Fact: No Toilets (at least not as we know them).

This is perhaps one of the most uncomfortable features of the castle, as if the castle weren’t uncomfortable enough; there were no toilets, but rather little constructions called “garderobes,” a hole through which users would aim their waste products, which would ultimate go through shoots which wound up in the surrounding moats. Adding to the wretchedness, these “bathrooms” were often cold and breezy, hardly conducive to progress. Another gross detail: the “garderobe” was called such as residents would keep their clothing inside, as the odor would repel insects (and any human with a sense of smell, most likely).

Fact: The First Castles Were Wooden.

When the Normans (who came from Normandy, France) came to England almost a thousand years ago, they built wooden motte-and-bailey-styled castles, which were essentially castles built on a mount, whereby low-level residents and enemies at naturally lower altitudes had to hike up sharp inclines to reach the castle itself. While this was a clever way of putting the earth to good use, the walls which enveloped the castle, as well as the castle itself, were made of wood, which could easily be burnt down.

Fact: Windsor Castle is the Oldest Still-Occupied European Castle.

At about 900 years old, Windsor is still occupied by Queen Elizabeth II (one of the many facilities she calls home). Originally, it was a wooden motte-and-bailey-type castle built by William I as the first in a series of nine castles. Later it was renovated with stones and was given a few additions by way of some outer walls and a round tower by a generous Henry II. Sounds similar to the way every elected U.S. President has added a new feature to the White House (most recently with President Obama’s basketball court). Whatever you can do to call it home…

Fact: They Were Built Strictly for Defense.

Just looking at all the apparatus and features of a castle gives you a pretty good idea of its purpose: moats, turrets, ramparts, murder holes, gun and arrow loops, etc. Every single one of these design elements was meant to keep enemies out and down. A few that stand out: murder holes were holes in the ceiling through which scalding liquids would be poured on the enemy. Gun and arrow loops were slits out of which arrows could be fired from with little detection. It seemed foolish in any context to even approach a castle without a written invitation.

Fact: Stairs Always Turned Clockwise.

Castles were always built with a spiraling staircase that turned clockwise. This was a purposeful design element that served an incredibly practical purpose; the idea was incoming siegers would ascend the stairs, but be given a huge disadvantage in the way of their sword arm, as most people are right-handed. On the other hand, castle occupants descending the stairs would be given the advantage of a staircase designed with their sword-arms in mind. Damned they were though, if they were attacked by an entirely left-handed infantry.

Fact: There Are 1500 Castle Sites in England.

This is according to the Castellarium Anglicanum which is supposed to be the ultimate authority on castles in England and Wales. Note the intentional use of the term “site,” as many of these castles are ruined to the point of invisibility, while over 800 have some remnants, and more than 300 are still standing and structurally intact to a large degree. Also note, there is some debate as to what constitutes a “castle,” as some structures claim to be castles even as they are definitively not so.

Fact: Castles Used to Be Completely Uncomfortable.

When you think of a castle, you usually think of lavish amenities and grand-scale poshness, but who cares how big the barn is, when its still slathered in mud and smells like horse manure. Similarly, castles were often poorly lit (the sun came through tiny slits for windows); they were damp; and they had poor air circulation (think of all they body heat circling around the place). After all castles were build primarily for defense; creature comforts were on the back-burner. Eventually however, castles came to be outfitted with pretty rugs and artful stained-glass windows as somebody had the bright idea to make these things livable, and to have the interior be a reflection of wealth as well as the exterior.

Fact: Eating Was the Primary Means of Entertainment.

The castle was a very boring place. Essentially, all anyone did was stick around making sure nobody touched their stuff. Outdoors, recreational activities included hunting and a whole bunch of combat training. Manly things indeed. Indoors however, it was much more bleak. Chess was one of the few games that did exist in the day, but the number one way to cure boredom was to eat (which people still do to this day). There’d be great feasts full of food and drink (lots of booze), jesters and minstrels. Nowadays, we have T.V. dinners and six-packs. And you don’t need to be of high social standing to enjoy those (and you usually aren’t).

Fact: Personal Servants Received Some of the Luxury.

The personal servants in the Middle Ages were treated like the family dog… and that’s not a bad thing. They got to sleep in the same isolated quarters as the castle owners, which, while the rest of the castle may have been cold and dreary, was heated by a personal fireplace and definitely the warmest place in the castle. While they did sleep on the floor, they were given warm blankets. Elsewhere in the castle, residents of lower social standing slept in the towers and relied upon body heat and light bed dressings for warmth. They only wish they could be the lapdog of the nobility.

Fact: Achilles Heel? The Well.

The well was like that one weak spot on the Death Star; it was an ultimate source of vulnerability. Sure there were dozens of ways to pour sand and molten substances on oncoming aggressors, and the structural soundness of the castle ensured impenetrability, but if the well wasn’t properly-secured, or if it ran dry, the rest was very useless. Invaders could very well poison the water supply, if left unattended, and virtually guarantee defeat.

“The awe and dread with which the untutored contemplates his mother-in-law are amongst the most familiar facts of anthropology.”
James George Frazer (1854 – 1941) Scottish social anthropologist

“Look,” said Naomi, “your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods. Go back with her.” But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.” When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her. – Ruth 1: 15-18

“Coffee Talk with Linda Richman” was a Saturday Night Live sketch by Mike Myers (1991-1994) in which Myers played a exaggerated version of his own real life mother-in-law. Sketches featured discussion topics, call-ins from fans and a bit of Barbra Streisand obsession. Richman would start conversations with topics including, “Ralph Fiennes is spelled neither rate nor fines. Discuss.” and “Rhode Island is neither a road nor is it an island. Discuss.”, all while throwing in Yiddish phrases and references. The real Linda Richman wrote a book “I’d Rather Laugh: How to Be Happy Even When Life Has Other Plans for You” in 1998 and founded Hidden Talents casting and directing company. Richman was also in the audience the on February 22, 1992 when Barbra Streisand made a surprise appearance on the “Coffee Talk” sketch. Streisand is an idol to the real and fictional Linda Richman.

You may want to pay attention – this one gets a little complicated. In 1989, Bill Wyman, 52, the bassist for the Rolling Stones married Mandy Smith. 18. They were married until 1993 after Patsy Smith, Mandy’s mother, gave her full consent to the May-December romance. That same year, Mandy’s mother Patsy Smith, 49, married Stephen Wyman, Bill’s 31 year old son. That makes Patsy Smith the Mother-In-Law and Daughter-In-Law of Bill Wyman. This bizarre Mother-In-Law pairing would not last however as Bill and Mandy divorced in 1993 and Patsy and Stephen’s marriage ended in 1995. This video shows the start of it all – the wedding of Bill and Mandy.

Dimple Kapadia is an Indian film actress and noted sex symbol. Her family spans several generations of actors. Known for her debut film Bobby (1973 film), the second top grossing film of the decade, which started the Bollywood trend of rich teen/poor teen romance films. Dimple Kapadia won her first of her four Filmfare Best Actress Award in 1974 (in the only tie in Filmfare history). Later films include Kaash (1987), Drishti (1990), and Rudaali (1993). She married actor/ producer Rajesh Khanna and had daughters Twinkle and Rinke with him. Daughter Twinkle would marry Bollywood star Akshay Kumar in 2001. Kumar has won two Filmfare Awards and is known as the “Indian Jackie Chan”. He has a good relationship with Dimple; both have praised each other for their work and throw lavish events in honor of their family. This clip shows Kumar praising the women in his life: his mother, his mother-in-law and wife for their support around 1:25.

As the leader of China from 1861 until her death in 1908, Cixi was a ruler for 47 years. Her position in history is controversial, she is either considered responsible for the fall of the Dynasty (which occurred in 1912 after her death) or a mere victim of a culture change she had no control over. Regardless, for this woman to rise from imperial concubine to powerful Empress is remarkable. Her son, Tongzhi, married in 1872 the Empress Jiashun Alute, the granddaughter of Cixi’s sworn enemy. This mother-in-law combination was not a good match. Alute was said to have stated, “I am principal wife and empress, having been carried through the front door with pomp and circumstance, as mandated by our ancestors. The Empress Dowager Cixi was only a lowly concubine, having entered this house by the side door.” Tongzhi was an inept ruler who was known to frequent Beijing’s brothels and died, allegedly, from syphilis in 1875. Cixi’s daughter, Empress Xiao Ding Jing, would succeed her mother. She is most famous for abdicating the empire on behalf of her six year old son, Puyi, the Last Emperor. Here is a clip from the 1987 movie of the same name.

Internationally acclaimed fashion designer, Diane von Fürstenberg is most noted for her iconic wrap dress. Born Diane Halfin in Belgium, married Prince Egon von Fürstenberg in 1969 and had two children, Alexander and Tatiana. Alexander married Alexandra Miller in 1995. Diane and Alexandra began collaboration as she joined the design team of her mother-in-law becoming the image director for DvF. Alexandra assisted in the wrap dresses revival in the 1990s. She is currently the President of Alexandra Von Furstenberg, LLC. While both Diane and Alexandra are both now separated from their husbands, their collaboration in the fashion world has not slowed.

Married to Sigismund I the Old she became Queen of Poland in 1518. Her only surviving son, Sigismund II Augustus, became her focus. Sigismund’s first marriage was to Elisabeth of Austria and caused a rift between Sigismund and his mother. She was gravely ill and her husband spent their short marriage having an affair with Barbara Radziwiłł. Upon his first wife’s death, Sigismund married Barbara. This match caused great turmoil amongst the nobles and especially his mother. It was noted that the King approved of the match, as his son was in love with Barbara. However, Bona was deeply troubled by his marriage. Five months after Barbara’s coronation, she was dead, supposedly poisoned by Bona Sforza. Barbara’s death would inspire the Faust- like Polish folklore tale Pan Twardowski and several works of art.

Marian Robinson, also known as “First Granny” is a resident of the White House as the Mother-In-Law of President Barack Obama. Born Marian Lois Shields, she married Fraser Robinson in 1960 and had children Craig Robinson (Oregon State University’s head basketball coach) and Michelle Obama. She is the first live in mother-in-law to live in the White House since President Eisenhower’s mother-in-law. Formerly a secretary at Spiegel catalog, the widowed Mrs. Robinson remains active in her retirement, participating in the Senior Olympics in addition to being caregiver to Sasha and Malia. She is the bedrock of the Obama family.

Through her marriage to Charles Louis, Hereditary Prince of Baden, Amalie became Hereditary Princess of Baden. Noted for her wit and intelligence, she was a devoted wife and mother, and subsequently, an invested mother-in-law. As the mother of eight children and six daughters, she was known as “Mother-In-Law of Europe”. Marquess Amalie of Baden children were noted for marrying into notable royal families. Friedericke became Queen of Sweden after marrying Gustaf IV Adolf and Maria married the Duke of Braunschweig. Daughter Louise was married Alexander I of Russia. While Louise’s grandmother-in-law adored the young princess of Baden, Alexander I mother, Maria Feodorovna, did not share these warm feelings. However, their in-law relationship is for a later topic.

As Queen consort of King Henry II of France from 1547 until 1559, Catherine de’ Medici was a force to be reckoned with during her sons consecutive reigns. Having eleven children, seven of whom survived to adulthood, Catherine was destined to become a mother-in-law to many. However, her children, and their spouses, were not immune to Catherine’s will. She forced daughter Marguerite to marry the Protestant Henri de Bourbon,Henry IV of France, to better her status. Catherine’s hatred for her daughter’s mother-in-law, Jeanne d’Albret, might have lead to her untimely death. Rumors spread that Catherine poisoned Jeanne with perfumed gloves. This union caused greater strife among her people and set off the War of the Three Henries. Another famous in-law would include Mary, Queen of Scots. She was praised by everyone at the French court. Everyone, of course, except Catherine. Her marriage to Catherine’s first child, Francis II of France, was short lived and his death devastated Mary. Catherine was said to have insisted that Mary return her jewels and return to her homeland.

Sara Delano Roosevelt took her role as Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s mother very seriously and her role as mother-in-law was equally important. She married James Roosevelt, Sr. in 1880 and they had Franklin two years later. Sara’s possessive nature over her son was obvious and she once noted, “My son Franklin is a Delano, not a Roosevelt at all.” She doted on Franklin and was central to life. Considering their relationship, it is no wonder that his engagement to Eleanor was such a source of resentment for Sara. Franklin’s mother deliberately took him on a cruise in 1904, hoping he would change his mind on the matter. Sara was a frequent visitor to their home in Springwood and despite the new couple’s financial income, they did not rebuff Sara’s presence. As difficult as their relationship was, Sara was keen to be a mentor to the orphaned Eleanor. Sara’s dedication to their marriage’s success was evident in her staunch opposition to a divorce following Franklin’s affair. Sara was said to have threatened to disinherit Franklin if he did not save his marriage. Her focus was the success of Franklin and once she married her beloved son, Eleanor’s success was of equal import. As the greatest female figure in Eleanor Roosevelt young adult life, Sara Delano Roosevelt’s role as mother-in-law is one of historical significance. One can only assume, regardless of the stress of their relationship, the insecure, shy Eleanor that entered her marriage found her voice along the way to the White House. As one of, if not the, most influential First Lady of the US, the role of Sara in Eleanor’s life can not be downplayed.

Biruaslum is a stack in the Barra Isles to the west of Vatersay, Scotland. A stack is a steep column of rock that is formed around sea coasts. Stacks can grow extremely high and Biruaslum reaches 72 meters (236 ft). Biruaslum is separated from Vatersay Island by a collection of steep cliffs on the eastern face. Sitting on the edge of the cliff is an ancient fort and well-constructed wall that is 2m wide and 3m high. The wall encloses a semi-circle and runs approximately 90 meters. The fortress is situated above a flat shelf and rocky gorge which separates it from Vatersay.

The ancient fort is most well preserved on the south-eastern end of Biruaslum. The structure extends away from the cliff and moves over the stack. The fortress holds the remains of a small oval stronghold which is located on the uphill side of the wall. The history of the fort remains unclear and historians are unsure who made it and for what purpose. The style of the structure appears to be from the Iron Age, but artifacts have been found from the Neolithic period. It has been determined that the Barra Isles have a long history. They have been featured in several Viking sagas and legends. It is difficult to visit the Biruaslum cliff fort, but charters to the islands can be organized by Barra Fishing Charters.

In 1321 AD, a man named Ghazi Malik assumed the title of Ghias-ud-din Tughlaq, and started the Tughlaq dynasty, which was a Turkic dynasty of Delhi, India. Upon taking control of the area, Malik became obsessed with building a massive fortification in the southern part of Delhi. He dreamed of a beautiful fortress that could keep away the Mongol marauders. In order to build the fort, Malik issued a dictate that forced all the laborers in Delhi to help construct it.

The massive fortification spans across 6.5 kilometers (4 miles) and includes three sections for housing, a citadel, and a royal residence. The grounds are littered with underground tunnels and the fort once held 52 gates (13 remain today). The walls surrounding the fortification are made of granite and between 10 and 15 meters (32-49 feet) high. The fort has a collection of massive stone buildings and tombs. Among the most famous is Mausoleum of Ghiyath al-Din Tughluq, which is an extravagant tomb that holds the remains of Ghazi Malik.

Legend says that Tughlaqabad Fort is cursed. In 1324, Ghazi Malik was crushed to death by a canopy. After his death, people became frightened by the land and the fortification fell into ruin. Ghazi Malik’s dream of a massive city in Delhi was lost and abandoned in 1327. Today, most of Tughlaqabad Fort is inaccessible due to the dense thorny vegetation and the potential for collapse, but sections of the area are still widely visited. The Bijai-Mandal is one of the most popular locations and is a large citadel that features the highest point. From the citadel, one can explore the vast tunnels and walkways underneath the fort.

St. Augustine is a city in the northeast section of Florida that is the oldest continually occupied European-established city in the U.S. It was founded in 1565 by Spanish explorer and admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés and was a major hub along the “The First Coast,” which extends from Amelia Island to Jacksonville. After a series of attacks on the city, including a 1668 bombardment involving English pirate Robert Searle, the Spanish realized that they needed to protect the site, so they built a masonry fortification named Castillo de San Marcos. The structure is a star-shaped fort made of a stone called coquina. It is the oldest masonry fort in the United States.

Castillo de San Marcos has four bastions and a large ravelin that was used to protect the sally port. A ravelin is a triangular fortification that is placed outside the castle walls and used to sweep fire across attacking troops as they approached the curtain (wall). The fort was surrounded by a massive moat that used a series of floodgates. It had a glacis (artificial hill or slope) to help force attackers toward a series of cannon outposts. The fort also has a collection of infantry embrasures that were built in the walls so muskets could be fired from inside.

In 1702, the English decided to attack St. Augustine during Queen Anne’s War. All of the Spanish soldiers and residents in the area moved into Castillo de San Marcos to protect themselves. After a long bombardment, the English could not penetrate the walls of the fortress and were forced to retreat. The fort remained a stronghold in the area for centuries and has seen numerous battles. In 1763, the British captured Castillo de San Marcos and renamed it Fort St. Mark. In 1819, Spain signed the Adams-Onís Treaty, ceding Florida to the United States. Today, Castillo de San Marcos is a popular tourist attraction and occupies 2.5 acres (10,100 m²) in downtown St. Augustine.

The Battle of Stalingrad was a major event during World War II in which Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union for control of Stalingrad in southwestern Russia. The battle was marked by extreme brutality, disregard for military law, and massive casualties on both sides, nearly two million people died. At one point, the Third Reich captured 90% of the city, but the Soviets prevailed in the fight. During the battle, the Red Army attempted to occupy strategic positions throughout the city. One of these places was Pavlov’s House, which is a four-story building in the middle of Stalingrad and constructed parallel to the Volga River.

Pavlov’s House is located on a cross-street and provided a 1 kilometer line of sight to the north, south, and west of Stalingrad. In September 1942, the house was attacked and captured by the Germans. In response, the Red Army ordered a platoon led by Junior Sgt. Yakov Pavlov to take it back. After an intense battle where 26 of the 30 Soviets in the platoon were killed, the Red Army was able to capture Pavlov’s House. The house was then fortified and turned into a stronghold. The building was equipped with machine guns, anti-tank rifles, and mortars. It was surrounded by four layers of barbed wire, minefields, and the Soviets set up machine-gun posts in every available window. The supplies were brought into the fort through an underground communications trench.

During the battle, the Germans attacked Pavlov’s House several times a day. Each time the Red Army would unload a barrage of machine gun fire and kill dozens of Nazis. The Russians mounted a PTRS-41 anti-tank rifle on the roof of Pavlov’s House and destroyed a large number of tanks. The structure came to symbolize the Soviet resistance and was marked as a fortress on several Nazi maps. For his actions in the war, Yakov Pavlov was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union. Soviet general Vasily Chuikov famously said that the Germans lost more men trying to take Pavlov’s House than they did Paris. After the war, Pavlov’s House was reconstructed and turned into an apartment building. A memorial set of bricks from the battle remains at the site and is located on the East end of the house facing the Volga River.

During World War II, Hitler constructed a series of forts and Führer Headquarters across Europe. In 1941, upon the start of Operation Barbarossa, Hitler ordered the civil military engineering group Organisation Todt to build a large fortress in the Masurian woods, about 8 kilometers (5.0 mi) from the small East Prussian town of Rastenburg (now Kętrzyn, Poland). The fortress was used as a home for high ranking Nazi officials. In total, Hitler spent over 800 days at the Wolf’s Lair from June 23, 1941 to November 20, 1944. In order to ensure that the location was safe, the Third Reich went to great lengths. The buildings used heavy camouflage. They were hidden by bushes, grass, artificial trees, and netting.

The Wolf’s Lair was protected by Hitler’s personal bodyguard service, which used tanks, anti-aircraft guns, and other heavy weapons. Stations were constructed in order to detect aircraft from about 100 kilometers (62 mi) away. The fortress was constructed with a maze of tunnels and hidden rooms, guard houses, and over 54,000 landmines surrounded the installation. It was a large fortification and approximately 2,000 people lived and worked in the Wolf’s Lair at any given time.

On July 20, 1944, the Wolf’s Lair was the location of a well documented assassination attempt on Hitler’s life when Claus von Stauffenberg detonated a bomb in his vicinity. On January 25, 1945, the Wolf’s Lair was destroyed by the Nazis when Hitler ordered the fortress to be bombed. Tons of explosives were used in the effort, but the walls of the bunkers were so thick that many of the structures survived the impact and remain standing. Two days after it was bombed, the Red Army captured the site without a fight. The Wolf’s Lair was taken on the same day that Auschwitz was liberated. It has been estimated that about 180,000 people visit the ruins each year.

In 1534, a Polish military commander and politician named Mikołaj Sieniawski decided to build a massive fortress near Berezhany, western Ukraine. Sieniawski wanted to create a place that was impenetrable, so he selected a patch of marshy land that was located on a small island near the Złota Lipa River. The structure took twenty years to complete and was one of the best concealed fortresses of the 16th century. The Sieniawski family wanted to make the fort a stronghold, so they included an entry gate, quarter tower, church, protective bastion, and thick guarding walls (6 meters in places).

Large sections of the building’s design were hand carved, including the chapel ceiling and a series of sculptures. In 1630, Berezhany Castle was expanded to include a collection of military style installments, four towers, lodging, and another church. The fortress was reconstructed by famous Italian architects of the time. Amazingly, the structure was not damaged by the Khmelnitsky’s Cossacks or the Turks of the 17th century.

Berezhany Castle was used as a safe haven for royalty and rich. It was visited by a collection of famous people, including Peter the Great of Russia on two separate occasions. By 1908, the castle had fallen into disrepair. It underwent major damage in World War I and after the Soviet Union occupied Berezhany in 1939, the fortress was destroyed. Many reports say that the Red Army purposefully bombed the buildings. Since 1999, Berezhany Castle has been included on a list of places in Ukraine that need to be reconstructed.

One of the most important forts in the history of the United States is Ticonderoga. It is located near the south end of Lake Champlain and was constructed by Canadian and French forces between 1754 and 1757, during the Seven Years’ War. Ticonderoga was important because it is situated at the junction of a portage near the La Chute River. The fort looked over trade routes between the British-controlled Hudson River Valley and the French-controlled Saint Lawrence River Valley.

In 1758, 4,000 French soldiers were able to repel an attack by 16,000 British troops near the fort, but the British soon learned that they could control the location by securing high ground. During the American Revolutionary War, Ticonderoga was captured by a U.S. militia under the command of Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold in a surprise attack. The fort was then recaptured by the British in June of 1777 and abandoned in 1781. Fort Ticonderoga is one of the most well preserved military forts in the U.S. It was restored in the early 20th century and now acts as a popular tourist destination and museum.

The town of Crown Point, New York is located in one of the most strategic areas of the United States. It is situated on the west shore of Lake Champlain and sits 39 miles (63 km) from Burlington, VT, 44 miles (71 km) from Queensbury, NY, and 108 miles (174 km) from Montreal, Quebec. In 1734, the French selected this area for a massive Fort Saint-Frédéric that was meant to control Lake Champlain and prevent British colonization. In 1759, the French left the fort before an advance of a large British army under General Jeffery Amherst. The British then constructed the much larger Fort Crown Point next to the ruins of Saint-Frédéric.

Fort Crown Point is the largest earthen fortress ever built in the United States. It was constructed with large walls, housing, and stations for cannons. After the Seven Years’ War ended, the British sent home many of their troops and left only a small number of soldiers at the fort. At the beginning of the American Revolution, Capt. Seth Warner and 100 Green Mountain Boys captured the fort in the battle of Crown Point. In total, the soldiers recovered 111 cannons and sent the weapons for use on the war front. Fort Crown Point was officially abandoned in 1780 and fell into ruin. In 1773, an accidental fire entirely destroyed parts of the fortress, leaving only the empty stone ruins of two barracks buildings. Today, the site is a popular tourist destination.

There are literally dozens of ruined castles in England, but I have chosen to include Corfe Castle. In 1066, William the Conqueror was able to invade and capture England. After his victory, William ordered the construction of a large number of castles across Europe, 36 in total. One of these fortifications was Corfe Castle, which was built by the Normans in order to control a gap in the Purbeck Hills that was used to travel between the English towns of Wareham and Swanage. The name “Corfe” is derived from the Saxon word for gap.

The castle is located next to a village named Corfe Castle in Dorset, England. Burial mounds in the area suggest that the land was occupied as long as 8,000 years ago. A large percentage of the castle was constructed under the order of William the Conqueror, but there was a stronghold at the site before the 11th century. In 978, Corfe Castle was the location of the murder of Edward the Martyr, King of England.

Corfe Castle is unique in that it was built on a massive hill overlooking the valley. Most medieval castles in England were constructed in valleys and near river crossings. The castle was organized in a triangular shape and has three wards. In the beginning of the 13th century King John ordered the creation of a fine hall, chapel, inner bailey, and domestic buildings at Corfe Castle. Henry III constructed additional walls, towers, and gatehouses.

In 1572, Corfe Castle was sold by Elizabeth I to Sir Christopher Hatton, who was her dance master and possible suitor. During the English Civil War (1642–1651) the castle was a stronghold for the Royalists (Cavaliers) and was besieged twice. In response, it was demolished on the order of the Parliament.

In 2006, workers restoring the castle discovered a hidden “appearance” door designed for Henry I in the stone. The find indicates that the castle was one of the most important in England during medieval times. Corfe Castle may have equaled the White Tower in prominence, which is a principal part of the Tower of London. In fact, Henry III ordered that Corfe’s keep be whitewashed in 1244. In 1240, he had the keep at the Tower of London whitewashed. The ruins of Corfe Castle are currently owned by the National Trust. The castle receives approximately 200,000 visitors each year.

One of the most intriguing ruined castles in the world is Dunnottar. Dunnottar is situated on a rocky headland about two miles (3 km) south of Stonehaven, Scotland. The fortress overlooks ancient shipping lanes and was strategically situated to control land passage. For this reason, Dunnottar Castle has played a strategic role in the history of Scotland and been the site of many famous battles, including an important confrontation of the Dark Ages when Constantine II defied the conquest of Æthelstan, King of Wessex.

The ruins of Dunnottar are spread over 3 acres (1.2 ha). The only way to access the L plan castle is to pass over a narrow strip of land that has an extremely steep edge. The design of the fortress was strategically developed in order to prevent enemy soldiers from reaching the walls. In order to capture the castle, armies needed to use heavy artillery. During its long history, Dunnottar was visited by some of the world’s most famous leaders including William Wallace, Mary Queen of Scots, and King Charles II. In the 17th century, a small garrison of soldiers famously held off the army of Oliver Cromwell for eight months and saved the Scottish Crown Jewels from theft.

After Cromwell was able to get his cannons up the steep cliffs surrounding the North Sea, he bombarded the castle and captured the remaining soldiers. The land has never recovered from the massive attack and has remained in ruins for centuries. The last time Dunnottar was used for active duty was 1715 when Earl Marischal was executed for his part in the Jacobite Rising. The fortress has become a popular tourist destination and is open to visitors on a daily basis. Certain sections of Dunnottar Castle were once used as a dungeon and are said to be haunted. If you visit the site late at night, you might hear cries from the rocks below the massive cliffs.

Golubac Fortress is a medieval fortified town that is located 4 kilometers downstream of the modern-day village of Golubac, Serbia. The compound was built in the 14th century to protect an important stretch of the Danube River. It sits at the head of the Iron Gate gorge and was used to control river traffic. In medieval times, a strong chain was placed across the river that connected to a large rock named Babakaj. If a ship wanted to pass, they needed to pay a tax.

Golubac Fortress was the last military outpost located on the Danube River and the final line of defense between Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. For this reason, the fort witnessed dozens of large scale military conflicts, both cold steel and firearm based. The fortification was a key advantage in the world of conquest and warfare. It regularly shifted hands between the Turks, Hungarians, Serbs, and Austrians until 1867, when it was turned over to the Serbian Knez, Mihailo Obrenović III.

Golubac Fortress is split into three compounds and shows signs of heavy reinforcements over the centuries. It has ten towers, two portcullises, and a collection of military outposts. Each tower had a specific purpose, including a citadel, chapel, dungeon, and weapon storage facilities. The fortress used a large moat, which trapped water from the Danube and made it difficult to reach the land. From 1964-72, a dam was built inside the Iron Gate gorge which elevated the river’s water and flooded sections of the fort. Today, Golubac Fortress has become a popular tourist destination. It is one of the most important sightseeing points on Danube boat tours.

Pepin was the eldest son of Charlemagne, King of the Franks and later the first Holy Roman Emperor, the man who created the Frankish Empire and laid the foundations of modern France. Pepin was the product of his father’s relationship with Himiltrude, a noblewoman who may or may not have been his legal wife. After Charlemagne contracted a political marriage with the daughter of the King of the Lombards, Himiltrude was cast off, and as a result Pepin’s legitimacy was cast into doubt. He was already under a cloud because of the congenital spinal deformity that gave him his nickname. It was probably no surprise to anyone when in 780, Charlemagne formally disinherited Pepin and made his third son, Carloman, his legal heir. However, Charlemagne must have still had some affection for his eldest son, and he was allowed to remain at court, and even given precedence over his brothers at official occasions. However, Pepin was much less enamored of his father, and plotted with rebellious barons to murder his father and brothers and seize the throne. The plot was exposed by an informer and the conspirators, including Pepin, were arrested and tried. The nobles were executed, but because of his royal blood Pepin was spared and allowed to enter a monastery, where he stayed for the rest of his life.

The eldest son of Christopher Columbus spent much of his life trying to win back the entitlements his father had lost after being stripped of his title as Governor of the Indies and sent back to Spain in chains in 1500. Just 12 years old when his father made his historic voyage in 1492, Diego followed his father into a maritime career, eventually becoming Admiral of the Indies. Having made a very fortunate marriage into the well-connected family of the Duke of Alba, he was able to regain his father’s title of the Governor of the Indies in 1509. He was made Viceroy of the Indies in 1511, but proved ultimately unsuccessful in rehabilitating his father’s reputation with the Spanish court. His record was somewhat tarnished by a major slave revolt in Santo Domingo (now the Dominican Republic) in 1522, and he died without fulfilling his ambition to recover his father’s entitlements. His son Luis eventually renounced the family’s claims in return for estates and titles in Jamaica and Panama.

The illegitimate son of Galileo and his mistress Marina Gamba did not follow his father into the sciences. Rather his life’s interest was in the arts. Born in Padua, he was legitimized by his father in 1619. His father enrolled him to study law at the University of Padua, but poetry and music were his passions and he became a skilled player of the lute. He also gained a reputation as an inventor, particularly of musical instruments. His relationship with his father was a stormy one. They quarreled frequently about money, however, he staunchly supported his father when Galileo was under attack by the Church. He became his father’s major support during the later years of Galileo’s life when the famous scientist was crippled by ill-health and debt, but he himself died while still quite young in 1649.

The ninth son of Johann Sebastian Bach is generally regarded as the most talented of the great composer’s offspring. Born in Leipzig of Bach’s second marriage, to Anna Wilcke, he was a precocious talent, and was taught music by his father from a very early age. He developed into an outstanding keyboard player. In 1750, still only a teenager, he was appointed as chief harpsichordist to the household of Count Wilhlem von Schaumberg-Lippe, and began his composing career. He composed numerous sonatas, oratorios and symphonies, as well as opera and choir music. While none of his work has attained the fame of his illustrious parent, modern experts hold his music in high regard, and regret that so much of his output was lost when the Institute for Music in Berlin where manuscripts of much of his work were held was destroyed during WWII. He married the opera singer Lucia Munchausen in 1755, and his son Wilhelm in turn went on to become a significant composer in his own right.

Napoleon’s only legitimate son, generally known to history as Napoleon II, was born to the Emperor’s second marriage to Marie-Louise of Austria. From birth he was titled the King of Rome and was designated as his father’s heir-apparent. He grew up as his father’s Empire was crumbling. At the age of only 3, he briefly became titular Emperor after his father abdicated and went into exile on Alba. Following his father’s final defeat at Waterloo, he went into exile in Austria with his mother. He grew up in the Austrian court and as a teenager was awarded the title Duke of Reichstadt. He lived quietly and evinced no interest in following his father’s footsteps. Tragically, he contracted tuberculosis and was dead shortly after his 21st birthday. In 1940 his remains were transferred by Hitler from Vienna to the Les Invalides in Paris where his father’s body had lain for exactly 100 years. In retrospect his one major contribution to history was that by his existence he forced his cousin to adopt the title Napoleon III rather than Napoleon II when he came to power in 1852.

The only one of Abraham Lincoln’s sons to reach adulthood, Robert Lincoln has generally received negative reviews from historians, primarily because he failed to make a successful long-term career in politics. In addition, his personality, as described from contemporaries, was very distant from his father’s generosity of spirit. He was variously described as selfish, abrasive and argumentative. He certainly had a difficult relationship with both his parents, perhaps feeling that they preferred his ill-fated brother Willie, who died young. However, he is recorded as weeping copiously beside his father’s deathbed. He resented his mother’s efforts to keep him out of the Union army until the very end of the Civil War, and they later became completely estranged. It is not known whether the son of perhaps the greatest U.S. President ever had presidential ambitions himself. He certainly did decline a number of offers to be vice-presidential running mate to various candidates, perhaps believing that they were simply trying to cash in on his famous name. His only major political office was as James Garfield’s Secretary of War from 1881-1885. Afterwards, apart from a stint as US ambassador to England from 1889-1893, he retreated to his successful law practice. Contrary to his image as a selfish and self-involved personality, Lincoln was responsible for a number of charitable works, including establishing an industrial training school in Illinois, specifically aimed at helping underprivileged and abandoned boys.

Sigmund Freud’s third son is a great example of the son of a great man making his mark in a different field from his father. Ernst declined to follow his father into medicine, and instead went on to become a noted architect. It has been speculated that the opprobrium Freud gained because of his theories of psychoanalysis could have been the reason why all of Freud’s children except his youngest daughter Anna opted not to follow their father into his field. In the event Ernst gained a solid reputation as an architect in the era of Art Deco. He opened his practice in Berlin in 1920. Ironically, having rejected medicine, he specialized in designing consulting rooms and surgeries for doctors. During the 1930′s he became acquainted with the famous Berlin architect Mies van der Rohe, a member of the Bauhaus group, and was influenced by his style. When the Nazis came to power he fled to London, where he continued to practice, designing a number of houses and apartment buildings. He was reunited with his parents when they fled to London also after the Austrian Anschluss. He became a naturalized British subject in 1939. Two of his sons became famous in their own right, Clement as a chef, TV personality and politician and Lucian as an artist.

Another example of a son becoming successful in a different field from his father, Einstein’s elder son became an expert in the obscure field of sediment transport and went on to become a noted academic in his own right. Born while his father was still a clerk in the Swiss patent office, Hans went on to study at the same institution as his father, the Swiss federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. He became a civil engineer and began working on a bridge being constructed in Dortmund, Germany. Following this he returned to study and obtained his doctorate in 1936, which began his interest in sediment transport. After emigrating to the US in 1938, he settled in Greenville, North Carolina and obtained a job with the Department of Agriculture, before moving to California and a position as Associate Professor of Hydraulic Engineering at the University of California Berkeley. He became a world recognized expert in the field of hydraulic engineering. Albert Einstein was once quoted as saying that his son’s success in his chosen field was one of the things in his life he was most proud of. After his death, Hans Albert was honored by the American Society of Civil Engineers creating the Hans Albert Einstein Award for achievement in the fields of sedimentation and erosion control.

The oldest son of Franklin D Roosevelt went on to have a successful political career of his own, but generally spent his life in the shadow of his famous father. Roosevelt followed his father to Harvard and eventually started a successful insurance business, but the pull of political office proved too strong and in 1937 he became his father’s administrative assistant and then Secretary to the President. He had already done campaign work for the Democrats as far back as 1924 and headed his father’s campaign in the Massachusetts primary of 1932. However his initial foray into politics was short-lived. He was accused of improperly using his position to gain business for his insurance firm. He denied the allegations but resigned anyway. A stint in Hollywood as an assistant to Samuel Goldwyn was followed by an unsuccessful attempt to start his own movie production business. With the advent of war in 1939 he joined the Marine Corps and became a military attaché to the British forces in Syria. When the US entered the war in 1941, he went into active service and fought at Midway and other battles in the Pacific. Leaving the service as a Colonel after the death of his father in 1945, Roosevelt went back into politics. He failed in a bid for California Governor in 1950, but was elected to Congress in 1954. He became a leading campaigner against McCarthyism and led the fight to deny congressional funds to the House Un-American Activities Committee. He retired from Congress in 1965 after President Johnson appointed him as a delegate to UNESCO. He surprised everyone by supporting Nixon’s re-election in 1972 and the election of Reagan in 1980, arguing that both candidates were better for the nation than the Democrats they were running against.

The only son of Winston Churchill is a tragic example of a son who was completely unable to come to terms with his father’s legacy and was eventually destroyed by it. As a child he was thoroughly spoilt by his doting parents and grew up as a brash, argumentative and opinionated individual. He lacked his father’s charm and ability to inspire loyalty. He was nevertheless very good-looking and had no trouble attracting women. Throughout his life he remained a compulsive womanizer, which destroyed his two marriages. Politically ambitious from an early age, he announced that he would be Prime Minister one day, even before his father had attained that office. But his initial efforts to gain a seat in Parliament were unavailing. He lost two attempts at election before finally being pre-selected in a seat where he was unopposed and thus entering Parliament as the member for Preston in 1940. He was generally disliked by his fellow MPs however and was not considered for higher office. The crushing blow came when he was not considered as a member of his father’s war cabinet. Frustrated, he volunteered for military service and served bravely as a commando, being dropped behind enemy lines in Libya and Yugoslavia despite his father’s misgivings, who feared his capture would be used as propaganda by the Nazis. After the war he lost his seat in the 1945 election rout of the Conservatives and was never able to regain entry to Parliament despite many attempts. With his political ambitions ended, he turned to writing to make his mark. Despite growing problems with alcohol and the failure of his marriages, he became a successful author & journalist. Just before his father’s death in 1965, he was granted the right to author Winston’s biography, which he was sure would be the high point of his literary legacy. However ill-health prevented him from completing the work, and only two volumes were finished when he died alone in his flat in 1968.

Undoubtedly the most significant French victory of the war and one which changed the course of it significantly. Between the 5th and 12th of September 1914, the French (with some British help) stopped the previously invincible Germans in their tracks and saved Paris. In a brilliantly planned counter-offensive, General Joseph Joffre exploited a weakness on the German right flank and pushed his forces between two German armies, casing the German offensive to break down in confusion. It was still a hard-fought battle, at one stage reinforcements for the French were brought from Paris in taxis, a feat which has become a major rallying point for French patriots ever since. However, the Germans came close to being surrounded and had to withdraw, effectively ending their chances of capturing Paris. They changed tactics and set themselves up for a war of attrition which would last for four bloody years. However, there is no doubt that the “Miracle of the Marne” saved France from certain defeat in 1914, and as such has assumed a sacred status in the annals of French military history.

Generally not considered a victory because of the enormously high losses on both sides, the fact is that the German offensive around Verdun failed to secure its twin objectives of capturing the city and inflicting crippling losses on the French. The city remained in French hands and French losses were not much higher than the Germans’ own. Along the way the French soldiers showed tremendous character and resolve to hold on even after the Germans seized the key forts of Vaux and Douaumont and inflict huge punishment on the German forces who paid heavily in blood for each metro they advanced. The battle comes to seem much more like a French victory when one considers the two little-known offensives which the French conducted in late 1916 and 1917, successfully recapturing virtually all the German gains and capturing some 11,000 German prisoners. Verdun has been described as France’s Stalingrad, which effectively captures both the horrendous slaughter and the refusal of the defenders to yield.

After the fall of France in 1940, from exile in Britain, Charles de Gaulle rallied remaining French forces from around the world to form the Free French Forces. The first significant campaign for the Free French came in North Africa, where they fought first against their own Vichy countrymen, then against the Germans and Italians. In May 1942, the Free French came up against the might of Rommel’s Afrika Corp at Bir Hakeim, an oasis in the Libyan desert. Defending an old Turkish fort, the 1st Free French Division under General Marie Pierre Koenig held off the much larger German and Italian force for 14 days, before successfully evacuating under cover of darkness on 11 June. The action was significant because it delayed Rommel long enough for the British to re-group their forces. Although Rommel succeeded in capturing Tobruk 10 days later, Bit Hakeim and other delaying actions were successful in giving the British the vital time needed to pull together the forces which eventually defeated Rommel at El Alamein in July. The Bir Hakeim action was trumpeted by De Gaulle as an indication that France was not out of the war and was still a force to be reckoned with by the Germans. Hitler was infuriated by the French actions and ordered Rommel to execute all Free French prisoners. Rommel ignored the order and the Afrika Corps continued to treat Free French prisoners as legitimate POWs, which reinforced the Free French assertion that they were a genuine army and not simply a group of partisans.

On 19th August 1944, after more than 4 years of occupation, the French Resistance rose up to throw off their German oppressors. Anticipating the imminent arrival of the Allies, the Forces françaises de l’intérieur (FFI) launched a street by street campaign against the Wehrmacht, Numbering 20000, with only a few being armed, they nevertheless barricaded streets, dug trenches, attacked isolated German outposts and bombed German vehicles. The Germans fought back, and an infuriated Hitler ordered Paris destroyed. However, the closeness of the approaching Allies was playing on the Germans’ minds, and they were unable to co-ordinate a concerted campaign against the rebels. Some 800 Resistance fighters were killed, another 1600 wounded, but the survivors were able to hang on until the French 2nd Armoured Division swept through the remaining German defences and entered the city to a delirious reception on 24 August. The Germans surrendered the next day, opting not to carry out Hitler’s destruction order. It was perhaps the only significant French victory of the Second World War, but it is nevertheless one that the French have proudly celebrated ever since.

Although the French campaign to defeat the Viet Minh in Indochina is generally regarded as a great military disaster, the French military did win some significant encounters along the way. Much like the Americans a decade later, the French usually proved too strong when the Viet Minh unwisely chose to fight in open battle rather than adhering to guerrilla tactics. Such a battle occurred in January 1951, when General Giap decided to make a major strike at Hanoi and chose to attack the French at Vinh Yen, 65 kilometers northwest of the city. The French had just brought in one of their most respected generals, Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, to bolster their flagging campaign, and he saw an immediate chance to strike a blow against the Viet Minh. He was flown in on 14 January to personally take charge of the Vinh Yen garrison. He ordered successful counterattacks against the Viet Minh, driving them back from territory that they had captured and then ordered the largest napalm attack of the war. Devastated, the Viet Minh tried to fight back, but by 17 January, Giap admitted defeat and the remaining Viet Minh fled for their mountain strongholds. Ultimately the Viet Minh learnt they could not defeat the French in open battle and returned to their successful guerrilla tactics, until the great disaster of Dien Bien Phu in 1954 ended the French campaign

Due to their commitments in Indochina, the French sent only one battalion to fight with the UN in Korea. However, the specially-formed battalion of active and reserve soldiers proved to be one of the better units in the UN force and won praise, especially from the Americans, for their heroics in several battles, particularly in the month-long battle of Heartbreak Ridge in September and October of 1951. In conjunction with an American regiment, the 23rd, the French were ordered to make a near suicidal attack up a heavily defended ridge. They reached the top after sustaining heavy casualties, but then had to endure repeated counter-attacks by the North Koreans. The battle grew larger in scale, drawing in American tank regiments and South Korean soldiers for the Allies, and Chinese troops on the Communist side, but it was the French who finally delivered the coup de grace, capturing the last Communist position on 13 October. The French battalion lost several hundred men, and were awarded a distinguished unit citation, one of 3 they won in the course of the war, from the grateful Americans.

In late 1956, the National Liberation Front (FLN), seeking an end to the French occupation of Algeria, began a series of hit and run attacks against French forces in the capital of Algiers. The French government decided to deploy major elements of the French Army to Algiers to combat the rebels. Under the command of General Jacques Massu, the force was given carte-blanche to end the uprising any way they saw fit. Massu obliged, making use of torture and summary executions in his efforts to terrify the FLN into submission. While this largely didn’t succeed, the well-trained French military did succeed in wiping out most of the FLN strongholds in Algiers, and on September 24, they captured Saadi Yacef, one of the FLN’s key leaders. This effectively ended the Battle of Algiers, but the FLN retreated to the countryside and successfully employed guerrilla tactics until the French succumbed to the increasing unpopularity of the war at home and granted Algeria independence in July 1962.

Also known as The New Stone Age, dated beginning about 9500 BC in the Middle East, it was a period of the progress of the human technology. Pottery was first introduced in this age, as well as the development of tools for hunting, building and cooking. The neolithic peoples in the Levant, Anatolia, Syria, northern Mesopotamia and Central Asia were great builders, utilizing mud-brick to construct houses and villages. Houses were plastered and painted with elaborate scenes of humans and animals. The Mediterranean neolithic cultures of Malta worshiped in megalithic temples. In Europe, long houses built from wattle and daub were constructed. Elaborate tombs for the dead were also built. These tombs are particularly numerous in Ireland, where there are many thousand still in existence. Neolithic people in the British Isles built long barrows and chamber tombs for their dead and causewayed camps, henges flint mines and cursus monuments. This period shows the start of human civilizations, spiritual beliefs, and the human ambition to make life easier.

This period covers the Ancient Civilizations of Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome and The Byzantine Empire around the time from 3000 B.C. up to 300 B.C. The ancient Mediterranean civilization, from ancient times to the beginning of the Middle Ages, is a result of significant historical events, and it is one of the most notable empires which gave a progressive influence to the growth of human cultures. The mild and healthful climate, and the inheritance of important civilizations of Mesopotamia, India and China, the facile communication by maritime routes, as well as the invention of writing, supporting columns, doors, windows, arches, sculpture, painting, engineering, the alphabet, agriculture, metal works, and logistics was born in this era. The Ancient Mediterranean civilization was a result of the continuous process of advancement, enhanced by the inheritance from previous civilizations, by easy maritime communication, and by the exchange of ideas through migration and colonization.

Dating from around 600 A.D. to around the late 1700s, Islamic architecture comprises a wide range of both secular and religious styles from the foundation of Islam to the present day, influencing the design and construction of buildings and structures in Islamic culture. It composes the Influences of Moorish, Abbasid Caliphate, Fatimid, Mamluk, Persian, Azerbaijani, Turkistan, Ottoman, Indo-Islamic, Sino-Islamic, Indonesian-Malay, Sahelian-Islamic, and the Somali-Islamic architectures. The principal Islamic architectural types are: the Mosque, the Tomb, the Palace and the Fort. From these four types, the vocabulary of Islamic architecture is derived and used for buildings of lesser importance such as public baths, fountains and domestic architecture.

For those of you who don’t know, Egypt is part of Africa. Egypt could be considered as the most progressed region in Africa. The Pyramids of Giza is considered as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO and is noted as one of the architectural achievements of its time. The rise of large structures like Building and Temple complexes were derived from Egyptian architectural backgrounds. Ancient architecture south and west of the Sahara is not well documented compared to their Egyptian neighbors so little is known of their architectural styles. The architecture of Africa is remarkably diverse because each of these African ethno-linguistic tribes has had their own architectural traditions throughout history. These entire region share a common theme that defines traditional African architecture: The use of fractal scaling: small parts of the structure tend to look similar to larger parts, such as a circular village made of circular houses. African architecture uses a wide range of materials, such as thatch, stick/wood, mud, mud brick, rammed earth, and stone, and other more perishable material.

Also includes Persian architecture, this age comprises of all four corners of Asia. It encompasses a wide variety of geographically and historically spread structures, each to their own details and religious deities. The diversity of each nation’s culture is represented in its architecture. It is a blend of ancient and varied native traditions, with building types, forms and technologies from West and Central Asia, as well as a few in Europe. Presently, Asian interior design is a popular trend used in homes. The use of artworks, furniture, Zen, Balinese, etc. are Asian inspired.

Comprises the Mesoamerican, Incan, Olmec,Maya, Aztec and Ancient North America influences in architecture, the pre-Columbian era is a period in history of the Americas before the arrival of the European colonizers in the 16th century. Traditions are best known in the form of public, ceremonial and urban monumental buildings and structures, the development of an extensive road system spanning most of the western length of the continent, the construction of the world’s first suspension bridges (Rope Bridges), peoples were excellent stone cutters whose masonry used no mortar, textiles, and the building of platforms were their most renowned achievements. Pre-Columbian architecture is mostly noted for its pyramids which are the largest such structures outside of Ancient Egypt, and also The Macchu Picchu.

Also known as ‘The Middle Ages,’ it is a term used to represent various forms of architecture common in Medieval Europe. The basic characteristics of this style of architecture were influenced by religion (latin cross style churches), military (castle and fortified walls) and civil (Manors) impacts. Pre-Romanesque, Romanesque, Gothic and Renaissance Era divides this period. This was a time of war (Pre-Romanesque), Expansion (Romanesque), plague (Gothic) and rebirth (Renaissance). These are characterized by a use of round or slightly pointed arches, cruciform piers supporting vaults, featuring almost skeletal stone structures with great expanses of glass, windows containing beautiful stained glass, depicting biblical stories, rosette windows, pared-down wall surfaces supported by external flying buttresses, pointed arches using the ogive shape, ribbed stone vaults, clustered columns, pinnacles, sharply pointed spires, and don’t forget the gargoyles.

This is the time when men wanted to colonize other land masses, think of Pocahontas, Magellan, Columbus, Lewis and Clark. This is the Colonial Period. Architecture was primarily made from things they found wherever they are in search of the frontier. With the rise of various European colonial empires from the 16th century onward through the early 20th century, the new stylistic trends of Europe were exported to or adopted by locations around the world, often evolving into new regional variations. This period is divided into the Baroque (elaborate and over-designed), Classicism (symmetry and proportion), Revivalism (revival of an architectural era), Orientalism (Imitation of Eastern Cultures), and Art Nouveau (organic forms and structures).

Expressionist, Art Deco, International Style… this is the Early Modern Era. Think of old Hollywood, Silver Screen at its peak. Early Modern architecture began with a number of building styles with similar characteristics, primarily the simplification of form and the elimination of ornament, which first arose around 1900. By the 1940s these styles had largely consolidated and been identified as the International Style. The exact characteristics and origins of modern architecture are still open to interpretation and debate. An important trigger appears to have been the maxim credited to Louis Sullivan: “form follows function.” Functionalism, in architecture, is the principle that architects should design a building based on the purpose of that building. This statement is less self-evident than it first appears, and is a matter of confusion and controversy within the profession, particularly in regard to modern architecture.

Could be subcategorized into the general term of modern architecture but this period is slowly standing on its own. This was the time that man finally set foot on the moon, which inspired the idea of futurism to architecture as well. It composes the Regionalism (sense of placelessness), Postmodern Architecture (diverse and innovative aesthetics), Deconstructive Architecture (fragmentation and controlled chaos). The newest addition to this period is Green Architecture, also known as Sustainable Architecture, is a general term that describes environmentally conscious design techniques in the field of architecture. Most simply, the idea of sustainability, or ecological design, is to ensure that our actions and decisions today do not inhibit the opportunities of future generations.

Although a number of substances were known for a long time to make people insensible to pain, they were not used in surgery until the nineteenth century. Up until this point, surgery was performed by butchers and their ilk, as it was done with the patient fully conscious (although often inebriated to dull the pain) and as quickly as possible. The patient would violently struggle, scream, and frequently bleed to death in a very short amount of time. Traditionally, a team of people held the patient down, a butcher chopped off the damaged extremity, and the stump was immediately coated with tar to stop the bleeding. Surgery was not done on a fine scale or with any attention to detail, as there simply was not enough time for such things. It was one’s last option, as the surgery more often than not resulted in death. The use of anesthesia allowed doctors the time to work more cautiously, to learn how to stem blood flow more carefully, and to perform increasingly delicate operations. Modern surgery and medicine are thankfully unrecognizable next to their barbaric ancestors. Even in the most underdeveloped countries, eye surgery is fairly common, something unheard of before the dawn of anesthesia.

In 1928, Alexander Fleming showed that the fungus Penicillium notatum could be grown in a special way that caused it to produce a substance he called penicillin. This had the wonderful property of killing many disease-causing bacteria, especially syphilis. In fact, earlier people had used similar fungi to treat illnesses, but never with a systematic, scientific approach. Penicillum was developed into many strains and for the first time, all kinds of incurable diseases were easily eliminated. The idea that a cure could be easily and specifically grown from simple mold was unprecedented, and today we use antibiotics as the modern descendants of the original breakthrough. Cures are found almost as quickly as new bacteria emerge, and bacterial diseases are no longer the formidable threat they once were.

There is a finite amount of farmable land on Earth, which can be used to grow only so much food and in turn support only so many people. Up until the 1940s, this maximum number seemed to have been reached in many countries, with starvation and famine being rife due to there simply not being enough food. The father of the Green Revolution, Dr. Norman Borlaug, studied plant genetics before developing strains of wheat which produced a much higher yield than traditional wheat. This was followed by the development of better rice and other staples. Cereal production in India and many African countries doubled and famine was finally not a normal part of people’s lives. Thanks to Dr. Borlaug, a Nobel laureate, well over a billion more people are able to exist on the Earth today. Arguably, no single person has directly saved or enabled the existence of as many people as Dr. Borlaug.

Although the steam engine has a history that is thousands of years long, it was not used widely until it brought about the industrial revolution. It heralded a new era of mass-production and transportation of goods through the widespread use of engines. It was the first engine to be extensively used around the world, and still today makes up the main power source on Earth: 90% of all the electric power in the world is derived from steam. The steam engine and the large-scale construction and manufacturing it enabled not only reshaped the lives of all in or near the British Empire, but it gave rise to modern capitalism, for which there had been no need by the paltry businesses that had previously existed. Electric lighting, travel by boat and railways, mining, textiles, chemicals, and glass manufacture all increased on a gigantic scale, turning much of the world into a machine of production. Today, even those who live without electricity use products created elsewhere by steam power. The effects of steam power, the Industrial Revolution, and mass-production have become ubiquitous.

Fossil fuels had been used by ancient civilizations for a variety of purposes, but never on a large scale. In the middle ages, coal began to be mined extensively for use by smiths and metalworkers. Coal saw its biggest use at the beginning of the industrial revolution. Intimately connected with the use of the steam engine, fossil fuels provided a rich source of energy. Coal is the most widely used fossil fuel on the planet, although other forms such as liquid oil and various gases are also used. Coal provides much more energy when burnt than an equivalent mass of wood, and when a large quantity of fuel is needed, fossil fuels are more economical and less wasteful. Fossil fuels allowed the steam engine to proliferate and enabled electricity to be given to the world.

The use of steam power and the widespread use of large transport vehicles such as trains and ships gave rise to the natural human desire to refine what they already had to a more delicate scale. A personal transportation machine, a steam-powered carriage, was the dream of many. Several prototypes were produced, but all had various problems and were not suitable for widespread use. When the internal combustion engine, a specialized steam engine, was developed, it began to be adapted for automobiles. The technology developed, but was never entirely successful until Karl Benz created what is acknowledged as the first modern automobile in 1885. Gradually, the usefulness of these cars was seen and production steadily increased. There nearly a billion cars and small trucks being used on roads today, and although most people do not yet own their own car as has always been dreamed, many villages have one car which is shared between all the villagers in case of emergency. Cars are used all over the world when urgent travel is needed. The very layout of every city on earth is dictated by roads for use by cars.

Since our vague beginnings, humans have clung to the Earth, only able to gaze longingly at the divine freedom enjoyed by flying creatures. Around the world, all kinds of ancient myths and legends concern people taking flight as a sign of divinity or hubris. Kites and gliders were keenly investigated, but these could not, in their early form, carry the weight of a single skyward-yearning man. The first glider to support a man was built in 1853, and further developments lead to the controlled and powered flight of the Wright brothers. Aeroplane designs have been greatly modified since that time, but the use of an engine for propulsion and a body shape for lift remain constant. Today, flight still captivates the imagination, and it has played a major role in exploration, travel, and warfare. Even people in developing countries who might never fly themselves are often given aid via airplane.

With the ease of inter-continental travel, communication between distant people became the norm. Postal services struggled to keep up with people who were increasingly used to the notion of speedy replies. Smoke signals, flags, and fires have all been used, but never widely. The availability of electricity in the Industrial Revolution enabled the development of the telegraph wire, which was used with Morse Code to transmit messages across thousands of miles instantly. Further developments in the new field of electricity and electronics allowed the telegraph to evolve into the telephone, which could convert sound into current at one end and back into sound again at the other end. Incredibly, people could speak to one another when they were on opposite sides of the Earth. Instant communication has sped up business, reshaped warfare, and has changed the standards at which we live our lives in ways too numerous to mention. Very nearly every human settlement on earth has telephone access, and telecommunications are now less dependent on wires and have developed into instant messages, email, and data transfer. The amount of information available to people has drastically increased, just as the effective distance between foreign people has decreased through telecommunication-induced globalization.

This was what enabled Dr. Borlaug to create better strains of wheat. The understanding of the heritability of traits has always been with people, if only in a vague sense. After all, children resemble their parents, and livestock can be selectively bred. Direct manipulation of genes, a more accurate and accelerated form of genetic manipulation through clever breeding and directed evolution, first occurred in 1973. A number of medicines and other substances used today are produced from bacteria and yeasts which have been genetically manipulated. Insulin, vaccines, multivitamins, and all manner of antibiotics used today are produced through simple genetic manipulation. There is even research in the direction of growing whole organs from a single cell for the purpose of organ transplantation, which has been met with some success but is not yet ready for wide-scale use. Similarly grown meat tissue might eliminate the need for farming animals, and genetically modified bacteria can be used to clean up oil spills and nuclear waste. With genetic modification, we can and have improved the lives of billions of humans and innumerable other animals.

In the past, abacuses and other instruments have been used to help with human mathematical computations. The first machine to be able to store data and perform all four basic arithmetic operations (addition, subtraction, division, and multiplication) was conceived by Charles Babbage and was entirely mechanical. The next major development was the mechanical loom of Joseph Jacquard. It wove intricate patterns according to the sequence of holes it detected in paper fed to it, the early beginnings of programming. The computer, in the modern electronic sense, was developed by Alan Turing and used in the Second World War to break the unprecedentedly complex Nazi codes. Computers were originally the size of buildings, but they have since shrunk thanks to advances in the miniaturization of electronics. Computers and telecommunication together gave birth to the World Wide Web. Computers are now used in watches, cars, televisions, phones, and all sorts of other casual everyday items. The public availability of computers has made information accumulation and education increase to levels never seen before, and is the most recent step in a globally aware populace.

Logical thought, also called scientific thought, is the process of reasoning and testing in order to deduce the truth in any situation so that it may be more widely applied. For example, noting that every time anyone eats a certain berry they grow sick and die leads to the conclusion that the berry is likely poisonous. However, noting that when one ate a certain fruit the rain began to fall should not lead to a conclusion of ‘eating fruit makes it rain’ because the process has not been repeated or tested to confirm the link. A large number of animals are able to make such connections without testing them logically. Many superstitions are a result of illogical connections, where a coincidence that occurs once or twice is wrongfully interpreted. Several ancient civilizations even developed priest-kings who interpreted various signs according to increasingly complex superstitions and often produced bizarre or destructive behaviors. The ability to think with increasing logic allowed humans to make important links with far-reaching consequences in every field of human endeavor. Every advance is thanks to our capacity to think logically and search for connections so that we may gradually build a better world for ourselves.

Apes, and indeed many other animals, have been making tools for millions of years. However, very few ever venture to refashion stones. Tools made of leaves and wood tend to rot or wear away, but stone tools are much more permanent, and therefore lend themselves to better and better shaping towards their purpose over time. A spearhead, after a hunt, can be retrieved and refined so that the next hunt is easier. Hunting suddenly became much more successful. Stone tools and the need for more refined tool making require a greater intellect and imagination than that of most animals, and so the humans with better brains made better tools, enjoyed better lives, and generally lived longer, allowing them time to have more offspring. In shaping stone tools we shaped our own evolution.

Although there are records of chimpanzees, our closest relatives, performing ritualistic fire dances and even wielding flaming branches, humans are the only verified creature to have learnt the art of creating a flame. Fire provides comfort and warmth, but much more importantly, it allows us to cook meat. Our ancestors found that cooked meat was easier and safer to eat, and they rapidly adapted to a diet with more meat in it. Their powerful vegetation-chewing jaws shrank and their brains grew as they hunted more game, an act requiring a relatively high amount of intellect for the planning and communication involved. Fire changed our diets, which subsequently changed our digestive tracts, our jaws and teeth, and was one of the biggest factors in the development of near-modern intelligence. Stone tools may have started us down the road to larger brains, but fire massively accelerated the process. In a relatively short space of time after fire was mastered, the brain size of our ancestors more than doubled.

Rather than live nomadically and follow herds of game around, some groups of early people found they could keep groups of less aggressive creatures confined to a set area and alleviate themselves of the need to constantly travel. This allowed more permanent settlements to be formed, and the people had more free time due to not having to travel so often. Written language became much more useful in keeping track of things, and the extra time gave them the window to develop it. Domestication was applied to plants as well, and basic husbandry began. Breeding became a carefully controlled process. Weaving and other arts could be refined, and trading for goods greatly increased. Instead of having only a few occupations as in a hunter-gatherer society, there were now hundreds of specialist jobs, ranging from metal workers to breeders to primitive vets. No-one was a generalist anymore. Where previously the world population had been only a few million, farming allowed a number approaching the billions. Farming had an internal affect as well: the large stores of food which resulted from farming gave rise to larger and larger numbers of disease-carrying vermin, which in turn made people develop stronger immune systems.

Around six thousand years ago, the wheel began to be used in various parts of the world. Our fascination with it was slow at first, as the lack of smooth roads limited its wider uses. Gradually it took hold and settlements would flatten paths so that wagons could pass, greatly increasing the efficiency of a number of human endeavors. The wheel went on to give birth to the water wheel and the windmill, which gave us power and dramatically reduced the amount of effort needed in farming and food production. Vehicles and chariots began to develop, changing the fate of empires through warfare and travel. Its other offspring are the spinning wheel, enabling the development of various kinds of refined cloth making, potter’s wheels, used to make higher quality and refined pottery, cogs and pulleys, allowing all manner of mechanics to develop, the astrolabe, a device used by great minds to study the movements of the heavens, the propeller, used much later on planes and boats as a means of propulsion, and the steam engine, another great breakthrough discussed below.

Mathematics had a slow beginning, but became highly needed once agriculture developed. Dealing with trading goods and keeping track of larger numbers of animals necessitated counting and manipulation of numbers. As farming grew, people needed not only to count into the hundreds or even thousands, but they also had to be able to add and subtract those numbers. Mathematics allowed far more complex trading, which had up until then been dependent largely upon haggling, and introduced the notion of currency. This revolutionized business and gave rise to economics and true commerce. Mathematics also allowed engineering and astronomy to become independent fields in their own right, and together these formed the basis of much of modern science and technology. More recently, the introduction of Arabic numerals and the place-value system made higher mathematics universally accessible. Up until then, years at university were required before something as simple as multiplication could be understood.

Probably the first metal to be widely used was gold. This is because, unlike many other metals, it naturally occurs in a fairly pure form and is soft enough to be worked by stone tools. Eventually, ancient people realized that heat from fire could be used to extract other quite pure metals from ores (rocks containing small amounts of metal). Copper and tin were extracted and prized for their superior hardness, but were still too soft for many uses until they were combined, probably by accident, and formed bronze, an alloy that is much harder and more useful. Bronze weapons and tools easily outperformed all that had come before them. Farming tools, chariots, armor, and scientific instruments became unrecognizably better. Iron took much longer to be mastered, due to its higher melting point, but when it was, it was found to be an even better metal. People noticed that iron that had come into contact with organic matter formed a near-perfect metal – steel. Steel is more resistant to rust, is easier to weld, and today is cheaply mass-produced and used around the world.

The wide availability of paper was a major factor in the push towards universal literacy. Before paper was easily available, people could generally only write in the dirt or sand, which was impractical for most uses and therefore all but the most intelligent people were not disadvantaged by remaining illiterate. Universal literacy meant writing needed to be simple and efficient, and so complex hieroglyphs became refined and less cumbersome. This new art of easy writing was so persuasive that it passed even to people who had no paper and no opportunity to develop this smooth writing on their own. Widespread literacy and the subsequently developed writing was incredibly useful at storing information and reliably recording knowledge too vast for any one person to be relied upon to remember it all perfectly. The amount of knowledge capable of being maintained by humanity leapt forward. Literacy made communication at distance much more viable, and it was the first small step towards a unified global community.

Paper and writing were useful in recording valuable information, but books needed to be painstakingly written out one by one, and therefore were few in number and devoted only to the most important topics. The printing press allowed entire books to be printed in minutes, making knowledge much more widely available and enabling books to encompass a much broader range of subjects. The total amount and range of knowledge capable of being stored by humanity increased almost exponentially, and the availability of books and knowledge made education improve and become more widespread. The idea that all children should be academically educated is today almost omnipresent. This was a great milestone in the path towards increasing the average intelligence of the general populace.

Although used by a number of ancient cultures, vaccination became properly understood in the eighteenth century and was carried out on a widespread scale only last century. Most famously, the terrible disease smallpox has been completely extinguished thanks to vaccination. Smallpox was fatal for nearly half of infected adults, and over 80% of infected children. It killed millions of people every year for millennia. A vaccine, initially developed from the milder yet related disease cowpox, was used to produce immunity, and when enough people were vaccinated by 1977, the disease had no-one left to infect and died out. A myriad of other unpleasant and often deadly diseases which plagued our ancestors are now easily avoided thanks to vaccinations at birth and in childhood. Even those who are not vaccinated often benefit as the disease is less likely to spread if enough others are vaccinated. Billions of lives have been saved and the entire human population have better lives thanks to vaccination.

During the Ediacaran period, complex life had begun to take form for the first time on Earth. Tiny bacteria had evolved into the more complex and specialized Eukaryotes, some of which grouped together to increase their chances of finding food and avoiding becoming food. Most of these odd creatures did not leave a record because they had no skeletons; they were soft and tended to rot when they died rather than fossilize. Only in peculiar circumstances could fossils form, such as a creature lying on soft mud which suddenly hardened and left an imprint. These few fossils tell us of seas full of strange and alien creatures who resembled modern worms, sponges, and jellies. However, these creatures were dependent upon oxygen, as are we. The oxygen levels began to fall and world-wide extinctions occurred 542 million years ago. Over 50% of all species died. The huge numbers of dead creatures decomposed and make up some of today’s fossil fuels. The exact cause of the lowering oxygen levels is unknown, however, this mass extinction made room for the Cambrian explosion, a sudden diversifying of complex creatures beyond mere worms.

During the Cambrian period, life flourished. The Edicaran life had remained largely unchanged for millions of years, but in the Cambrian it suddenly diversified and evolved into endless new forms. Exotic crustaceans and trilobites became the dominant life in their huge numbers and variety. Shellfish and giant aquatic arthropods, similar to insects, filled the seas. These creatures had rigid exoskeletons which left a bounty of fossils for us to study. Life flourished until, rather suddenly in geological terms, over 40% of all species suddenly became extinct 488 million years ago. Those that remained survived poorly at best due to some harsh change in the environment. What this change was we do not know. One theory is that a glaciation occurred, the coldest part of an ice age. We have been enjoying an interglacial period, the warmest part of an ice age, for the past eleven thousand years. An extreme change in temperature can easily cause the extinction of a huge amount of life. This extinction event marked the border between the Cambrian and Ordovician periods.

Life began to flourish once again during the Ordovician period. Nautiloids (primitive octopuses), trilobites, corals, starfish, eels, and jawed fish filled the seas. Plants were struggling to take hold on land. Life was gradually becoming more complex. 443 million years ago, over 60% of life died out in what is considered the second largest extinction on record. It was caused by a rapid ice age brought on by lowering levels of carbon dioxide. Much of the water that was home to the abundance of life became used up in icecaps and glaciers which in turn caused oxygen levels to lower as well. It is thought that a burst of gamma rays from space had destroyed the ozone layer and the Sun’s unfiltered ultra-violet radiation then destroyed much of the plant life, which caused the initial drop in carbon dioxide. Although some life survived and continued on, by number of species it would take over 300 million years to recover from this event.

Following the Ordovician extinction, the Silurian period began. Life recovered from the last mass extinction and this period was marked by the development of true sharks and bony fish, most of which appeared perfectly modern. Moss and small plants finally began to grow freely on land along coastlines, and some arthropods evolved into spiders and millipedes who were adapted to the dry air and lived alongside the land plants. Enormous sea scorpions became abundant, and trilobites continued to dominate. 420 million years ago, there was a sudden climate change which caused the extinction of perhaps 30% of all species. The atmospheric gases changed in proportions that many creatures found disagreeable or toxic. The cause of this change is not known. Life struggled on until the Silurian period ended and the Denovian period began, when evolution produced a different model of life that thrived.

The Devonian period was where certain fish evolved sturdy fins that let them crawl onto dry land, eventually becoming animals such as reptiles and amphibians. In the seas, vast coral reefs were filled with fish and sharks, some of whom ate trilobites. The trilobites lost their footing as a dominant sea creature for the first time since they appeared over 100 million years prior. In fact, the sharks of this time were so successful that they have not needed to change much and some modern sharks look almost exactly the same as their predecessors. Land plants evolved seeds and diversified. More complex land plants developed and soil appeared for the first time in history. Strange forests of 8m tall fungi sprouted, which sadly are no longer with us. 374 million years ago, 75% of all this amazing life died out. This was due to a change in atmospheric gases, possibly due to massive volcanic activity or a meteorite impact.

After the Devonian period came the carboniferous period. A few land animals developed terrestrial eggs, which allowed them to live almost anywhere on land rather than being confined to shores where they could lay their eggs, as turtles still do today. Winged insects appeared and prospered. Sharks enjoyed a golden age and the few trilobites who had survived the last extinction became increasingly rare. Gigantic trees appeared and vast rain forests covered much of the land, increasing the air oxygen content to 35%. For comparison, today 21% of the air is oxygen. Conifers from the Carboniferous period remain almost unchanged today. 305 million years ago, a short sudden ice age caused carbon dioxide levels to become the lowest in the known history of Earth. The great forests died and with them, many of the land animals. Nearly 10% of all the species on Earth disappeared at this time. The trees rotted, condensed, and are now our main source of carbon fuels, after which this period was named.

After the rain forests fell, the most successful animals left on land were those who laid eggs. These quickly dominated before other species had a chance to recover and they diversified, producing a huge variety of reptiles and dominant synapsids, which were mammal-like reptiles and the ancestors of mammals. 252 million years ago, a disaster occurred which the Earth had never seen before and has never seen since. It was caused by a meteorite impact or volcanic activity which changed the air composition radically. Between 90% and 99% of all life became extinct. This is the biggest mass extinction in history, and is known as the ‘Great Dying’.
For reference, let us look at the extinction of animals caused by humans. During our tenure, high estimates suggest that we have wiped out nearly 1000 species of animal. There are about 8 million species alive today, meaning that even according to the most pessimistic estimates, we have obliterated 0.01% of all animal life. Although this is nothing to be proud of, it is infinitesimal when compared to the gargantuan extinctions nature herself casually puts forward.

After the desolation caused by the end of the Permian period, reptiles again became dominant and the dinosaurs appeared. Dinosaurs were not dominant above other reptiles, and at this stage were not much larger than horses. It was their descendants who became the famous and fearful creatures we know so well. All the larger dinosaurs, tyrannosaurus, stegosaurus, triceratops, and the giant long-necked sauropods, came in the Jurassic or the Cretaceous periods. 205 million years ago, 65% of Triassic life died out, including all the large land animals. Many of the dinosaurs were spared due to their small size. Most mass extinctions last a million years or so, but this one took only ten thousand years. It was likely caused by massive volcano eruptions which disgorged huge amounts of carbon dioxide or sulphur dioxide, resulting in sudden climate change.

During the Jurassic period, gigantic sea reptiles such as the famous plesiosaur dominated the oceans. Pterosaurs ruled the skies and dinosaurs ruled the land. Stegosaurus, the long diplodocus, and the great hunter allosaurus became common. Conifers, cycads, ginkgoes, and ferns provided lush forests. Smaller dinosaurs evolved feathers and birds began to appear. 200 million years ago, 20% of life suddenly vanishes from the fossil records, mostly marine species. Shellfish and corals had been widespread, yet they almost completely vanished. The few who survived managed to repopulate the seas gradually over the coming millions of years. This extinction did not greatly affect land animals, and only a few species of dinosaurs were lost. The cause of this almost marine-exclusive extinction is a matter of debate, but one possibility is that the ocean tectonic plates sank slightly and made the oceans deeper. Most marine life was adapted for shallow water, and it perished as it crept further and further away from the surface.

This is the most famous extinction event. After the Jurassic ended, dinosaurs continued to proliferate and evolve throughout the subsequent Cretaceous period. They specialized into the forms which are familiar to many children today. More importantly, it was only during the Cretaceous period that life finally recovered from the much earlier Ordovician-Silurian extinction. The number of species at last matched and then exceeded the number from the Ordovician period, over 300 million years prior, for the first time. The synapsids finally evolved into small, rodent-like creatures, which were the first true mammals. 65 million years ago, a huge meteorite impacted the earth at Chicxulub in modern Mexico, disrupting the atmosphere and causing severe global warming, in turn killing 75% of all species. This meteorite contained a high concentration of iridium, normally rare on Earth, and all around the world rocks which are 65 million years old show a thin layer of iridium left over from the impact. A few small reptiles and mammals were among the survivors of this extinction. Mammals would go on to replace dinosaurs as the dominant terrestrial animal.

Sexual abuse of the naive and innocent by authority figures is nothing new to human history, but what makes this example of it especially heinous is that it has taken place under the unwatchful eye of the most powerful Christian organization in the world. Child rape and molestation are, in the common view, possibly the vilest, most despicable sin (and felonies) a person can commit, precisely because there can be no excuse for it. Add to that the sin of homosexuality (we speak here in terms of Christianity), and it seems an impossible situation for a child ever to be found in.

Priests ought to understand these sins better than most people, and in Roman-Catholic cultures all over the world, parents highly revere priests as authority figures, second fathers to their children, and excellent teachers of morality. Hence, the question everyone has asked, “How in God’s name could this have happened?”

It’s not just a matter of well kept personal secrets among the guilty parties. The Catholic Church held meetings in the 1950s concerning sexual abuse of minors by priests, and yet, apparently nothing was done to prevent the growing disaster. Those people known to have a history of committing sexual abuse against others were knowingly ordained and sent to priestly duties all over the world, not just in the United States, but in England, Ireland, Canada, Belgium, the Philippines, and many other nations.

The scandal didn’t hit the mainstream media until the 1980s, raising suspicion of Papal cover-ups to protect the image of Christianity. Fortunately, Christianity’s image has not suffered a fraction of the fall-out that the Catholic hierarchy has. Christ will never be torn down because of man’s sin, or it would certainly have happened by now. The priests are, as of this list, still being hunted down, investigated, and dealt with according to man’s law. God’s law will deal with the guilt of every sinner involved, if you believe in Him, but in the meantime, the Roman-Catholic denomination of the man many hold as the absolute greatest good in history has suffered severe damage to its reputation. Whether it is irreparable depends on how long a consecutive series of superlative Popes the Catholic Church can elect, beginning with John Paul II.

From 1958 to 1962, China experienced a monumental famine that killed at least 45 million people. There are generally two causes blamed for it: natural disasters and the communist policies of Mao Zedong. Chairman Mao defined this period of his rule as the “Great Leap Forward,” and implemented economic and social changes with epic consequences. This entry is quite similar to #6 and #3.

Mao intended to turn China from an agrarian economy into a modern, urbanized, industrial giant on par with the U. S. But forcing his Great Leap Forward on the Chinese countryside led to nationwide crop shortages. Then the Yellow River flooded in 1959, drowning or starving 2 million. The next year, 60% of China’s farmland received no rain at all.

Mao’s idea of forcing farmers into industrial careers further destroyed the harvests. The famine became so intolerable that in some areas, people resorted to canniablism. Millions were tortured to death for the crime of stealing food to feed their families. One man, Liu Desheng, was found to have stolen a sweet potato, and he and his wife and son were urinated on, then forced to eat large gulps of human feces. They both died within weeks.

Mao and his officers meanwhile dined on $1,000 French meals and 20 year-old Scotch whisky. Mao is on record as having told his officers that there would be many deaths due to his Great Leap Forward, but that in the end, they would serve a greater good. The famine only ended when the weather improved in 1962. 5% of China starved to death, drowned, or were murdered.

Ecologists agree that Earth appears to be experiencing a mass extinction at present. These have happened many times in the past. The extinction of the dinosaurs is believed to have been caused most directly by a comet or asteroid impact. That event was nothing compared to the Permian-Triassic extinction, which may have been caused by a Gamma Ray Burst. That event resulted in 96% of all marine life and 70% of all land life dying.

What has happened to plant and animal species while modern man has been on Earth pales in the shadow of these two events, and yet humanity in general is doing terribly little to maintain critically endangered species. Most humans seem to adore “cuddly” animals. Anything with fur qualifies, and we have many tastes in what animals are beautiful. The tiger is magnificent. In 2005 there were only 250 breeding Siberian tigers in the Russian wild. There are well over 10,000 in captive breeding programs around the world: some people are trying to save species from extinction, while many others willfully poach those endangered animals for the black market.

Tiger penis is considered the ultimate aphrodisiac in some places in China. These magnificent animals are being killed, illegally and at extreme personal risk, for money and sexual gratification. In 2011, the Western Black Rhinoceros was declared officially extinct. They, like so many other gigantic African marvels, had been hunted coldly, and unsympathetically, by humans out for a cheap thrill and what they thought was sport and danger.

Black rhinoceroses are extremely aggressive and have terrible eyesight. They will charge headfirst into trees and termite mounds, thinking they see a territorial challenger. Males weigh an easy 3,000 pounds. The record is 6,380 pounds. There are only about 4,000 left in the African wild as of this list. The reason is two-fold: in 1900 there were several hundred thousand in Africa, but English “hunters” toured Africa to shoot down the Big Five: elephants, rhinoceroses, cape buffaloes, lions, and leopards.

This lister goes hunting now and then for deer, squirrels, rabbits, and doves, and these animals are very bountiful and fairly difficult to outwit in the wild. The hunter must also be a good marksman. But in Africa, elephants and rhinoceroses are too gargantuan to have natural predators except the very occasional lion. So they stand still or charge in the presence of humans. There’s no “hunting” involved. You can drive up to either species in a jeep in the middle of day and take pictures.

And armed with a .700 Nitro Express, which propels a 1000 grain solid bronze bullet at 8900 foot-pounds of force, there’s no skill involved. Some people just enjoy killing these magnificent animals for the empowerment it seems to instill. Also, rhinoceros horns are highly sought after in Chinese “medicine” for their ability to cure disease and impotence, neither of which the horn can do. It is made of pure keratin, and so are your fingernails. Keratin comes from the Greek κέρατος, which means “of the horn.”

There are anywhere from 470,000 to 690,000 African Bush Elephants left in the wild, and they are protected from poachers, but not well. They are poached for their ivory tusks, regardless of the international illegality of buying or selling them. Gorillas are poached for their hands, which are used as ashtrays. Then, of course, there is severe habitat destruction in virtually every ecosystem on the planet, so we can have our diamonds and gold, and build colossal megalopolis.

Splinter-cell terrorism refers to acts of terror, especially bombings, hijackings, and assassinations, committed by agents of organizations operating all over the world free of direct link to any organization. It is the ultimate example of guerrilla warfare, and as the world has seen in the past 20 years or so, huge, powerful, technologically advanced militaries have extreme difficulty stopping these criminals.

Splinter-cell terrorists are responsible for the September 11, 2001 attacks against the United States of America. Before that, the U. S. remained generally aloof to the global war of attrition being waged against these fanatics (lunatics). U. S. embassies were bombed in Africa in 1998, the USS Cole in 2000, and all the while, efforts were underway to find the leader of the primary aggressor against global civilization, al-Qaeda. That leader, Osama bin Laden, could not be found, until after 9/11, when the U. S. began hunting him down in earnest. It took a decade to catch him. In the meantime, other fanatics the world over were perpetrating atrocity after atrocity against innocent, unarmed civilians of dozens of countries, for the avowed purpose of eradicating Jews and Christians from Earth. Stopping each of these terrorists once they make their presence known can never put an end to the problem.

Islamic terrorists are not the only culprits, as Theodore Kaczynski and Timothy McVeigh prove. It is impossible to make these fanatics respect any military might, since to begin with, they are not afraid to die in the process of killing others. How civilized humanity can put a total end to this terrorism is still debatable, of course. Whether it even can be stopped is also debatable.

The Khmer Rouge were members of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, and during their 4-year reign of terror, from 1975 to 1979, they completely destroyed Cambodia, economically, politically, and demographically. They took advantage of the chaos following the Vietnam War to overthrow the Republican government and set up what their leader, Saloth Sar, who named himself Pol Pot, called “agrarian socialism.” It was, in reality, a forced relocation of every single Cambodian citizen from cities to farms where they were forced to farm regardless of skill or health. They were starved to death, beaten to death, overworked to death, and tortured to death.

Anyone deemed “intellectual” was immediately murdered to protect the regime. Anyone wearing glasses was deemed intellectual. These people were taken out into “killing fields” and hacked to pieces with machetes. Every single book that could be found was burned, as was all money. All banks and even hospitals were shut down. The citizens were no longer given more than two bowls of rice soup per day. All religion was banned, and those adhering to any religion were prime targets for murder, including Buddhists, Christians, and Muslims, anyone educated in western universities, and any ethnicity other than Cambodian.

The most notorious details of this sorry moment in human history come from S-21, now the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. It was a high school before it was taken over. The Khmer Rouge guards forced the prisoners to eat the guards’ feces. The prisoners were forbidden from drinking water without permission, and if they did, they were beaten sometimes to death. They were water boarded, raped, their teeth and genitals electrocuted, bled to death, drowned, and castrated with pliers.

The death toll of this regime cannot be accurately calculated, because records were rarely kept well. The most reliable estimate is 2.5 to 3 million murdered. That was 21% of Cambodia’s population. Pol Pot died on 15 April 1998 of what was claimed to be heart failure. He might have been poisoned, or committed suicide, since he was about to be arrested for his crimes.

One of only two wars to make this list, this one does because of the hideous speed at which hostilities escalated in 1914, and because there is no single villain to blame. Humanity in general is to blame for this one. In retrospect, it appears as if every country in Europe was harboring a festering hatred for one another, and everyone was looking for an excuse to invade. The act that touched it off was the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria-Este, by Gavrilo Princip, whose motive was no more complicated than a desire to prove his bravery to the Serbian army, which had rejected him for being too small and weak.

Almost every nation in Europe had a treaty with another nation, and these treaties all said the same thing: if anyone attacks you, we’ve got your back. Austro-Hungary declared war on Serbia, which prompted Russia to declare war on Austro-Hungary, which prompted Germany and Italy to declare war on Russia, which prompted the United Kingdom and France to declare war on Germany and Italy. Spain and, of course, Switzerland stayed out of it.

The United States stayed out of it until Germany waged total war on international unarmed merchant ships, particularly Lusitania, and because of the Zimmermann Telegram which Germany sent to Mexico, urging it to declare war on the U. S. The British intercepted this memo, but Mexico, to its credit, did not dare attack the U. S.

We can all agree that war is the epitome of human stupidity, and as wars go, WWI may be insurmountable in exemplary idiocy. War theory, if we may call it that, had progressed in terms of modern defense, but not attack: both sides were armed with more or less the very same weaponry, especially the Maxim machine gun, the first truly modern machine gun. It is belt-fed, fires the .303 British, the 8mm Mauser, or the 7.62 NATO, at a rate of 450 to 500 rounds per minute, sufficient to cut men in half, which is precisely what it did tens of thousands of times for 4 years.

The British, French, Germans, Russians, and Americans all had them, and for the first 2 and a half years, the trench warfare involved one side charging out across 100 to 1000 yards of no-man’s land, through shell craters, barbed wire, mud and mines, right into the waiting machine gun lines of the enemy trenches. Each time one side was beaten back with severe losses, the other side thought there would be a weakness and charged after them, right into waiting machine gun lines. Kaiser Wilhelm sent a telegram in late 1914 to his cousin, Tsar Nicholas II, that read, in Russian, “Nicky, how can we stop this?”

On the first day of the Battle of the Somme River, 1 July 1916, the middle day of the middle year of the Great War, as it was called before 1939, the British conducted the European Slow March, walking, not running, toward the Germans, on the theory that the slower they advanced, the more difficult they would be to hit, and more fearsome they would be to the enemy. After 12 hours, 19,240 British soldiers lay dead in about 25 square miles. This was the most lethal day in the British military’s history.

The Somme was begun in an attempt to draw men of both sides away from the Battle of Verdun, so a decision there could be attained. Instead, the Somme became an even larger battle in scale, and it and Verdun remain the most epic of the War. 698,000 men died at Verdun, 70,000 per month for 10 months. Over 300,000 died at the Somme. Each battle resulted in over 1 million casualties, the debut of the modern flamethrower at Verdun, and the tank at the Somme.

The Germans opened hostilities at Verdun with a 10-hour cannonade of 808 artillery pieces, firing almost 1 million shells, some as wide as steering wheels. Around the French fortifications, the blackened skeletons of trees were festooned with human and horse intestines. The Germans also used ample supplies of mustard gas in both battles. Mustard gas is essentially aerosol hydrochloric acid. One breath of it can kill a man by internal drowning. It also severely burns and blisters skin and blinds eyes.

Both battles ended in utter stalemate, because mobility had not progressed on par with firepower, and that lack of mobility, especially on the first day of the Somme, displayed more directly than any other action in any war the utter futility and insanity of warfare. Neither side could approach the other, but the Germans found their losses more irreplaceable than the combined French and British. When the Americans showed up, the Germans simply could not cope with the overwhelming enemy men and materiel for much longer. About 15 million, military and civilian, died, unless we include deaths from Spanish influenza, which was itself a direct result of the War. That puts the estimate at about 65 million.

There is no one cause to blame for the Bubonic plague’s rise to power in 1346 or so, but Europe in general can be criticized strongly for its primitive belief in witches. Because “witches” were hunted down wholesale by reason of an insufferably pervasive fear of the Devil, domestic and feral cats were also killed by the hundreds of thousands, because they were thought to be witches’ “familiars,” that without one, a witch could not adequately cast spells.

So once witch-hunts showed up in full swing and cats started disappearing into the fires, the entire European world was ripe for an epidemic of rats. And the rats showed up in full swing in 1346 in the Crimea, via the Silk Road from China. There were no cats to check the rats stowing away onboard merchant ships, and these rats were infested with fleas. The fleas carried yersinia pests, better known as plague.

Today, this bacteria has been all but eradicated in most places around the world, because cleanliness is next to Godliness. A regular hot bath with soap will rid you of fleas, but such baths were not regular in the Middle Ages. Once bitten by an infected flea, curing yourself is really not difficult at all. Streptomycin prevents the bacteria from replicating, which gives the immune system enough time to tailor an antibody to kill it. Europe didn’t know about antibiotics, and had they, they might have had fair results by eating moldy bread.

Without treatment, plague is one of only three known diseases with a mortality rate of 100%. The other two are rabies encephalitis and HIV. Given the primitive medical knowledge of the Middle Ages, the world didn’t have a chance. Even the best physicians had no clue what to do to protect themselves, much less the populace.

Doctors entered homes only after donning full-body leather armor, helmets and masks shaped like hawk beaks, filled with aromatic herbs, due to the miasmatic theory of diseases. According to this theory, simply “stirring up the vapors” would cure the area of plague, while the doctor would remain safe breathing in his mask. The masks had red glass over the eyeholes, because even looking at an infected person was thought to cause infection.

Ringing bells was thought to stir up the vapors. Or the sick person could stand next to a latrine and inhale the stench. About the only method that actually worked to a small degree was smoking tobacco, because the smoke kept the fleas away. But the most infamous methods for curing the plague were based on the principle that God was very angry with the whole world.

The Flagellants began roaming the countryside by 1349, especially in Germany, and they beat themselves bloody with Roman-style flails, the same kind used to scourge Christ. The idea was that if they suffered enough, God would relent and the plague would stop. It didn’t work.

So, like clockwork, God’s wrath was blamed on the non-Christians throughout Europe, and that mostly meant Jews. In February of 1349, 2,000 Jews were hacked to pieces and burned at the stake in Strasbourg, on the French-German border. But the plague kept coming. It killed 40% of Egypt, 30% of the Middle East, about half of the 100,000 people in Paris. The worst hit area was Mediterranean Europe, including Italy, Spain, and southern France. There, about 75% to 80% died. The Pope, Clement VI, survived by surrounding his throne 24 hours a day with torches burning close to the floor. In the aftermath, his servants found scorched fleas “like pepper” just outside the ring of flame.

England suffered about 20% dead. The total average was about 25% of the whole world, as evidence indicates plague deaths in sub-Saharan Africa, India, and the Orient. As much as 66% of Europe and Asia succumbed. Approximately 100,000,000 people died in 4 years.

Holodomor is the Ukrainian word for “killing by hunger.” It is now the proper term for Josef Stalin’s forced starvation genocide against the Ukraine from 1932 to 1933. The manner by which Stalin forced it on the Ukrainian people is open for discussion, but most historians agree that he knew what was happening in the Ukraine and refused to provide relief of any kind, even ordering food shipments diverted from the Ukraine and what food its population had confiscated, violently whenever necessary. He imposed this particularly cruel death sentence on so many solely out of retaliation for the Ukraine striving for national recognition and independence.

Today, we refer to it as a country, Ukraine, with Kiev as its capital city. But at that time, it was still referred to as “the Ukrainian SSR,” or simply, “the Ukraine,” one of many areas of Russia. The famine was manmade, an imposition directly from Stalin, but whether he premeditated it beforehand is difficult to determine. Most of Russia was experiencing a famine at that time, and Stalin may have seen this a chance to make the Holodomor look, at best, like an accident, at worst, passive justice.

The numbers are the saddest testimony overall in every one of these entries. Records were not well kept during the famine, so the death toll ranges from 1.8 to 12 million. Some scholars have narrowed this down to about 4 to 5 million. The borders were closed by the NKVD, the precursor to the KGB, and anyone attempting to flee to other countries or Russian states was either shot or captured and brought back to starve. 190,000 tried to escape the Ukraine after the first year. Starvation may be the most awful cause of death. The commoners’ despair, agony, and terror led tens of thousands to resort to eating their own children. Many ate their own feet. It did not end until Stalin’s implementation of forced collectivization of grain threatened to destroy all of Russia, not just the Ukraine. Once the police and military stopped stealing everyone’s grain, farmers were able to grow for small communities, as they always had.

This war can be blamed mostly on one man, Adolf Hitler. Let us take a brief look at the motives by which he initiated global hostilities in 1939. Whereas, Stalin was patently paranoid that he would lose his power, Hitler was not afraid. He simply carried a fuming rage which, in childhood, he directed against nothing in particular.

He was imprisoned for his failed Beer Hall Putsch, an attempt to overthrow the Kaiser government, in 1923. While serving 8 months, he and Rudolf Hess wrote Mein Kampf, in which Hitler blamed absolutely everything bad that had ever happened to Germany on the Jews, all of them everywhere on Earth. Whether he actually believed this is open to debate, but there is no denying that he saw in Jews an outstanding scapegoat, one against which all non-Jewish Germans would rally.

It worked better than he could possibly have imagined. He emerged from prison a national hero and 10 years later took control of the government. What followed was a nationwide brainwashing: everyone began hating Jews intensely. Many of the Jews saw the trouble coming and left for England or America. Most stayed, hoping they would be saved. They weren’t, until it was too late.

6 years later, Hitler made good on his promise to acquire “lebensraum” for the German people, by invading Poland. Britain and France immediately declared war on Germany. Russia made a pact with Germany because Stalin knew he could not conquer Germany at that time. Hitler bided his time before invading Russia 2 years later, in the knowledge that Russia’s military was woefully inadequate. Japan invaded China for its resources, and in September 1940 Japan, Italy, and Germany became the formal Axis Powers, solely because they understood their identical desires to conquer other countries.

Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in retaliation for the U. S. embargo on oil, iron, and machinery. The U. S. then declared war on Japan, and there were declarations of war all around. Oh, what a merry world it became so quickly. After 6 years, 71 million people were dead. Rome, Paris, Moscow, Leningrad, and London were smoldering. Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Stalingrad, and Manila were obliterated.

The most infamous aspect of the War will forever remain the Holocaust. It is also referred to as HaShoah, which is Hebrew for “The Catastrophe.” Much has been said about it already on Listverse, so let us briefly examine Hitler’s methods, by which he remorselessly and unsympathetically attempted to eradicate an entire race of humans.

His seething, abiding rage found in Jews the perfect target, and he set about in his political ambitions, surrounding himself with men who agreed, some for power, some out of rage or delight, all out of hatred, that the Jews as a race needed to, and could, be extinguished. The Wehrmacht, for its part, had nothing at all to do with the Holocaust, and had very little idea it was going on. They were an honorable institution, if honor, just as compassion, can be found in war.

The Schutzstaffel, or SS, carried out the murder of 6 million men, women, and children, by poisonous gas, shooting, beating, torturing, “scientific” experiments, systematic starvation, and overwork, on the pretense that “Aryans” were superior humans, and that Jews were no better than cattle, in which terms, the question was asked, “Do we feel bad when we slaughter cows for food?”

1.1 million were murdered at Auschwitz, 700,000 to 800,000 at Treblinka, 600,000 at Belzec, 360,000 at Majdanek, 320,000 at Chelmno, 250,000 at Sobibor. Merely because they were Jewish. Meawhile, at least 750,000 soldiers and civilians died in 199 days in Stalingrad. That was only one battle of the War.

Whereas, Stalin never offered any political explanation for, nor a formal admission of, attempting to starve all of Ukraine, and Hitler explained the Holocaust as “a necessary step” in the process of purifying and strengthening the “master race,” the Crusades were undertaken by both the Christians and the Muslims for the openly expressed purpose of exterminating the opposing religion along with all its adherents, solely to glorify God. It remains the blackest moment in the history of all religion.

It lasted from c. 1063 until c. 1434, when handheld gunpowder weapons were first used to good effect in combat. Keep in mind, before you denounce God for allowing or causing it to happen, that doing so is foolishly dismissive. Assuming there is a God, the Crusades were not his fault. They remain humanity’s fault by two causes: first, the refusal to tolerate differences; and second, the active enjoyment derived from hurting things, especially other humans, since they can best voice their disapproval of such actions.

The use of the word “God” in any language to justify one’s actions of violence is but a means to an end, and also sweetens the enjoyment of another person’s pain, since by denouncing that person as an infidel, the malicious party can believe that person is also destined for eternal agony, after the agony s/he is forced to suffer on Earth. Sounds appetizing, doesn’t it? Because we all get angry at other people for various perceived offenses, deep down doesn’t it sound appetizing to believe those people are going to Hell, regardless of how much they suffer in life? No one would ever admit to it, of course, but it’s a primitive passion innate in every human, and precisely the heart of the Crusades.

In 1099, the 1st Crusade ended in “Christian” victory, when knights and soldiers from France, England, Germany, and Apulia (southern Italy) successfully besieged Jerusalem from 7 June to 15 July. They were opposed by the Islamic Fatimid Caliphate of Egypt, under Iftikhar ad-Dawla, who had 400 cavalrymen and a garrison of Muslim and Nubian troops comparable in size to the invaders, about 13,000 for each side. Inside the city there lived over 60,000 unarmed civilians, mostly Muslims and Jews.

Once the city fell, the invaders stormed in, ransacked every building and murdered every single man, woman, and child within the walls. 70,000 people were hacked to pieces “in the name of Christ.” The horses waded in blood up to their knees. Probably half the women were raped, and most of everyone was tortured by varying methods. It was unbridled, bacchanalian sadism. About 500 Jews fought alongside the Muslims, then took refuge in a synagogue. The French burned the synagogue to the ground, with everyone in it.

88 years later, Salah ad-Din successfully took Jerusalem back for Islam and allowed all those inside to return unharmed to their homelands provided they paid a ransom. Those who could not afford it were sold into slavery. Two years later, Richard I of England (the Lionheart) arrived with Phillip II of France and Frederick I of Germany. Richard was not the chivalrous hero he is frequently depicted as in films. He spent barely 6 months of his 10-year regency in England. He lived in France, spoke only Langues d’Oil and Langues d’Oc, two dialects of Old French, did not speak any form of English, and used England as a money machine to finance his conquests. He loved the sport and glory of overpowering other nations. His Crusade, the 3rd, ended in an uneasy stalemate.

There would be 6 more Crusades, with the Holy Land changing hands several times, costing hundreds of thousands of lives, all in the name of one god or another. All the while, both bibles stated, “Love your enemies.”