Interesting Information

By its very definition, charity is selfless. Whether it’s dropping a few pennies in a collection box or shipping our old T-shirts off to Africa, a spot of charity is a quick and easy way to net some karma. At least it would be if it didn’t usually harm the very people we’re trying to help. Take our practice of sending old clothes to Africa. Objectively, it makes sense: People living on under a dollar a day probably don’t have much of a clothing budget, so why not redistribute the stuff we’re not using? In fact, it makes so much sense that millions of us pack and ship off our novelty Christmas jumpers every year - resulting in the complete collapse of the African textile industry. Think about it: If you flood a market with free goods, you’ll bankrupt the traders and manufacturers trying to sell them. And that’s exactly what’s happened here. Across the continent, whole communities have lost their livelihoods in exchange for your old Slayer T-shirts.

In the second century B.C., the Chinese weren’t too sure of what lay west of them. So the Han government commissioned its envoy, Zhang Qian, to locate Central Asian kingdoms and open up new markets for Chinese exports. Qian made it as far as Bactria (Afghanistan) where he encountered the remnants of a fascinating culture that had been forced south into India by nomads. The Greco-Bactrians were Hellenic colonists who settled in the area following Alexander the Great’s conquests. They brought grapevine cultivation, European horses, and traditionally proficient artists to the area - which Qian reported to the Han court.

Les Apaches were a French street gang that operated in turn-of-the-century Paris before the advent of World War I. They were called Apaches because they were so ferocious during attacks that a policeman, upon hearing of their crimes, exclaimed that they were as vicious as Apache warriors. They were stylishly dressed, looking like old-timey French hipsters with fancy, striped shirts and berets, creating their own distinct style that would catch on and end up becoming popular in Bohemian circles. But they weren’t just fashion victims - they could actually fight. They practiced their own

The 1692 Salem Witch Trials are everyone’s favourite example of mob mentality, and although the incident has been discussed to death, it’s worth mentioning. It truly epitomizes what can happen when religious extremism and mobs collide. In fact, this incident made such an impression that - over 320 years later - we still use the phrase “witch hunt” to describe people being senselessly persecuted. No doubt you’ve heard the story: a couple of girls started acting weird (having fits, diving under furniture, contorting in pain, etc.) and claimed witches were responsible for their “sickness.” They pointed fingers at specific women in Salem, and after the doctor confirmed the girls were possessed, the already witch-phobic town went berserk. Salem officials started arresting suspected witches based on the flimsiest evidence (accusations from little girls), and the town went along with the whole thing, relishing in the witches’ destruction.

Depleted uranium rounds sound exactly like the kind of thing you’d want to stay right the hell away form. Even with the “depleted” bit thrown in there, these things still sound worse than wasps made of anthrax. In a nutshell, depleted uranium rounds are exactly what you’d expect: rounds with a small amount of uranium crammed in them, because the pointy metal thing that flew at you at 400 MPH wasn’t dangerous enough. It’s not what these rounds do to the human body that makes them terrifying though; it’s what they do to armour.

On August 6 & 9 of 1945 Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed by two nuclear bombs. It is estimated that 280,000 people were killed. This is the only time that nuclear weapons have been used in war, which is lucky because modern nuclear weapons would be even more destructive. A single warhead from the the UK's Trident system is around 8 times more powerful than the bomb which destroyed Hiroshima. Each missile contains three warheads. A submarine containing up to 16 missiles is constantly on patrol. Why were Hiroshima and Nagasaki destroyed? Many reasons have been suggested as to why the US administration decided to wipe out these two Japanese cities. Some of the most plausible are: The United States wanted to force Japan's surrender as quickly as possible to minimize American casualties.