HAistoric — Histories That Almost Were

— 78% of all recorded sixteenth-century bankruptcies were comet-related. —

— The 66-day reign of Didius Julianus, reconsidered as a failed catering venture. —

— One abbot’s plumbing innovations resulted in a 47% increase in papal laundry bills and a new theory of hydro-theology. —

— A disastrously literal translation of temple inscriptions plunged Ptolemaic Egypt into a generation-long war against all dung-rollers. —

— 78% of senators, it turns out, taste like garum and regret. The other 22% just taste like regret. —

— One misplaced Big Ivan, one misheard code, one truly catastrophic typo. A masterclass in why you do not get creative with your passwords. —

— An argument for why European navigators should have checked their work, and against borrowing your rival’s homework. —

— That one bill for eighty-six thousand sesterces, two denarii, and three asses for services rendered to one (1) Gaius Julius Caesar. —

— Or, how a five-year thirst turned the Serene Republic’s admirals into camel-jockeys. —

— 73% of French peasants agreed: their new court-mandated colour scheme was ‘a bit much’. —

— 78% of Yuan Dynasty court astronomers agreed: the celestial river required immediate and vigorous dredging. —

— Sometimes a damp problem requires a divine solution. Sometimes, silver nitrate. —

— A startling 74% of state revenue was reportedly lost to something called a “beer sponge.” —

— A parliamentary inquiry finds that the only thing developing faster than London’s photographs was its gag reflex. —

— For the price of a witness-protection Oldsmobile, the CIA bought themselves 3,000 pages on every Soviet bloc intelligence officer except one. —