After more than two millennia, the Roman Empire—transfigured, fragmented, renamed, and reimagined—finally collapsed on May 29, 1453, as Ottoman forces under Sultan Mehmed II breached the gates of Constantinople following a 53-day siege. With the city’s fall came the extinguishing of the last imperial…
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People have always been passionate about their favorite sports teams. On January 11, 532, a quarrel that began among rival chariot-racing factions in the Hippodrome of Constantinople erupted into one of the most violent urban uprisings of antiquity: the Nika riots. What started as…
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