Curated playlist
Political terminology
- MonarchyNearly half of independent states were monarchies at the start of the 19th century.
- IdeologyThe word ideology was coined by a French aristocrat sitting in prison.
- Class discriminationIdentical job applications got different callbacks depending only on the name.
- GovernmentThe word government comes from a Greek verb meaning to steer a ship with a rudder. Plato used the same ship image.
- Third WorldThe term Third World began in a 1952 French magazine article. Demographer Alfred Sauvy coined it.
- AppeasementAppeasement was once a respectable word for peaceful settlement. After 1939 it came to mean cowardice and surrender.
- Father of the NationThe title Father of the Nation began as Pater Patriae, an honor the Roman Senate gave to heroes.
- World War IIIWorld War III was already a magazine headline on the 3rd of November 1941, weeks before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Time magazine ran the story under the title "World War III?" It concerned Hermann Rauschning, a Nazi refugee who…
- White émigréRussian women who fled with almost nothing turned an Istanbul arcade into a flower market. It became Çiçek Pasajı.
- LysenkoismSoviet leaders once declared genetics illegal. Lysenkoism was a political campaign that wrecked biology.