12 Byzantine Rulers: The History of The Byzantine Empire

Calling all history enthusiasts! "12 Byzantine Rulers: The History of The Byzantine Empire" is a website that contains a series of podcasts written and recorded by Lars Brownworth. He uses the podcasts to introduce the little-covered Byzantine Empire's history. He focuses of events surrounding 12 better-known rulers which spanned across centuries and covers them in great details. He hasn't finish recording the podcasts and is in the midst of arranging his research materials for the last three Byzantine emperors.

1421 The Exhibition

I went to the 1421 exhibition held at Marina Promenade yesterday and came away with a different perception of the Ming Dynasty. I used to view the Ming Dynasty as a redundant dynasty that caused China to lag behind the rest of the world in terms of science and technology advancements. I was wrong. The Ming Dynasty did indeed made used of their knowledge of the world and their state-of-the-art ship-building technology to chart the world to such details that future “explorers” were to benefit.

The exhibition wasn’t a grand one but it was an eye-and-mind-opener nonetheless. The many theories presented are surrounded by much historical information that the exhibition left little for the visitors to refute the theories even if they didn’t believe them. I got to understand the background and findings which have led Gavin Menzies to write his book. Yes, I now believe the Chinese did sail the world.

Today is the last day of the 1421 exhibition and it will be a pity if you haven’t gone to visit it. If you have missed it, you can read about it at http://www.1421exhibition.com/ and understand more about the continuing work in gathering more historical evidence to support Menzies’ theories at http://www.1421.tv/. ChannelNewsAsia will be showing a documentary about 1421 soon so try not to miss that.

60th Anniversary of the A-bomb dropping

Just finished watching the first part of the BBC documentary "Hiroshima". It was really scary how human creativity and intelligence could be used for the intention to kill and destroy; such cruelty. Let us not waste effort on arguing whether the dropping of the A-bomb was necessary or not; that is history. Innocent lives had been lost and hopefully this fact will serve as a reminder to humankind that history shall not be allowed to repeat itself. Humanity will survive...