General

Forget Manzikert. The Defeat That Really Broke Byzantium Came 105 Years Later
Two defeats During the late twelfth century, everyone involved with the Byzantine imperial court knew that in August 1071 the Byzantine emperor Romanos IV Diogenes had led his army east to confront a new threat on the Armenian border: the Seljuk Turks under the leadership of Sultan Alp Arslan. The Byzantine army suffered a crushing loss near Lake Van at Manzikert, leaving the emperor a prisoner of the Turks. However, he was released by the sultan shortly afterward, on fairly lenient terms.
By S. Kallistos3 days ago in History
It Began with a Debt: How the Fourth Crusade Came to Sack Constantinople
After the events of April 12, 1204, the historian Niketas Choniates fled Constantinople. A Venetian merchant whom Choniates knew helped protect him, his pregnant wife, and their young children by leading them through the streets as though they were his prisoners. Behind them, the army of the Fourth Crusade, which had set out to fight the Muslims of Egypt, had completely plundered the city.
By S. Kallistos4 days ago in History
The Holes That Made Winter Bearable
On a winter morning in Dezhou, the first thing to wake in Guo Wende’s house was not a person. It was the stove. The coal cakes sealed the night before were poked open at dawn. The flame was barely alive. The smoke came first. It squeezed through the seams of the stove ring, crept along the base of the wall, and stained half the wall gray-yellow. The children coughed. The adults pressed wet towels over their mouths. Opening the window let in the cold. Leaving it shut let in the sting. The coal cakes were patted from coal dust and yellow earth. Dried and stacked along the wall, they looked like a pile. They burned with little heat. One shovel of slag came out half earth. Guo emptied the stove every day. Then he washed his hands. The water in the basin turned black as ink.
By Jin4 days ago in History
The Beautiful Place That Killed So Many People
Imagine going to bed one evening beside one of Africa's most beautiful lakes. The water is calm, and the surrounding hills are quiet. The night seems completely ordinary.
By Jason Morton4 days ago in History
The Second Iconoclasm: Compromise and Survival in 843
This is the second of two essays devoted to Byzantine Iconoclasm. Part I, which examines the origins and the instigators at the root of the conflict, is accessible here .
By S. Kallistos6 days ago in History
The First Iconoclasm: The Emperor Who Probably Never Smashed an Icon
This is the first of two essays on Byzantine Iconoclasm. The second, on how the conflict returned in 815 and the reasons it was brought to a definitive end in 843, can be accessed here .
By S. Kallistos6 days ago in History
The Volcano That Never Erupted: America's Forgotten Mountain of Fire
On August 24, 1804, William Clark encountered something along the Missouri River that should not have been there. A bluff was burning. Not a campfire. Not a patch of grass ignited by lightning. An enormous wall of earth, rising nearly 190 feet above the river, seemed to generate heat from somewhere deep inside itself.
By The Iron Lighthouse12 days ago in History
Basil II Never Called Himself the Bulgar-Slayer
In the summer of 1014, the Byzantine Emperor Basil II vanquished the Bulgarian army of Tsar Samuel in one afternoon and broke the back of the forty-year war between them. Yet he became famous less for his victory than for its aftermath.
By S. Kallistos13 days ago in History
The Fly, the Hoe, and the Emperor
1. First, a Fly Across large parts of sub-Saharan Africa that are otherwise suitable for farming, one insect shaped history. The tsetse fly bites livestock and transmits trypanosomiasis. Cattle and horses weaken, collapse, and die within weeks. Historians overlay maps of tsetse infestation with maps of agricultural suitability and find heavy overlap. Economists have quantified the consequence: in tsetse-affected areas, precolonial African groups were significantly less likely to own large livestock, less likely to use the plow, and less likely to develop political centralization.
By Jin13 days ago in History
Qin crossbows vs. Macedonian armor is the wrong fight
A common internet argument runs like this: reconstructed Macedonian linen armor stopped a 60-pound bow at 7.62 meters, so Qin crossbows would have had to fire at point-blank range to penetrate a phalanx. After one volley, the five-meter sarissa would already be in the crossbowman’s face. The claim has some evidence behind it. The conclusion usually drawn from it does not. The larger problem lies elsewhere: the habit of taking one weapon, one armor sample, or one tactical cliché and treating it as the whole military system.
By Jin14 days ago in History
Celtic Mythology: The Cat-Sith
Witches and cats—especially black cats—are synonymous with Halloween. Their origin dates back to Europe during the Middle Ages, when the Church deemed anyone who practiced pagan rituals to be working with the Devil. Cats were thought to be a witch’s familiar and would aid or protect a witch during her magical practices. Familiars could be perceived as either demons or fairies, depending on whether the spirit was working for a witch or a cunning folk (folk healer). Medieval superstition about pagan practices eventually led to the Witch Trials of the 16th century.
By Amy Arndt16 days ago in History
The White Hurricane of 1913: The Day the Great Lakes Swallowed a Fleet
November 9, 1913. Lake Huron. Somewhere beneath the black water, steel ships were disappearing. Above them, winds approaching ninety miles per hour drove snow and freezing spray across a lake that had become almost unrecognizable. Waves rose to heights associated with violent ocean storms, crashing across the decks of freighters built to haul thousands of tons of cargo. Visibility deteriorated to nothing… Water froze against exposed surfaces. Navigation became increasingly difficult. The wind shifted, and the waves grew larger. In the space of a few terrible hours, eight major freighters would be lost on Lake Huron alone.
By The Iron Lighthouse19 days ago in History