History of Everything

He was a Japanese doctor who went to treat leprosy and ended up irrigating 16,000 hectares of Afghan desert. Afghanistan called him Kaka Murad — "Uncle Murad."

Few foreigners have ever been mourned in Afghanistan the way Dr. Tetsu Nakamura was. When he was assassinated on December 4th, 2019, the president helped carry his coffin, an airline painted his face on a plane, and vigils were held across the country. Afghans didn't call him by his Japanese name. They called him a relative.

Nakamura spent roughly 35 years in Pakistan and Afghanistan. He started with leprosy patients and refugees, one at a time. He ended by turning a place called the Valley of Death green. In between, he kept discovering that medicine alone couldn't cure the illnesses he was treating — so he taught himself civil engineering rather than walk away. He studied a 1790 Edo-era weir from his own home region in Japan, drew up plans, and operated the excavator himself. His canals now feed an estimated 600,000 people.

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On the morning of May 26, 2013, a tugboat sank 30 meters to the seabed off the coast of Nigeria…and one man lived through it all.

When the Jascon-4 capsized in the Bight of Benin, eleven of its twelve crew members died. But ship's cook Harrison Okene was knocked out, stripped to his boxers, and trapped in total darkness. There he survived for roughly 60 hours inside a shrinking pocket of air. What followed was a rescue that defied every expectation, and a decompression nightmare that nearly killed him a second time.

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In 1975, a French mercenary named Bob Denard landed on the beaches of the Comoros Islands with a handful of men and changed the course of African history. Then he did it again. And again. And one more time for good measure. This is the story of how one man overthrew the same government four separate times, ruled an island nation as a puppet master for over a decade, and somehow died peacefully in France instead of prison.

From the bloody coups of the 1970s to the failed Operation Azalee in 1995, this is the story of the unbelievable career of France's most notorious soldier of fortune—a man who treated international borders like suggestions and presidential palaces like Airbnb rentals.

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Normally when one describes a dictator they will talk about murder, violence, oppression, coups, but not usually willingly giving up power. The dictator of Seychelles is perhaps one of the most rare examples of exactly that in history.

This is his story and how the Seychelles became a modern state.

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After World War II, Japan was devastated. Food was scarce, morale was low, and the country needed something—anything—to rebuild. That "something" turned out to be a simple bowl of wheat noodles in broth.

Today we trace how ramen went from a cheap street food to an unlikely economic and cultural savior for post-war Japan. We'll explore the black market stalls of 1940s Tokyo, the American wheat surplus that changed everything, and how instant ramen inventor Momofuku Ando literally helped feed a nation and to create what is one of the most popular foods on earth.

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