History's Most Insane Rulers, Part 3: Ib...

Nearly a century of Cold War tensions between the United States and Russia hide the incredibly close friendship that the two nations enjoyed before this period. From America’s colonial founding in the 1600s to the eve of World War One, the two distant nations relied on each other ... Show More

One of the worst nautical disasters in recent American history is the sinking of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald. On November 10, 1975, the “storm of the century” threw 100 mile-per-hour winds and 50-foot waves on Lake Superior. The ship found itself at the worst possible place, at the ... Show More

Over the course of World War II, Germany’s submariners sank over three thousand Allied ships, nearly three-quarters of Allied shipping losses in all theaters of the war. Winston Churchill famously declared the only thing that truly frightened him during World War II was the U-boa ... Show More

For the very first time in Arab history, a child became the umma’s caliph. The 13 year old had not yet left his royal harem and was totally under his mother’s control. She used her influence over al Muqtadir to to extend her personal wealth and authority. It was a fundamentally c ... Show More

The 46-year reign of Süleyman the Magnificent across central Europe, the Mediterranean and the Middle East was defined by territorial expansion and economic growth, as well as a flowering of art, architecture and culture.The epithet ‘magnificent’ invites us to believe the Ottoman ... Show More

Co-chairman of the Conservative party, Baroness Warsi recalls her Pakistani-born father during her Yorkshire childhood telling her about the heroic martial deeds conducted by a thirteenth century Indian princess, Razia Sultana.Descended from humble stock, the much mythologized Su ... Show More

Synopsis: Ongoing strife in Anatolia and Egypt allows Antiochus VII to campaign east against the Parthians.  His early successes inspire hopes of a resurgent Seleucid Empire, hopes shattered by his unexpected death. “In Asia, Attalos III as soon as he came to the throne began t ... Show More

Sulayman’s underwhelming time in charge ended with a twist, and Omar ibn Abdulaziz proved to be a real surprise. The famously pious Umayyad had a vision for the umma, and he used his new position to impose an order unseen since the early, predynastic days of the caliphate. Althou ... Show More

After the Fall of Constantinople, the Ottomans became the most powerful dynasty in existence. But the great empire began to decline, and in the early 20th century, a leader named Talaat and a group of radical nationalists worked to remove the ineffectual sultan and restore the Ot ... Show More

Ottoman Sultans kept a harem of hundreds of enslaved concubines to bear their children. But from 1533 to 1656 a handful of remarkable women bent the harem system to their wills and exercised extraordinary political influence and power. This period is known as the The Sultanate of ... Show More