On October 31, 1984, Indian Prime Minister Indira Nehru Gandhi was assassinated by two of her Sikh bodyguards. The attack likely was retaliation for Gandhi's order for the Indian Army to ... Read More

Science popularizer and author "Dino Don" Lessem has a new exhibit running, but this one isn't about dinosaurs. The Denver Museum of Nature and Science is hosting his exhibition on Genghis ... Read More

In Afghanistan, it is known as buzkashi and is the national sport. Turkic regions of Central Asia call it kok boru. Legend says that Genghis Khan's hordes played ... Read More

When the Chinese Civil War ended in 1949, foreign diplomats were left with a dilemma. Both Mao's communist government on the mainland and Chiang Kai-shek's government on Taiwan (formerly ... Read More

New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art currently has an amazing exhibit of Japanese samurai armor, swords, and other gear. The Art of the Samurai show runs through January ... Read More

After the Japanese annexed the Korean Peninsula in 1910, and took control of Sakhalin Island as well, many young people from southern Korea were lured to Sakhalin by the promise ... Read More

I recently finished reading an interesting book called The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography, by Martin W. Lewis and Karen E. Wigen. Their provocative initial premise is that continents ... Read More

If you are interested in the history of Japan during the transformative years between the end of the Tokugawa shogunate (1868) and the lead-up to the Second World War, then ... Read More

Mongolia now boasts the largest equestrian statue in the world - a 131-foot-tall depiction of Genghis Khan (more properly spelled "Chinguz"). Although the great conqueror is remembered none-too-fondly in ... Read More

The announcement on Friday that President Barack Obama had won the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 came as a surprise to many - including President Obama himself. He joins an illustrious ... Read More

During the past few decades of interminable war in Afghanistan, thousands of artifacts from the country's fascinating past went missing. According to a New York Times article, between 1992 ... Read More

On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched humanity's first artificial orbiting satellite, called Sputnik. The name "Sputnik" means "Fellow Traveler." Weighing about 185 pounds, the spherical satellite took approximately ... Read More

This weekend I find myself engrossed in the Glass Palace Chronicle of the Kings of Burma. It's a complete history of the country, compiled from thousands of years of ... Read More

Mao Zedong declared the official founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC) sixty years ago today, on October 1, 1949. The declaration came at the end of China's 22-year-long Civil ... Read More