Whitney's Bargain
On 14 March 1794, Eli Whitney received a patent for his cotton gin — a crude wooden machine he hoped would reduce slavery. It did the opposite.
Blog
Blogs, essays, updates, and occasional notes that sit alongside The Butterfly Effect.
The Caravan That Got Away
On 13 March 624, Muhammad set out to intercept a merchant caravan. The caravan escaped. An army three times his size came out to meet him instead. He had 313 men, 2 horses, and 70 camels.
God Wills It
On 12 March 1088, a French monk named Odo was elected pope in a small gathering in Terracina — unable to enter his own city. Seven years later, he launched the First Crusade. He died before he knew it had succeeded.
Leopold of Arabia
Born to a rabbinical Jewish family in what is now Ukraine, Leopold Weiss converted to Islam, became a confidant of Ibn Saud, and ended up as one of the intellectual architects of Pakistan. The life is almost too improbable to believe. It is all true.
Mr. Watson, Come Here
On 10 March 1876, Alexander Graham Bell spoke six words into a device above a Boston theatre and Thomas Watson heard them from another room. The telephone had just worked for the first time.
The Invisible Hand's First Draft
On 9 March 1776, Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations — not the final word on economics, but the first coherent one. The discipline has been arguing with it ever since.
The Coup Nobody Noticed
On 8 March 1963, a handful of young Ba'athist officers seized Damascus in a coup so bloodless and unremarkable that the population greeted it with indifference. Nobody noticed. That was the problem.
Historical Justice, Such as It Is
Britain forced China to buy opium at gunpoint. Now China is the primary source of the chemicals that make fentanyl, which kills tens of thousands of Americans a year. The symmetry is not accidental, but it is not justice either.
The Matrimonial Entrepreneur
In 1826, a 30-year-old diplomat abducted a 15-year-old heiress with forged letters and a manufactured family crisis, married her at Gretna Green, and nearly got away with it. He served three years in prison. Then helped found New Zealand.
Il Divino
On 6 March 1475, Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni was born in a small hill town in Tuscany. He went on to produce some of the most reproduced images in the history of Western civilisation, and died still working, at 88.