Transcript One of my dirty secrets is that I’m a fan of pro wrestling. Whenever I tell people this the first thing I inevitably hear is, “you know it’s fake right?” This idea that people think professional wrestling is real comes from the concept that wrestling insiders call kayfabe. Learn about the history of kayfabe …
Transcript Sports history is littered with really bad teams. The 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers didn’t win a single game and wound up losing 26 in a row. The 2012 Charlotte Bobcats went 7-59 for a .106 winning percentage. The 1899 Cleveland Spiders set a record for futility in baseball winning only 20 games out of …
Transcript The ancient Romans had a practice called Damnatio Memoriae, which was to banish someone’s memory from public life. It was also sometimes known as oblivion. It called for the complete deletion of the person’s name or image from all statues, inscriptions, coins, and texts. While the practice neither began nor ended with the Romans, …
Transcript For eight seasons, the TV show Dexter showed the fictional life of a crime solving forensics expert who just so happened to have been a serial killer who killed serial killers. This got me wondering, has there ever been a real life Dexter? A killer, or even a criminal, who targeted other criminals? Well, …
Transcript If you ask most Muslims what the holiest site is in Islam, they would probably tell you that it is the Kaaba at the Great Mosque of Mecca. Ask most Jews what the holiest site is in Judaism is and they would probably say the Western Wall of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. Ask …
Transcript Each of the 50 states in the United States has a unique history. 13 of them were originally British Colonies. Some of them were former Spanish or French territory. Most of them were officially US territories before they became states. A few however, were actually independent countries before they joined the Union…..or at least …
Transcript Lis Hartel was a Danish equestrian competitor in the 1940s and 1950s. She competed in the 1952 Olympics and the 1956 Olympics and she won medals at both. However, her Olympic medals are just the starting point of her fascinating and inspirational story. Learn more about Lis Hartel and her remarkable accomplishments on this …
Transcript North America and Europe have much which separates them culturally as well as geographically. One of the biggest differences is in the area of sports. Not just which sports we play, but in how sports are organized. Many people on either side of the Atlantic have no clue how sports are organized on the …
Transcript In the Roman Republic, men of senatorial rank could compete for political offices which were placed in a set order and had to be earned sequentially. This hierarchy was known as the Cursus Honorum. The Cursus Honorum was the basis of political and social life in ancient Rome, and the fortunes of entire families …