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Unlike Joe Biden, 81-year-old Benjamin Franklin was at the top of his game and still making incredible contributions to the United States. It was the spring of 1787– five and a half years since the last major battle of the American Revolution– yet still more than two years before the Constitution would take
The blood was barely dry in the streets outside of the Bastille when the brand-new government of revolutionary France started confiscating assets. It was November 2, 1789. And by a margin of 508 to 346, France’s fledgling legislators– on both the Left and the Right– voted to nationalize all of the real estate
Rumor has it the Chair of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Lina “Genghis” Khan, has set her wrath on a major US liquor distributor for the egregious crime of selling in bulk. The company in the path Khan’s fury is called Southern Glazer’s Wine and Spirits; they distribute alcohol to bars and restaurants
“Americans are feeling uneasy for reasons that are hard to pin down,” quipped economist Paul Krugman in a New York Times interview published earlier this week. Reasons that are hard to pin down? Bear in mind that this man received a Nobel Prize– our society’s most prominent award for intellectual achievement. Yet he
There is a well-known modern proverb (often attributed to the novelist G. Michael Hopf) that goes, “Weak men create hard times, hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men.” The saying sums up the cyclical nature of the rise and fall of societies– and it’s a
On the 1st of October 1791, the 755 freshly elected members of France’s brand-new Legislative Assembly took their seats for the first time in Paris’s famous Salle du Manege– an indoor horse-riding arena that had been converted into a giant meeting hall. While there were numerous political parties in France at the time
It was March 23, 2010, when Barack Obama signed his infamous “Affordable Care Act” into law. And in theory it was a nice idea. Healthcare in the US was incredibly expensive, and he wanted to bring costs down. But the execution was abysmal. Since 2010, the number of uninsured Americans is still far,
This entire week has been full of eye-rolling— borderline eye-gouging— cowardice and deceit in the halls of Congress. It started on Monday when none other than Dr. Anthony “the Science” Fauci appeared in front of the House Oversight Committee for two days of testimony. And every time the guy opened his mouth, we
Next month will mark 80 years since the US dollar was formally anointed as the world’s reserve currency. It was July 1944. And with the war in Europe near its denouement, governments were already trying to plan what the postwar world would look like. Most urgently, they needed to figure out how to
On August 4, 2017, the most hated person in the world was sentenced to seven years in prison. You may remember the case: his name is Martin Shkreli. Shkreli had quite infamously taken over a pharmaceutical company and jacked up the price of a medication by 50x, practically overnight. Media outrage ensued, and
In 2007, Giuseppe Ferrarello found himself facing a monumental challenge as the newly-elected mayor of Gangi, Italy — an incredibly picturesque yet dwindling town nestled in the mountains of Sicily. Like many rural communities across Italy and beyond, the village of Gangi was grappling with depopulation and economic decline. Once home to 15,000
In the year 1712, an English ironworker and part-time Baptist preacher named Thomas Newcomen finally put the finishing touches on a new invention that had been more than a century in the making. Newcomen called it the ‘atmospheric engine’, and it was essentially a very crude, rudimentary steam engine that he used to
This morning Spain’s Deputy Prime Minister, Yolanda Diaz, released an announcement to “celebrate that Spain recognizes Palestine State. . . [which] will be free from the river to the sea.” This comes on the heels of her boss, the Prime Minister of Spain, announcing formal recognition of Palestine as a sovereign nation, alongside
On Tuesday, September 15, 1992, the two most powerful financial officials in the British government held an urgent meeting that night to review their plan for when the markets opened the next morning. The tone of the meeting must have felt frantic… even desperate… because the value of the British pound had been
On July 12, 1648, dozens of angry French politicians gathered at the hallowed Palais de Justice in Paris to draft the final ultimatum that would be sent to their nine-year-old king, Louis XIV. The politicians were all members of France’s national parliament, and, like most modern politicians, they were almost all lawyers who
