Posts from March 3, 2026

On 3 March 1938, an American drilling crew in the Saudi desert struck oil at Dammam No. 7. The well produced 1,585 barrels on its first day. Eighty-eight years later, that single strike has reshaped the global economy, bankrolled a kingdom, and made the politics of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries unimaginable without it.

On 3 March 1861, Alexander II freed twenty-three million Russian serfs. For his troubles, he was blown apart by a bomb twenty years later. The country he tried to modernise would soon tear itself to pieces.