Once local and irregular, time-keeping became universal and linear in 311 BCE. History would never be the same again. What year is it? It’s 2019, obviously. An easy question. Last year was 2018. Next year will be 2020. We are confident that a century ago it was 1919, and in 1,000 years it will be […]
From an emirate to space travel (and back again) I did not intend to write about Afghanistan, or the land of the Afghans, or as they call the tomb of empires, but, I felt obliged from another perspective to write a word or two about this country of disobedient peoples living in it, unlike from liberal […]
There is only one true way to experience Petra—the greatest city of the Nabataeans, a people who occupied the area from Sinai and Negev to northern Arabia in the west and as far north as southern Syria. On foot or mounted on a camel, one should leave the modern village of Wadi Musa in modern-day […]
“Violence only benefits those who have nothing to lose.” – Jean Paul Sartre The great pianist virtuoso Duke Ellington once said that, “the masters, frightened by the silence of their slaves, will order them to sing, so as not to give them an opportunity to think and forge a plan of revenge and liberation”. A […]
Between November 15, 1966 and December 15, 1967 a string of incredible, but disturbing, sightings took place in the Point Pleasant area of West Virginia of a “large flying man with ten foot wings” known today as The Mothman. On November 12, 1966, five men were digging a grave at a cemetery near Clendenin, West […]
The secret to Alexandria, if classical historians are to be believed, lies in a golden casket. Studded with jewels and small enough to hold in one’s hands, the casket was a war trophy found in the lodgings of vanquished Persian king Darius III more than 2,300 years ago. The man who defeated Darius, Alexander the […]
The grid system which the Roman republic exported all over Europe was never employed in the capital itself. The city has always lacked a coherent plan – save for the monumental temple that once towered over it. According to Tacitus, perhaps the greatest of all Roman historians, it was the great temple of Jupiter Optimus […]
Beneath the streets of a suburb of Damascus, rows of shelves hold books that have been rescued from bombed-out buildings. Over the past four years, during the siege of Darayya, volunteers have collected 14,000 books from shell-damaged homes. They are held in a location kept secret amid fears that it would be targeted by government […]