Category
History & Society
Institutions, public-policy arguments, historical myths, financial memory, and big-history interpretations that are easy to misremember without a compact reference.
Topics
Institutions & PolicyInstitutions, policy arguments, financial systems, and public decisions whose details are easy to blur.2Historical Myths & MemoryCompact corrections for historical stories that survive because the memorable version is cleaner than the evidence.1Big History IdeasLarge-scale historical interpretations, their causal frameworks, and their limits.2Alcohol: History & ScienceHow humans learned to ferment and distill ethanol, why the major beverage families differ, and what archaeology and language reveal about alcohol's long history.6
All Entries
Institutions & Policy
- Great Western Bank to Washington MutualGreat Western Financial was one of the large U.S. savingsandloan/thrift institutions that consolidated during the 1990s. In 1997, Washington Mutual won a takeover battle for Great Western in a transaction valued at roughly $6.6 billion, creating what was then the largest U.S. thrift.
- Permanent Daylight-Saving-Time DebatesThere are actually two separate policy questions that often get collapsed into “stop changing the clocks”:
Historical Myths & Memory
- Napoleon's Height MythNapoleon was probably around 1.68–1.69 m tall — about 5 ft 6½ in in modern units. That was not unusually short for a French man of his era and may have been around average or somewhat above it depending on the comparison sample.
Big History Ideas
- Guns, Germs, and SteelThe book in one sentence
- Nexus — Yuval Noah HarariThe book in one sentence
Alcohol: History & Science
- Alcohol: Fermentation, Distillation and the Major FamiliesThe easiest way to understand alcoholic drinks is not to memorize bottles on a shelf.
- Alcoholic Fermentation: How Sugar Becomes EthanolAlcoholic fermentation is often summarized as:
- Distillation: Concentrating Alcohol and FlavorDistillation has an almost magical reputation:
- Fermented Drink Families: Beer, Wine, Cider, Mead and SakeBeer, wine, cider, mead and sake all obtain their ethanol by fermentation.
- Distilled Spirit Families: Whisky, Brandy, Rum, Vodka, Gin, Tequila and MezcalWhisky, brandy, rum, vodka, gin, tequila and mezcal all contain distilled ethanol.
- Alcohol Through History: From Prehistoric Fermentation to the Word “Alcohol”Humans were making fermented drinks thousands of years before anyone used the English word alcohol.