In the 3rd century BC, King Hiero II of Syracuse commissioned a goldsmith to create a crown using a specific amount of gold... When the crown was delivered, the king suspected that the goldsmith had cheated him by substituting some of the gold with silver. But he had no way to

In 1805, when Muhammad Ali Pasha was appointed the Ottoman governor of Egypt, he only had control of the Capital Cairo... Everywhere else, he was fighting for control with the Mamluks, a warrior caste of slave soldiers who had ruled Egypt for centuries. But when the British

In the 4th Century BC, Philip II of Macedon, Alexander the Great's father, threatened Sparta with an invasion... At this point, he was on a roll and had already defeated and subdued all the major Greek city-states, with the exception of Sparta. He sent them this message: "You

In 1737, when Benjamin Franklin (the guy on the $100 bill) was renominated as clerk for the Pennsylvania General Assembly... Another member who didn't like him very much made a long speech about why the job should instead be given to someone else. Being the clerk was a

On February 4th, 1912, a French tailor, named Franz Reichelt, decided to test his new parachute design by jumping off the Eiffel Tower. In 1912, aviation was still in its infancy so there were a lot of crashes. Because of this, there was a lot of interest in a means by which

In 1563, a man was caught hiding under the bed of the Queen of Scotland, Mary I... He was a French poet named Pierre de Bocosel de Chastelard. He was infatuated with the queen and wanted to surprise her in private and proclaim his love for her. Actually, he wasn't a complete

In the 6th century BC, while Cyrus the Great was still in the womb, his grandfather marked him for death... His grandfather, King Astyages of the Median Empire, had two dreams that troubled him. And when he summoned his dream interpreters, he didn't like what they had to say...

During the 1992 Los Angeles riots, U.S Marines and some police officers responded to a hostage situation... You see, the Marines are not the guys you want for domestic duties. Their primary focus is on combat operations. The 1992 L.A. riots were intense... There was massive

Lesson: Make an example of one person and others will fall in line... In 336 BC, when the 20-year-old Alexander the Great ascended the throne of Macedonia, following his father's sudden demise, some Greek city-states his father had subdued saw it as an opportunity to rebel.

Lesson:  Be yourself... In 1985, The Coca-Cola Company decided to change the near 100-year-old taste and formula for Coke. All hell broke loose... They didn't just do this on a whim. They had been steadily losing marketing share to other competing cola products, especially to

Cernovich You want the real answer? Here it is: You institutionalize your power so that it becomes more efficient to wield. All entities who develop or acquire hard power tend to institutionalize it. If you don’t, you have to continuously exercise your power nakedly while wielding it,