In 1918 doctors believed Milton Erickson would die at the age of 17 after he was so severely paralyzed from polio that he couldn’t move. Once it became clear he would survive it fell upon the shoulders of his family to nurse him back to health while he was bedridden and unable to speak. During this time he began to focus on his sister’s body language and tone of voice and found another language hidden beneath their words.

He realized that while his sister’s performed their nursing duties they were also repulsed by his semi-vegetative state.

He overheard one sister offer another sister an apple only because it was the right thing to do, not because she wanted to share.

He would watch them say “yes” and mean “no,” eventually tuning his skills to such a degree that the true intentions of those around him were obvious regardless of what was said.

Erickson was paralyzed until he learned to focus on the memories of how his body used to move after watching one of his younger sisters (still a baby) graduate from crawling to standing up. Once he regained his motor control he went on to medical school, studied psychology, and became a psychiatrist where his self-education in the power of the unconscious mind led him to develop many unconventional but effective approaches to psychotherapy and hypnotherapy.

Ernest Shackleton was a British explorer who’s known for exploring Antarctica. His third expedition began in 1914 and was intended to be the first time a group of men crossed the Antarctic continent, through the south pole, on foot. Their plans included two ships, one called the Endurancewhich carried Shackleton and the explorers who were to trek across land, and a second called the Aurora, which would lay supply depots down for the traveling men in advance of their arrival.

Soon after the Endurancebegan to navigate the southern seas, the boat got lodged in ice. The crew was forced to wait nine months for spring to arrive and thaw the ice but when the ice began to melt the changing application of force caused the ship’s hull to crack. Water began to enter the ship and within a month the ship had sunk. Five months after the ship sank below the water’s surface the large block of ice the stranded party were camped on split into two and the men were forced to navigate to nearby Elephant Island.

Once on Elephant Island Shackleton knew there was little chance of rescue. The only way his men would survive would be for him to take one of the lifeboats on a month long journey to the whaling stations on South Georgia Island. They made the journey to land in less than a month but the whaling stations were on the other side of the island. Instead of risking more time on the water, Shackleton and two other men traveled over dangerous mountain terrain for 36 hours and when they got to the whaling station were able to rescue the rest of the expedition still stranded on Elephant Island.

The Peloponnesian War began when Sparta made demands which Athens had no intentions of executing, fearing initial concessions would lead to further demands. In response, Athens made its own demands, which Sparta rejected. The nature of demands isn’t important, what is important is the two sides chose to go to war.

Pericles, one of the most respected members of Athenian society, convinced the rest of his city-state to abandon the outlying territories. His plan required all of Athens’s citizens take refuge behind the city’s walls and not engage the Spartans on land. There was no denying the Spartan’s strength on land but the Athenians were masters of the sea. His plan was to take refuge in the city, resupply and feed the citizens through the ports, and continue foreign trade to support the people. The though was that if they could hold out long enough the Spartans would be unable to continue their attack and Athens would emerge without having lost unnecessary lives.

The plan proposed by Pericles was followed until a plague broke out in the packed city within a few years. With so many people in such close quarters the plague spread like wildfire and eventually killed over thirty thousand Athenians, including Pericles.

When Pericles died so did the more conservative approach to the war with Sparta. Athens began to go on the offensive and by the end of the war (almost thirty years later) Athens went from being the most powerful of the Greek city-states to being under Spartan rule.

Traditional Catholic Mass includes the rite of communion, a practice when worshippers consume the metaphorical body and blood of Jesus Christ. The priest blesses bread and wine which, according to the ritual, turns the bread and wine into Christ’s body and blood.

All masses were conducted in Latin before Martin Luther initiated the Protestant Reformation in 1517. In Latin, the phrase which transforms the bread into the body is “hoc est corpus.” Translation: this is the body. A bastardization of this phrase by non-Latin speaking worshippers turned into the phrase “hocus pocus” known today.

German East Africa is now known as Tanzania. In the early 1900’s the natives of this land were subjected to German rule and soon sought to rid themselves of the imperial shackles.

A spirit medium named Kinjikitile Ngwale become the voice of the oppressed natives. He changed his name to Bokero after he claimed to be possessed by a snake spirit. His largest contribution to the cause was his claim to have a medicine for the people which would turn German bullets into water (the “medicine” turned out to be water mixed with castor oil and millet seeds). Needless to say, the mixture didn’t work and German machine guns made quick work of the uprising.

The incident is known as the Maji Maji Rebellion. The term maji, in Swahili, means “water.”

The accusation is known as “blood libel.” It was thought among English Christians that Jewish people needed the blood of Christian children for use in their religious rituals. Blood libel received mainstream attention in the case of Hugh of Lincoln, who was murdered at the approximate age of 8 years old. Hugh’s body was discovered in a well after the child had been missing for a month. Blame for the murder fell upon the Jewish people in the area. Although there had been other instances of Jews being accused of murdering a child this particular instance is significant because it marked the first time the English Crown acknowledged blood libel against Jews. The incident is referenced by Geoffrey Chaucer in Canterbury Tales.

The law at the time said that any assets belonging to a Jew who was convicted of a crime would become property of the King. So when King Henry III had 91 Jews arrested and 19 of them hanged for refusing to participate in the trial he became owner of the 19 dead Jew’s property. Two of the arrested Jews were pardoned and the remaining prisoners were sentenced to death, although they were released in the spring of the following year.

Hugh of Lincoln was viewed as a Christian martyr at the time and his shrine in the Lincoln Cathedral attracted many visitors to the site. The shrine has since been destroyed.

In March 1968, in the midst of the Vietnam War, U.S. troops massacred hundreds of unarmed South Vietnamese civilians in the village of Son My. The massacre is known as the My Lai Massacre in the United States because one of the areas of the village was called My Lai.

To make matters worse, the incident was kept under wraps until November 1969, over a year and a half after the incident. Once the massacre became public knowledge there was an increase in opposition to the Vietnam War.

Victims of the massacre included men, women, and children. The troops were under the impression that all civilians would have gone to the market and if they were still in the village they must be the enemy.

The lone convicted soldier was a platoon leader. He was sentenced to life in prison but only ended up serving 3.5 years of… house arrest.

 The Zeigarnik Effect was discovered in 1927 by psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik. It states that once a task has begun it creates a task-specific tension which is relieved once the task has been completed. So the open orders are more easily remembered by waiters because the bill has yet to be closed but, as soon as the bill is paid, there is no reason for the waiter to remember the order and soon forgets.

The Zeigarnik Effect is also present in sports. Basketball player James Harden had a tendency to make a rushed shot whenever contact was initiated by a defender. This would lead to a foul and a stoppage in play. The tension experienced by the viewer at the stoppage in play is effectively the same as an “open” bill experienced by the waiter and the incident stood out in the mind of many fans. The NBA listened to criticisms of Harden and created the “Harden Rule” which changed the requirements of what constitutes a shot.

The Bagh massacre occurred in the province of Punjab, British India, on April 13, 1919. Thousands of Sikhs, Muslims, and Hindus had gathered in the public garden on the festival day of Vaisakhi. Additionally, there was a protest planned in the garden in the early afternoon over the arrest and deportation of two national leaders.

On the morning of the massacre British Colonel Reginald Dyer issued a ban on all meetings in an effort to prevent the protest. He had become convinced an insurrection was about to occur. Without the communication networks of today the Colonel’s notice failed to reach the masses.

When Dyer heard about the gathering in the public garden he mistook the protestors and celebrating civilians as the beginning of the feared (and imagined) insurrection. The garden was a two hundred yard square and surrounded by ten foot walls with only five entrances. Each entrance had its own gate and was overlooked by houses and buildings. Dyer took ninety troops and, without warning the crowd in the garden, blocked the main exits. He ordered his troops to fire into the most densely packed sections of the crowd.

The shooting lasted for nearly ten minutes.

When the shooting ended many people had been killed, both from being shot and in the stampedes to the locked exits. More people died when they jumped into a well in the middle of the garden to escape the shooting. To top it off many more wounded civilians died from their wounds overnight when they couldn’t be helped because of the curfew imposed by Colonel Dyer.

Marlon Brando was nominated, and won, the award for Best Actor in 1973 for his role as Vito Corleone in The Godfather. Instead of walking to the podium and accepting his award when his name was announced Brando sent Native American actress Sacheen Littlefeather in his place. While onstage she informed the audience Brando was unable to accept the award due to the way Native Americans were treated by the film industry.

Brando’s refusal of the award drew attention to the standoff at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, where a group of Native Americans had occupied the town in protest against failure of the US government to honor signed treaties.

This was the second time an actor had refused the award for best actor. George C. Scott was the first person to reject the award for his role in the 1970 film Patton, his reason being that he disagreed with a competition between actors for title of “best.”