Car Chases and a Rowdy Early Overland Auto Race
A 1907 automobile race from Beijing to Paris stretched the limits of what was possible with the technology of the era. The winning car took two months to complete the journey, traveling roads that were often barely navigable by someone on foot, let alone in a rickety automobile made half of wood. The obstacles faced […]
Odd Occurrences in the Big Missouri Winter Count
Building on a post about calendars I wrote last year, there are many systems to specify which year is which. The Gregorian calendar counts solar years from an arbitrary point loosely linked to the birth of the historical Jesus. The Hijri calendar counts lunar years since the prophet Muhammad had to flee Mecca. Classical Athens […]
That Cruel Stagolee
The blues ballad Stagolee (or Stagger Lee, Stackolee, etc.) is a classic of the African-American folk music tradition. In it, cruel Stagolee murders pathetic Billy over something petty (usually a hat, a gambling debt, or an insult) while Billy unsuccessfully begs for his life. It’s based on a real murder from 1895 St. Louis. The
The Reverse Marco Polo
The first Chinese person whom we know to have traveled to Europe arrived in 1287. Bar Sauma was a Chinese-born, ethnically-Turkic, Christian monk and an agent of two different Mongol empires. His travels from Beijing to Paris were missions both religious and geopolitical. He makes a terrific NPC and a great complication for politically-oriented adventures. […]
Pirates of the Panama Mule Train
In the 1500s, long before the Isthmus of Panama was crossed by a canal, it was crossed by a road: an awful, terrifying road plagued by pirates and freedom fighters. Yet vast wealth from the Spanish conquests and slave mines of South America flowed along this road. Raiding, defending, or merely traversing a fictional route […]
The Inquisitorial School for Girls
The Colegio de Niñas Expósitas de Santa Cruz de Atocha was a school for foundlings in colonial Lima, Peru (“the City of Kings”). It was run by the Spanish Inquisition. Because of its unusual administrators, the school had some odd quirks, even by the standards of tyrannical charity schools. It’s a really interesting adventure site […]
Two Calendars in Augsburg
In early 1582, Pope Gregory XIII announced that the calendar date of the day following October 4th that year would not be October 5th, but October 15th. This was part of a packet of calendrical reforms we now call the Gregorian calendar, and which most of the world uses today. But this reform came at […]
Heirs of the Ziggurat
First—super exciting! The Molten Sulfur Blog was nominated for a 2025 Ennie award for Best Online Content! This is the third time the blog’s been nominated, and I couldn’t be happier about it. Thank you, Ennie judges! In 401–400 B.C., when ten thousand Greek mercenaries had to escape the Persian empire, the land of Mesopotamia […]
The Forest Fire Boxcar Escape
On October 12, 1918, a forest fire of unprecedented size and ferocity devoured the lumber towns of Cloquet and Moose Lake, Minnesota and most of the surrounding countryside and farmland. 450 people died, but thousands more were rushed to safety by freight trains—the same trains that had started the fire in the first place. At […]
The Endless Tea Troubles of the Speckled Bamboo Shrine
From about 1615 to 1620 in Shaoxing, China (just south of Shanghai), the Speckled Bamboo Shrine had a problem. A spring on the temple grounds had produced a fad among fashionable tea-drinkers in and around Shaoxing. The sudden demand for the spring’s waters impinged on the shrine’s ability to run its affairs. The situation generated […]
PCs on the Battlefield: Xenophon on the March
In 401 B.C., Cyrus the Younger, the brother of the Persian emperor, decided to seize the throne for himself. He hired a bunch of mercenaries and marched on Babylon, hoping to catch his brother before the emperor could summon his vast armies from the far-flung corners of the empire. Among those mercenaries was a young […]
Hired into an Albanian Blood Feud
Before the arrival of state control in the 1920s, highland Albania had a highly-developed culture surrounding blood feuds. There was a particular way these feuds were supposed to be conducted, but all rigid customs turn out to be enormously variable when you dig into individual cases. One gray area surrounding Albanian blood feuds was hiring […]
PCs on the Battlefield: Kill the King!
In 401 B.C., the Battle of Cunaxa resolved a civil war in the Achaemenid Persian Empire. While the battle had all the things military history buffs enjoy—formations, miscommunications, different events in different wings, all that jazz—the singular event that resolved it was like something out of a fairy tale. In the midst of a battle […]
Drumming the Scandal
In the first half of the 20th century, the Tiv people of east-central Nigeria developed a way to air their disputes called “drumming the scandal.” The quarrelers each wrote catchy songs about what a scumbag their rival was, then performed them so loud they could be heard from other villages. This technique tended to escalate […]
Expelling the Jesuits from Mexico: Order 66?
In 1767 King Carlos III of Spain decided to expel the Jesuits—a religious order within the Catholic Church—from Spanish lands. But the Empire of Spain spanned the globe, from South America east all the way to the Philippines, and Carlos wanted to make sure none of them escaped to go underground. So he sent secret […]