Every article on the site, newest first. For the same list in order of time, see the timeline.
In 227 BC the assassin Jing Ke hid a poisoned dagger in a map scroll — but the King of Qin tore his sleeve, circled a pillar, and survived. How he escaped.
· 227 BCSargon of Akkad conquered dozens of warring city-states to found Akkad — the first empire recorded in history, in what is now central Iraq, c. 2300 BC.
· 2279 BCVesuvius turned the Villa of the Papyri library into charcoal in AD 79. X-ray scans and AI now read the scrolls without opening them; the first passages came in 2023-24.
· AD 79Enheduanna, daughter of Sargon of Akkad and high priestess at Ur (c. 2300 BC), signed her own name to her hymns and wrote in the first person — widely held to be the earliest author in history whose name we know.
· 2300 BCThe Epic of Gilgamesh is humanity's oldest story — a legendary king of Uruk who chased immortality, and its ancient Great Flood tale.
· 2100 BCNot numbers but a war machine: speed, decimal discipline, and absorbed siege tech built history's largest land empire — about twice the size of Rome.
· 1206The mighty Han Empire began weak: in 200 BC Emperor Gaozu was besieged by the Xiongnu at Mount Baideng, and Han bought peace (heqin) with silk, wine, grain, and a royal bride paid every year.
· 200 BCAt twenty Alexander inherited his father's unbeatable army, struck the gap at Gaugamela, and reached India — his true legacy was the Hellenistic world.
· 336 BCIn the early Roman Republic, the dictator held absolute power for up to six months, then had to give it back. As the story goes, the farmer Cincinnatus won a war in 16 days and returned to his plow.
· 458 BCNearly every Egyptian royal tomb was robbed, yet the least important boy-king Tutankhamun's tomb survived intact — because it was small and hidden.
· 1323 BCWhy did Hannibal lead war elephants over the Alps? The sea was Rome's, so Carthage's general took the road no one expected — and trapped Rome at Cannae.
· 218 BCThe mature Indus (Harappan) cities of ~2500 BC had a bathroom and toilet in nearly every home, covered street sewers, and inspection manholes — sanitation Europe would not match until the 19th century.
· 2500 BCAncient Athens filled most offices — the Council of 500, magistracies, and juries — by lottery (sortition) using the kleroterion, not by election, to stop the powerful few from seizing power.
· 487 BCCleopatra's 'seductress' image is Octavian's propaganda. The real last pharaoh ruled with language, diplomacy and strategy — a stateswoman, not a beauty.
· 30 BCThe Classic Maya (and their Mesoamerican neighbors) wrote zero as a shell glyph in a place-value system by at least 36 BC — over five centuries before India's conventional date, and independently.
· 36 BCIn AD 79 Vesuvius buried Pompeii — the ash did not destroy it but stored an ordinary Roman day whole, down to bread still in the oven.
· AD 79The Great Pyramid of Giza wasn't built by whipped slaves but by organized, well-fed Egyptian workers — for a god-king who dreamed of eternity.
· 2560 BCKing of Qin at thirteen, he survived Jing Ke's dagger, conquered six kingdoms, then unified China's script, coins, and measures as the First Emperor.
· 221 BCUruk in ancient Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) is humanity's first true city — ~40,000 people by 3300 BC, and the birthplace of writing.
· 3300 BC