Catharism

The Cathars were members of a Christian sect that flourished in France in the 12th and 13th centuries. Because most adherents believed in reincarnation—as opposed to resurrection—as a way of reaching the pure spirit realm, the Roman Catholic Church regarded the sect as heretical and launched the Albigensian Crusade to crush the movement. In one account of a massacre of some 20,000 Cathars, one of the crusade’s commanders is asked how to tell Cathars from Catholics. What was his famous reply?

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Catharism

Offal

Considered either waste material or delicacy, depending on the cultural context, offal is the entrails and internal organs of a butchered animal. It is prepared and consumed in a myriad of ways throughout the world. In the Philippines, pig intestines are used to make a type of blood sausage called Dinuguan, and in Pakistan, livers, brains, and kidneys are components of Taka-Tak. Scotland’s haggis is a boiled mix of sheep’s liver, heart, and lungs stuffed in what other organ?

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Offal

Ebola

Ebola, the virus group responsible for an often fatal hemorrhagic fever, emerged in Africa in the 1970s and was named for a river near the site of the first recognized outbreak. With mortality rates as high as 90%, Ebola hemorrhagic fever encompasses a range of symptoms, including vomiting, diarrhea, and sometimes internal and …

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Ebola

Old Summer Palace

Known in China as the Gardens of Perfect Clarity, the Old Summer Palace was a complex of palaces and gardens built in the 18th and early 19th centuries near the walls of Beijing. Hundreds of invaluable Chinese art masterpieces and antiquities were stored …

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Old Summer Palace

Capgras Delusion

The Capgras Delusion is a rare disorder in which a person holds the delusional belief that an acquaintance—usually a spouse or other close family member—has been replaced by an identical impostor. Found in patients diagnosed with schizophrenia, dementia, or those suffering from a brain injury, the disorder is named after Joseph Capgras, the French psychiatrist who first described it in 1923. What have researchers since learned about the disorder?

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Capgras Delusion

Kshatriya: The Warrior Class

Kshatriya is Hindu India’s military varna, or caste. In ancient times, it was considered the highest varna, but it was later supplanted by the priestly Brahman class. The legend of the caste’s demotion by Vishnu may reflect a historical struggle for power between priests and rulers. According to Hindu texts, Kshatriyas studied the ancient martial arts, which were eventually carried by Buddhist monks to China and Japan. From which of God’s body parts were Kshatriyas supposedly created?

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Kshatriya: The Warrior Class

The Phoenix Program

Coordinated with South Vietnam’s security network during the Vietnam War, the Phoenix Program was a military and intelligence program designed by the US Central Intelligence Agency to “neutralize”—via capture or assassination—the insurgency’s civilian support infrastructure, which included between 70,000 and 100,000 civilians in 1967. Although some saw it as a success, the program is widely criticized as an “assassination campaign.” How many people were “neutralized” during the program?

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The Phoenix Program

H.L. Mencken

Often regarded as one of the most influential American writers of the early 20th century, H.L. Mencken was a journalist, satirist, social critic, and cynic known as the “Sage of Baltimore,” for the city where he lived his entire life. Perhaps best remembered for his satirical reporting on the Scopes evolution trial, which he dubbed the “Monkey trial,” Mencken was frequently critical of myriad groups. Why did the Arkansas legislature pass a motion in 1931 to pray for Mencken’s soul?

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H.L. Mencken

Electron Microscope

Producing images of specimens magnified to about 2 million times their natural size—compared to just 2,000 for common light microscopes—electron microscopes use electron beams to resolve the minute structural details present in samples. An integral part of many laboratories, electron …

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Electron Microscope

Music of the Trecento

Considered by some art historians to be the beginning of the Renaissance, the Trecento was a 14th-century period in Italy that saw renewed focus on the arts, including painting, architecture, literature, and, especially, music. Influenced by troubadours and a type of polyphonic sacred music called the conductus, composers throughout the period pioneered new forms of expression, especially in secular songs written in the Italian vernacular. Who was the period’s most famous composer?

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Music of the Trecento

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