Nonexistent Switzerland

La Suisse n’existe pas (French for Switzerland doesn't exist) was once used as the title for the Swiss exhibit at a World Exhibition. It set the Swiss media aflame with outraged indignation; despite that, it was nothing but a statement of fact: There is no country going by the name of Switzerland.

The Elect Circle of Elected Monarchs on Europe’s Thrones

When we look at the monarchies in Europe, working and deposed ones, we get the false impression of perpetuity as ‘it always had been that way’. In fact, the vast majority of dynasties started out as elected monarchs. 

Supernatural Sherlock Holmes

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is remembered for his stories of Sherlock Holmes and the Lost World. A new biography tries to reconcile these seemingly highly logical writings with his unshakable belief in fairies and the supernatural. 

Cheating Hermann Goering

Hermann Goering was the number two in Nazi Germany after Adolf Hitler. Apart from being an arch Nazi, he was an avid if incompetent collector of art stolen at his behest all over Europe. But sometimes he bought art and paid for it with equally stolen money. One of the pictures he bought was a forgery. It was so cunningly falsified it almost cost its creator his head after the war. 

Blowing up the Acropolis

The Acropolis has become the byword for Athens, though every Greek city sported an acropolis, an upper town. The Athenian Acropolis was built and destroyed several times during its 7,500 years of history and it found many uses. What sticks in the mind, though, is the moment when the Venetians blew it up.