The house of Medici was a powerhouse family of generational wealth in Europe, including bankers, popes, queens, and kings.

Blaming foreign oppressors in the west as the cause of famine, floods and poverty, the Boxer Rebellion was a secret movement to attack foreigners and Christian converts during China’s Qing Dynasty in 1899.

Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection, the propensity for strong genes to propagate through evolution and weak genes to die, has been applied unnaturally to society in the form of the eugenics movement and gene-editing technologies.

After eight years of Revolutionary War, the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1783 recognizing the United States as an independent nation. John Adams, Ben Franklin, and John Jay were key American signatories of the treaty.

The Code of Hammurabi is an ancient Mesopotamian code of law first composed in 1754 BC and consisting of 282 laws spanning social engagement to contract law and punishment.

15th century Italy witnessed an explosion in art, literature, science, and especially the humanities, known as the Italian Renaissance. Great thinkers like Leonardo Da Vinci and Galileo were supported by a patronage system but detested by the Catholic church.

Sputnik was launched on October 4th, 1957 signaling Soviet dominance in rocket technology and igniting fears of nuclear war. The space race intensified after a very public launch failure by the Americans before the US pulled ahead with Explorer 1, Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and more.