Historyspeaking topic
The Library of Alexandria and the knowledge humanity lost forever. What knowledge might we be losing right now without realizing it?
— r/TrueAskReddit
practice with this topic
Set the timer (5-30 min), take 20 seconds of prep if you like, start talking. Jot your thoughts onto the sticky-note board.
similar topics
- What stopped the army of Genghis Khan's grandsons, one of the largest empires the world has known, at the gates of Europe was not a battle but the news of a single ruler's death; the commanders turned back to elect a new khan. If the fate of a continent hung on the timing of one man's death, how much can we trust the belief that history is driven by great forces?
- Robespierre and the Reign of Terror (1793-94): why did a revolution made in the name of liberty spiral into the guillotine and mass executions?
- How does Leonardo da Vinci being a painter, an engineer, and an anatomical illustrator all at once embody the Renaissance ideal of the universal man?
- The lead water pipes of the Roman Empire may have slowly poisoned its people; some historians even argue this contributed to the empire's fall. If what destroyed a civilization was not barbarian armies but the water it quietly drank, which of our own 'harmless' daily habits should we be rethinking?
- Medieval Europeans are assumed to have rarely bathed, yet public bathhouses were common; what really killed the habit was the plague-era belief that 'water opens the pores and lets disease in.' Doesn't an epidemic scaring people away from cleanliness, and making them even sicker, show that fear sometimes feeds the very danger we are fleeing?