Established in 1935, Unit 731 was officially known as the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwantung Army. Under the Imperial Japanese government, the unit worked to develop biological and chemical weapons and performed cruel and frequently fatal tests on detainees throughout the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) and World War II. These […]

As one of the most influential early 20th-century philosophers, Friedrich Nietzsche comes burdened with a controversial legacy. His elitist and anti-democratic ideas were adopted, and distorted, by figures such as Adolf Hitler. Indeed, few thinkers in history have so utterly critiqued and condemned modern mass society. This article explores Nietzsche’s distaste for the modern […]

Even though the revolt of the would-be slave-king Eunus ended in bloodshed and defeat for the slaves of Sicily, the dreams and possibilities of breaking the shackles the Romans bound them in remained. Very little changed in terms of material conditions on Sicily between the end of the First Servile War and the start […]

Few kings of France faced a more daunting prospect than Henri Bourbon in 1589. France was decades into the Wars of Religion, a conflict between Catholic and Protestant factions that had torn the country apart and drained the Crown of much power and prestige. His predecessor Henri III had been the first French king […]

Contrary to Enlightenment-era belief, ancient Greece’s Parthenon was actually “dark and dim” on the inside. A new study confirmed that the Athenian temple’s interior was never exposed to the open sky, nor constantly filled with natural light, as it appears in many familiar depictions. Rather, architects of the Parthenon built a roof to cover […]