to 40%. Nationwide there was of course an overwhelming lack of money for food and droughts in certain areas affected farming – thus there was on overall lack of food. Lets take a more magnified look at the lives of families during the great depression era.

Homo habilis is one of the first members chronologically of the Homo family. It stands at the base of our family tree and is considered one of the first real tool users. At one point thought the be the direct ancestor of modern humans; the importance of a proven, evidenced beginning point to our evolutionary branch cannot be overstated. Whether that is Homo habilis is, as always, debated. When we discuss the beginnings of human evolution we go back millions of years. When we have that much time to look across science does the best it can. Theories are made and debated, evidence is reexamined, and what we think we know is overturned. We have mentioned in previous videos that covered other hominins that science doesn’t have the full story yet and we try to take into consideration the new information as its revealed.

The Americans have long been thought to be the latecomers to the habituation of modern humans. But what if that wasn’t true, and humans were in North and South America tens of thousands of years before we thought they were. What kind of lives did they lead, where did they come from, where did they go, why aren’t they still here? These are huge questions and maybe we will find some answers as we trace history back as far as we can go. About 13 thousand years ago in the fossil record, there appears a series of archaeological evidence pointing toward a culture that existed in North America, Central America, and even into South America. This culture was largely identified due to the type of spearhead point used in hunting, this specific type of spearhead became known as a Clovis Point, named for a town near the initial discovery. First found in the 1930’s, the Clovis became the prevalent contenders for the first humans to come to the Americas.

Civilizations such as the Greek, Egyptians, Romans, Vikings and Chinese dynasties amongst others had slaves who largely slotted into one of four categories: chattel, bonded, forced labour etc. As long as we have written records of humanity, we have evidence of slavery. From ancient civilizations to modern-day, humans have always subjugated and enslaved one another. Whether it's because of the colour of our skin, our wealth, where we were born or simply due to who’s in charge, there have been instances of slavery across every single country and culture. Today we shall discuss a brief time line of slavery in chapter 2 of the A Brief History Of The Origins Of Slavery. In this video we shall look at how different era's and nations held and treated their slaves. We shall also look into the horrifying aspects of slavery including the transatlantic slave trade.

The horrors and tragedy of World War II are years before most of us were born, and even though the destruction of the war and the aftermath of it set the stage for major events even now some 8 decades later, many people don’t understand how the echoes of the war haunted the world for lifetimes. The scars left by World War II, emotional and physical, took many long years to fade. Some wounds never healed, and some of those who committed acts bloody and dark never faced judgement for their crimes. Escaped, hidden by distance, time, and help from unexpected places these men were wanted for crimes of war beyond scope. When the war ended in Europe there were many members of Nazi Germany and the Axis Powers that were to be tried for their actions during and before the war. Many of those people escaped arrest or even confinement with the help of “ratlines”, a series of escape routes for Nazis and Fascists after WWII. Often these ratlines led to South America.

Neanderthals, or Homo neanderthalensis, are possibly our most famous ancestors. They walked, talked, fought, loved, and suffered just like us. Modern humans shared so much with Neanderthals. Their homes, ranges, hunting grounds, and even their cemeteries were left, or ceded, to us over Europe, Asia, and some parts of Africa. When we discovered the Neanderthal’s disappearance from the fossil record tens of thousands of years ago we blamed climate change, the disappearance of megafauna, and competition from modern humans. The meeting between the two species was anything but short, but what actually happened when the latest branches of our family met so long ago? And what recent discoveries changed how we understand our meeting?

Holodomor can be literally translated to “death by hunger”. It’s a horrifying fate that between 7 and 10 million people suffered in Ukraine between 1932 and 1933 thanks to the Soviet Union’s harsh grain quotas and Joseph Stalin’s underlying desire to totally subdue the Ukrainian population. In recent years, with further evaluation of Joseph Stalin’s methods in Ukraine that led to this mass famine, historians have been forced to reconsider and reassess what happened in 1932-1933, with many now renaming the Holodomor as nothing shorter than one of the worst man-made famines. Before joining the Soviet Union in 1922, Ukraine was its own, independent, thriving nation. This was in no small part due to their flourishing agriculture, with lands full of fertile soil, ripe for farming. The crops produced in Ukraine became so well known that after joining, it became known as the Soviet Union’s breadbasket.

Back in the fourteenth century, Mansa Musa was the ruler of a West African Empire and was said to be worth more than double that: around 400 billion dollars by today’s money, accounting for inflation. Such wealth is often hard to imagine, so for context, this figure is the same as the national gross domestic product of Norway. Musa was so wealthy that his lavish gifting crashed a regional gold market for a decade, and quite literally put him and his empire on the map.

The Bengal famine of 1943 serves as an example of one of the worst and most fatal atrocities in Modern History. It is also the only famine in India that is recognised to be caused by man-made factors; greed, complacency, and even racism all played a role. It claimed the lives of 2-4 million Bengalis. It reduced the appearance of otherwise healthy men, women, and children to skeletons. Like life, History is complicated. History merely seeks to record life, so it must be. History tells us that its celebrated figures can be capable of both immense bravery but also shocking inhumanity. The story of the Bengal famine drives this concept home, forcing us to re-examine past beliefs and arrive at more nuanced conclusions about such figures. Join us, as we uncover this extremely tragic and difficult history.

The Ottoman Empire began in the 13th century with Osman the 1st. Gaining land and power the Ottomans, named after Osman via anglicization and some language hopping, would soon conquer the ancient city of Constantinople. This would bring about an influx of Greek and Roman culture that was the backbone of the Byzantines. The Ottoman Empire reached far and wide, and it was reflected everywhere in the empire, even the Imperial Harem.

Traditional, or perhaps more precisely previous, hypothesis has the appearance of modern humans, Homo sapiens, at around 200,000 years ago in the eastern part of Africa, plus or minus 50,000 years. However discoveries have muddied the already stygian depths on this topic, and we might have H. sapiens ancestors much older, and more widespread, than that.

The Colonial Period had many highs and lows. Spain was among the main players in the colonization of the west, and collected its share of the riches there for the taking. Queen Isabela of Castille, co-ruler of Spain with King Ferdinand II of Aragón, funded the expedition of Cristopher Columbus which landed on an island in the Bahamas in 1492. From the first the exploration of the New World was motivated by the desire for gold, glory, and God. The Spanish brought with them the tools of war, among them dogs trained to be vicious in battle. War dogs, known in Europe for hundreds of years, and bred to maximize their usefulness. One famous breed, the Greyhound, was said to have been bred for quick strikes in battle. The most fearful dog the Spanish used was the Spanish Mastiff. With a weight up to 250 pounds and standing 3 feet tall these dogs were terrors on the fields of war.

The Mughal Empire was a Muslim kingdom that spread out of the southern area of today's Uzbekistan in the early 1500s. Within a relatively short time, the Mughals, under their first emperor, Babur, had expanded to include present-day Afghanistan, Kashmir, and most of modern Pakistan, as well as the area around the Indian city of Delhi down the Ganges River to the border of what is now Bangladesh. Over the next one hundred and eighty years, the empire grew to encompass most of the Indian subcontinent except the far south, and much of modern Pakistan and Bangladesh. Its three greatest conquerors were Babur (who reigned from 1526-30), Akbar (from 1556-1605) and Aurangzeb (r. 1658-1707).

The story of Japanese Prisoner of War camps is a particularly harrowing example of the extreme degree of inhumanity so often present in war. Allied soldiers captured by Japanese forces experienced an almost unimaginable scale of depravity. However, this story also highlights the resilience of the human spirit as they resisted the cruelty they faced, adopting various strategies to preserve not only their lives but also their dignity and self-respect. Join us, as we journey through a remarkably intertwined tale of horror and resistance.

Hey, folks! Today we are going to dive into a disturbing topic that is rarely discussed and mostly left out of history books: Human Zoos. Most of you probably had no idea such a thing existed, and you cannot be blamed for it. It is certainly easier to forget than to remember and to face the shame of this abhorrent practice. One of the first people to host a human exhibition was a man called P.T. Barnum. Back on August 11th, 1835 in New York City, he displayed a woman, named Joyce Heth. He presented her as “the 161-year-old woman” and claimed she was the former slave of Augustine Washington, George Washington’s father. She was said to have raised and taken care of the future president George Washington. None of these claims were true, but regardless, the exhibition was a huge success and attracted the attention of thousands of people.

As well as stinky hygiene practices, plagues and farming, the medieval era was known for some truly weird weaponry. Across the era, humans developed interesting and inventive ways of poking holes in each other, and some were more gruesome than you might expect. The medieval times had some horrific and creative weaponry that served as an inspiration for a lot of modern weapons. Lets look at today's video to find out about the weird weapons and punishments of the medieval ages.

The word cannibalism originates from the Island Carib after unearthed 17th century legends suggested that the eating of human flesh was part of their culture (although this has since been debated). Instances of human cannibalism have been documented all over the world. It’s been practiced in countries like Great Britain, New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Fiji, the Amazon basin, the Congo and amongst Maoris in New Zealand. But the original cannibals weren’t actually homo sapiens. Archaeological evidence suggests that it was practiced by other early hominins, with evidence of “de-fleshed” bones dating back 600,000 years.

Serial killers. Nations become glued to their televisions or news feeds when just the suspicion of a serial killer roams in their midst. The term serial killer has only been used since the late 1800s, and the term was used to describe the infamous and still unknown “Jack the Ripper” of Victorian England. Imagine a time when none of that existed, and where the upper class did not only live better, more luxurious lives, in many places, and at many times, they could kill with impunity. The ancient serial killers we have more knowledge about are those in the very upper and/or ruling classes. Today in this video we shall uncover some of the most notorious serial killers of the medieval age, people like Liu Pengli, Gilles de Rais, Vlad the Impaler, etc.

Henry was never meant to become king of England. His older brother Arthur, Prince of Wales, had that role sewn up. Born at the Palace of Placentia in Greenwich on the 28th of June 1491, Henry was brought up to be an educated and strong prince - talented at Latin, French and Italian as well as hunting, dancing and sports. He picked up his fair share of titles as a boy - from Duke of York to Warden of the Scottish Marshes and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland – all given to him by his father, Henry VII. Lets go back in history to look at the notorious life of the Tudor king Henry VIII.

In this short historic documentary about Joseph Stalin, the leader of the USSR, we shall explore his final 24 hours. If you look at the reign of Joseph Stalin as the General Secretary of the Soviet Union, you get an image of Stalin as a ruthless, politically crafty, and dangerously paranoid individual. He held power in large part due to the fear he instilled. That insidious fear, not just of Stalin himself, but the mistrust he fostered between people themselves let him stay in power for 30 years. It eventually also led to Joseph Stalin lying in his own urine, the heads of state surrounding him, too afraid to lift a finger to help. Live by the sword, die by the loss of bodily functions in a narratively interesting way, as the saying goes.

No one knows, probably not even the Russian government, exactly how many people perished as a result of the many purges, labor camps, and other punishments that occurred during the life of the Soviet Union, which existed from 1917 - 1991. Reliable estimates have put the number over ten million, and perhaps as high as twenty million or more. Most, but certainly not all of those deaths occurred during the reign of Josef Stalin, a genius in the exercise of raw power, but otherwise, a paranoid megalomaniac with few equals in history. In today's video, we are going to tell you about some of the other terrible events that occurred during the life of the Soviet Union, or USSR.

For those of you new to this topic there were basically two types of Nazi camps: the “extermination camp”, for which the sole purpose was the mass killing of human beings. The German word for extermination camp is “Vernichtungs Lager”. The “Konzentrations Lager”, or concentration camp, was also a place of horror, but while in hundreds of thousands of cases, there was no real difference between the two types of camps, very generally speaking, there was a greater chance to survive in the camps designated “KZ” or “kah tsett”, as the letters and acronym was pronounced in German. In the extermination camps one's chances of survival were dramatically reduced. Though it is the most infamous camp, Auschwitz was actually three camps: Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II - Birkenau, and Auschwitz III – Monowitz. As you may know, “Auschwitz” is the German word for the town of Óswięcim ( pronounced “Ohss vee etch im”) in south-west Poland, where the camp was located.

In the 13th and 14 centuries, the Mongols established the largest land empire in human history. At its furthest extent, the Mongolian Empire stretched from the coast of China along the northern border of the Himalayas, encompassing much of today's Middle East from Persia to the Black Sea, much of south-central Russia and Ukraine and Europe to the gates of Vienna. This was done on foot, wagon, and most famously, on horseback. By the time the Mongols reached the eastern borders of Ukraine in the late 1200s, some of their armies numbered 100,000, but it was not their numbers that were the Mongols' primary weapon – terror was. That policy of terror started with their first great leader, the infamous Genghis Khan. He is not infamous everywhere. “The Great Khan”, as he is also known, is still a national hero in Mongolia today.

Today we shall dive deep into human evolution as we look at some of the most bizarre theories of how homo sapiens grew big brains with enhanced cognitive abilities! For the first two-thirds of our evolution, homo-sapiens shared the same brain size of monkeys and other primates. It would take a groundbreaking discovery in 1924 at a quarry in Taung, South Africa, to first introduce this extraordinary new idea. It was there that anthropologist Raymond Dart was stunned to find the fossilized cranium and intact skeletal face of an early bipedal ape, whose remains shared amazing similarities with the human brain. Dart declared it a previously unknown ancestor of modern humans, christening it with the name Australopithecus africanus, or ‘Man-Ape of Africa,’ causing a mixture of skepticism and feverish enthusiasm to sweep the academic world.

The word “concubine” has several definitions and many connotations. The easiest way to define the Chinese type of concubinage, at least among the very rich and the Imperial family was that they were mistresses. Concubinage in China differed in many ways from that of other nations, though it did have similarities as well. At the very top, in the Imperial Household, there was sisterhood, rivalry, palace intrigue, and much more. This likely took place at the home of rich men too. In the Imperial China which lasted until the Communist Revolution of 1949, a man could have only one wife, but as many concubines as he could afford to house, clothe and feed. Frequently, in Chinese history (and that of other nations), a man's wealth and power were partly judged by the number of concubines he kept and how they lived.

The Roman Empire fell in the 5th century AD, prey to internal corruption, disputes, and many enemies on and within its borders. Despite being just a memory for over fifteen hundred years, the ancient Romans, whose territory included almost the entire coast of the Mediterranean even before an emperor ruled them, have cast a long shadow. The politics of many nations today are based upon many ancient Roman principles. So are laws and modern Western architecture - just three things descended from ancient Rome. First, the language of Rome, Latin, is one of the two main building blocks of many modern European languages, along with Greek. Second, English words coming directly from Latin are "convivial" and "conviviality," relating to a pleasant but not overly raucous good time with good company. "The party was quite convivial, and all the guests enjoyed the spirit of conviviality encouraged by the party's hosts."

China is a unique nation and has been the most populous planet for the last few centuries. Considering ethnic Chinese living in other countries, it's estimated that about 1-in-5 people on the planet are Chinese. Twenty-percent. The population of China in 2020 was 1.44 billion people. Recently it's been announced that India, whose population in 2020 was 1.38 billion people, will soon be the most populated country on Earth.

Marriages in ancient Egypt were often arranged to strengthen connections between families or for financial advancement. All the same, romantic love was still important to Egyptians and celebrated in poetry from the age. The Chester Beatty Papyri date from 1200 BC and show a speaker praising the beauty of his lover, which demonstrates the idealised form of beauty at the time: “She radiates perfection and glows with health. The glance of her eye is gorgeous. Her lips speak sweetly, and not one word too many. Long-necked and milky breasted she is, her hair the colour of pure lapis.” The speaker refers to this woman as his “sister” – this does not mean that they were related but rather was a term of respect and esteem for women! In fact, marrying one’s family members was frowned upon for most of the population with the exception of the royal family, to preserve bloodlines and royal lineage. Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “sisterly love”.

Just under half a million women served in the Soviet Red Army in WWII, or as it is known in the former Soviet countries, "The Great Patriotic War". The most famous of them were snipers, but as far as we can tell from what Soviet records were made public after the fall of the USSR, only about 2,000 of them served as snipers on the front line, or at least, those were the women who received formal training. But consider this. Even if we limit ourselves to 2,000, the arguably five most well-known were responsible for the deaths of close to 700 Axis troops!

Commodus had ruled Rome from 177. For the first three years of his reign, he was actually "co-Emperor" with his illustrious father, Marcus Aurelius. Marcus Aurelius is well-known today for the collection of his writings entitled "The Reflections of Marcus Aurelius," a virtual handbook for those who wish to live a calm, stoic life of moderation. Marcus Aurelius was a revered figure in his time, and in the time since, he has been dubbed one of the "Five Good Emperors" for his accomplishments: expanding the borders of the empire and increasing the prosperity of Rome.

China is an ancient civilization that has existed for nearly 4000 years, responsible for some of the most important inventions ever conceived, such as the compass, gunpowder, paper, and printing. Yet China is also the place where some of the most wicked emperors to ever rule were able to order and perform acts so brutal and savage they defy belief. Here are some of the worst examples. Gao Yang was an infamous alcoholic who sat on the throne of the Northern Qi from 529 to 559.

Augustus, the first ever emperor of Rome, is most famous for his countless military successes during his long and tyrannical tenure. Yet, in 21 BC, at the height of his power, he was completely embarrassed by the most unlikely of leaders. Amanirenas of the Kush was not only a woman of colour but also disabled, possessing only one working eye. Thanks to her efforts, Augustus, the self-proclaimed ‘son of God, was forced to surrender and accept every one of her demands. Here is the story of how an African queen dominated the most powerful man in the world.

“From the halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli...” are the beginning lines from the United States Marine Corps Hymn, and the “Tripoli” that's mentioned is the largest city in today's Libya. The hymn was written sometime after 1867, and these lines commemorate two of the Marine Corps' most famous battles “the halls of Montezuma referring to the Mexican-American War of 1846-48, and “the shores of Tripoli” refers to the battles the Marine Corps, along with the US Navy, fought with the infamous “Barbary Pirates” who terrorized the coast of North Africa, the Mediterranean Sea and indeed, a large part of Europe for at three centuries.

Before Putin, the Soviet Union, Stalin, and Lenin, Russia was governed by the Tsars, an eccentric bunch of emperors and empresses who ruled the Slavic realm with an iron grip for nearly 400 years. As figureheads with unlimited power, and whose every word was tinged with absolute authority, it comes as no surprise that Russian kings and queens had a tendency to abuse their position, often in spectacularly gruesome ways. Today we're going to talk about tsars like Peter the Great, Nicolas II, Ivan the Terrible and Anna Ivanova.

Have you ever asked your school teacher for permission to get married? No? Well, if you'd been an Aztec, this would be just one of many things you'd have to do if you wanted to settle down! And did you know the saying Tying the Knot originates in a literal Aztec wedding tradition? Welcome to A Day in History, where we will be deep-diving into the astounding traditions of the Aztec people, from wedding preparations to married life and childbirth. In this video, you'll learn about the rich worlds of deities and crazy religious rituals that provided order to day-to-day Aztec life.

n February 2022, Netflix premiered the sequel to History Channel's "Vikings," called "Vikings: Valhalla." Two main characters are the famous Leif Eriksson and his sister, Freydis Eriksdotter. As you may know, Leif is reputed to have arrived in North America centuries before Christopher Columbus. Some accounts in the Norse sagas include a couple of tales of Leif's sister, Freydis – but in one of them, the close brother-sister relationship depicted in the series is anything but that! We'll tell you about that in a moment.

In 1940, the Bolshevik revolutionary and first head of the Red Army, Leon Trotsky, was offed in Mexico City. Trotsky fled the Soviet Union in 1928 after he came out at the bottom of a power struggle with Josef Stalin, a position many people had found themselves in. The offing of real and imagined foes had a long history in Russia. Still, it was during the early Soviet era when an entire branch of the intelligence gathering and spy apparatus of the country was given its own very top secret department within the NKVD in 1936. The department was called the "Directorate of Special Tasks." The NKVD underwent many changes after WWII and became the "MGB." In the MGB, the department was known as "Spets Byuro #1" for "Special Purpose Office #1". It was also known by more sinister and 007-like names such as "The Chamber" and "Lab #1".

One of the things that often stuns people learning about the Nazis for the first time is the sheer amount of information available to us about them – authored by the Nazis. In this video, we will tell you about five infamous documents detailing the evil of the Nazi regime. One of these documents isn't on paper. Instead, it's on audio tape, recorded in October 1943 in Poznan, Poland. The recording of SS-Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler speaking to an assembled bunch of SS officers is today housed in the US National Archives. We will tell you more about the content of the speech in a few moments.

Mehmed the Conqueror was a fearsome ruler that transformed the Ottoman Empire with his ambitious war plans and inflicting terror throughout his campaigns to the east. Europeans in the west were terrified of this Ottoman ruler and subsequently celebrated his death. Stick around to learn more about this Sultan and the many ways he destroyed his enemies, in this video of a Day in History.

The Cold War was the period of great tension between the United States and the Soviet Union, which lasted from 1945 until the fall of the Soviet Union, or "USSR," in 1991. The greatest fear of the Cold War period was that tensions between the two superpowers would become so great that the "war" between the two rival nations would turn "hot" and lead to a nuclear exchange that would end human civilization.

Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of Ancient China, is most famous for constructing the Great Wall that protected the Chinese realm against Mongolian incursions for millennia, and for the legions of Terra-cotta soldiers that guarded his tomb. Yet he was also one of their wackiest and most paranoid rulers, and a man so preoccupied with living forever that he cut his life short in the process. Let’s find out why.

One of the most tragic stories of WWII is that of the "comfort women", a polite name for the forced kidnapping or coercion of women and girls by the Japanese Army to "comfort" their soldiers. As in many war crimes cases, "comfort" is a euphemism, for this was just a polite term for "sexual slavery" on a mass scale. Though records exist in Japan, China, Korea, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Papua New Guinea, they are partial and only tell part of the story that Japan, to this day, is reluctant to talk about openly. However, it should be said that over the last two decades, they have made a greater effort to both admit their armies' guilt, apologize and make some restitution – though many of the surviving comfort women believe it was not enough. Time has gone by, and most of the victims of this atrocity have passed on, but their memory remains in the national identity of countries occupied by Japan during WWII.

When we think about the Vikings, love, and marriage are usually not the first things that come to mind. However, we might occasionally think about the Vikings and sex when watching one of the many shows and movies about the Vikings in recent years. From TV and movies, you'd almost believe that all Vikings were attractive, always washed, and odor-free. However, it does seem that the Vikings did take relatively good care of their hair. Combs are one of the most common items found in Viking graves and other archaeological sites – but it's hard to believe that these Scandinavian warriors (perhaps of both sexes) weren't more often "combing things out" than they were getting ready for a party.

“Whoever for devotion alone, not to gain honor or money, goes to Jerusalem to liberate the Church of God can substitute this journey for all penance.” These were the words spoken by Pope Urban II during the Council of Clermont, these words led to the First Crusade of the 11th century and would inspire future crusades to the east. These crusades led to millions of deaths and the suffering of people throughout the next two centuries. The Crusades were important to the history of Jerusalem and many other places they ventured to. The Christians acted in response to the Islamic Invasions that had happened centuries ago and continued after the Crusades. These Islamic invaders were also quite brutal, but not too much on those just yet as that will be a future topic on this channel. Stick around to find out the tales of the Crusaders throughout the Middle Ages, on a Day in History.

The Jewish people have often been the target of persecution. There are several reasons for this, though many of them do not make sense when looked at rationally. Later in this video, we will tell you how irrational fears and the misreading of history contributed to the hatred of the Jews, known as "anti- Semitism." Before we do that, we'll tell you about two times the Jews were persecuted for more understandable reasons.

We hope you read more about Timur after you watch this video. There's so much more to learn. One of those things is easy: Timur is just one version of the name of the last great Mongol conqueror. His real name was "Tīmūr bin Taraghay Barlas," or "Timur, son of Taraghay of the Barlas Clan," but he is most often known in English as "Tamerlane," which is just a corruption of "Timurlenk," or "Timur the Lame." Timur actually was "lame" as people used to those with skeletal disabilities: he had a form of tuberculosis that infected the bones, which paralyzed his right leg and shoulder. In his younger years, he had been shot through the right hand with an arrow, losing two fingers, and limiting its use. Timur, in a word, was likely in constant pain throughout most of his life. Perhaps this affected his temper – because Timur's temper was bad. REALLY, REALLY BAD.

Napoleon Bonaparte, born in then Italian Corsica in 1769, was the dominant personality of his time. He died in exile on the lonely British South Atlantic island of St. Helena in 1821. But though he was a shell of his former self living in isolation in the middle of nowhere, his life cast a long shadow, and his influence continued for decades after his death. His military philosophy and tactics are still taught throughout the world, for though the weapons of today are much different than those used by his armies, the tactics he used on the battlefield are timeless: speed, audacity, and surprise being foremost among them.

“Our” pope, John XII, ruled over Western Christendom from 955-963 some six hundred years after Pope Damasus. Damasus had been appointed by the Emperor Theodosius, but by the time of John XII, popes were elected by the people of Rome. Well, that's kind of misleading, for while the people of the city did vote for the pope, the vast majority of those votes were bought by powerful families who either had a son or other family member “running” for the position. Essentially, the position of pope went to the highest bidder. What's more the candidates for the position were oftentimes not exactly “paragons of virtue.”

For about ten years between 871-881, a revolt in today’s southern Iraq destabilized an entire empire. The death toll resulting from this revolt may have been as “low” as 100,000 and as high as a million and a half; historians are not exactly sure and might never be. Some people today believe that “The Zanj Rebellion” was a revolt of enslaved African people against their Arab masters in a bid for freedom, but the truth behind this brutal period is a bit more complicated. Like the other great religions of the world, Islam is divided into different sects. Many, but not all, of the differences involve the line of succession following the death of the Prophet Muhammad.

In the year 395, the Roman Empire split into two parts: the Western Roman Empire, which included Rome, and the Eastern Roman Empire, sometimes called “The Byzantine Empire” after its capitol at Byzantium, and which became Constantinople during the reign of Emperor Constantine. The split of the most powerful empire in Western history happened for a number of reasons. One, it would be easier to administer a smaller area, considering the means of communication at the time. Two, the borders of the empire were threatened by many hostile people and it was believed that dividing command and control would make defending the empire easier. Three, it was believed that having two equal emperors would lessen the number of power struggles that had been taking place within the Roman Empire for decades.

Many people today remember the Ottoman Empire as the „Sick Man of Europe”, an epithet the collapsing empire earned during the 19th and early parts of the 20th century. The description was no doubt correct during the period it was invented, however, it is also misleading, as throughout most of its existence, the Ottomans were a formidable power, whose strength was feared in Europe and the Middle East. The strength of the Ottoman Empire was built on multiple pillars, and each of these was able to strike fear into the hearts of the enemies of the Sultan. Stick around to find out what these pillars were, and please like and subscribe to the channel to see more videos like this.

From 1603-1854, Japan was a closed country. No one could leave the country, and foreigners were limited to a small port near Hiroshima. So when the American naval officer Matthew C. Perry forced Japan to open to trade and diplomacy with the outside world, the country was two hundred years behind the rest of the world economically, technologically, and militarily. Over the next forty to fifty years, however, Japan transformed itself from a feudal society governed by an outdated warrior class to a regional power.

Though wartime surgery remained largely the same until after the US Civil War, it is usually movies about that conflict in which we see the nature of combat surgery before the understanding and acceptance of germ theory and widespread use of anesthesia. Usually, the hero of the movie is carried into a blood-stained canvas tent with doctors and orderlies wearing leather aprons. These aprons were water, or rather, blood-proof, and in Civil War hospitals, there was an awful lot of blood.

One of the seemingly endless tragedies of the Holocaust was that the rise of the Nazis encouraged anti-Semitic movements and violent actions by other nations. One government allied to Hitler during WWII was Romania. Romania had allied itself with Hitler as protection against the Soviet Union, with which it shares a long border. For that protection, Hitler received the bulk of the sizable Romanian oil production and a government friendly to his anti-Semitic policies.

The fall of the Tokugawa Shogunate in 1868 ushered in the age of Imperial Japan in what is known as the Meiji Restoration. For almost 80 years, the Japanese Empire would change the life of many within Japan’s borders and beyond until its fall at the end of the Second World War. One of the many things that the Imperial age altered was the love, sex, and marriage behaviours of the Japanese people. The Meiji Restoration brought about a conservative, nationalist, and eugenicist view of the world that emphasized collective obligation in all things. The family was a microcosm of the nation and loyalty to it became the most important of virtues.