Everyone knows the Swastika, right? It used to be a type of good luck charm, before the Nazis corrupted it. In Ontario, Canada, there's a small town called Swastika. In 1911, two brothers found gold at a nearby lake and named the mine after a good luck charm (swastika). When World War II broke out, the government changed the name to 'Winston' after Winston Churchill. The people who lived in the town didn't like the name change, so they removed the "Welcome to Winston" sign and replaced … [Read more...]

A Persian king called Xerxes (gzerk'sez) was trying to cross the Hellespont, also known as the Bosphorus. It's a narrow bit of water known as the Dardenelles, north of Gallipoli. It's near Byzantium. Anyway, so this king has an army of over 1,000,000 guys and wants to cross the river. So what does he do? ... Build a bridge by tying boats together. Pretty cool of itself, isn't it? When they had finished the bridge, but before the army could cross it, a storm came up and completely mangled … [Read more...]