6 stories from this century.
On a July night in 356 BC a man named Herostratus set fire to the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus — one of the Seven Wonders — and confessed under torture that he had done it purely to make his name immortal. The Ephesians executed him and made speaking his name a capital offence. It didn't work: one historian wrote it down, and the arsonist got exactly what he wanted.
Read the story →Alexander the Great's Macedonian army of approximately 47,000 defeated Darius III's Persian army of approximately 100,000 east of the Tigris river on 1 October 331 BCE. Darius fled the field. The Persian Empire that had existed for two centuries collapsed within months. Darius was murdered by his own satrap nine months later. Alexander died of fever at Babylon four years after that.
Read the story →Socrates was tried for impiety and corrupting the youth of Athens in 399 BCE. The 500-member jury voted 280 to 220 to convict, then by a wider margin to impose death. He drank hemlock at sunset some weeks later in the prison at the western foot of the Acropolis. He was 70.
Read the story →Tollund Man was discovered in the Bjældskovdal bog in Jutland on 6 May 1950, his face so well preserved that the finders called the police. He had been hanged with a braided leather noose around 405-380 BCE, aged about 40, and buried face-down in the bog. His last meal was barley-and-flax porridge, eaten 12 to 24 hours before death.
Read the story →King Mausolus died in 353 BC. His widow built him a tomb so spectacular that for two thousand years every grand tomb in Europe was called by his name.
Read the story →Before Eudoxus, Greek mathematicians could prove statements about simple shapes. Eudoxus invented the method that let them prove statements about curves.
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