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For the first time in US history, the majority of Americans believe that even moderate alcohol consumption is detrimental to health. Just 54% of Americans say they still drink alcohol. This is the lowest percentage in nearly 20 years. However, it has taken a long time to reach these conclusions.

What do a foul-mouthed, drug-abusing Canadian, a stately Frenchman from Bourg-en-Bresse and an American businesswoman whose prison nickname was “M Diddy”, all have in common?

“Everything is finite—except pain.” (Mihai Eminescu, Reflections)

The idea of the end of the world refers to the end of the social order and humanity; the end of the planet as we know it. But according to the Bible, these will not all come at once.

"The world concedes without hesitation or dispute that Gutenberg's invention is incomparably the mightiest event that has ever happened in profane history." Mark Twain

The Unitarian Movement was defined as a significant minority movement under the influence of Humanism. The name “Unitarians” comes from the belief in one divine Person, a belief also common to Judaism and Islam, as opposed to the doctrine of the Trinity.

In one sense, it was hardly an unusual story: a big-budget Hollywood war movie with a big-name director and famous actors, featuring long and ultra-violent action sequences, with heroes and enemies.

“The newest religious sect has started in Los Angeles. Meetings are held in a tumble-down shack on Azusa Street...and the devotees of the weird doctrine... work themselves into a state of mad excitement...They claim to have the ‘gift of tongues’ and to be able to understand the babel”.

At the end of a journey tracing how the belief and hope in the Second Coming of Jesus have manifested themselves in the two-thousand-year history of Christianity, the final part of The Second Coming Files presents the remaining elements that link that history to the present day: the Millerite movement and Adventism.

Earthquakes have always struck fear into the hearts of people who didn't know why the earth was shaking but who saw how easily their possessions or loved ones could be lost to such tremors.

Marquis Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749-1827), a mathematician and astronomer and one of history’s most influential scientists, once had a meeting with Napoleon Bonaparte. Laplace came to offer the first consul of the republic a copy of his book, “Traité de mécanique celeste” (Treatise on Celestial Mechanics)—an analysis of the solar system that expanded on Isaac Newton’s conclusions.

Broken blade. Shaking hands. Clouded mind. “I could have killed him.”

A movement so alive and distinct from the imperial cults, as Christianity was, could not fail to attract the attention of temple servants, intellectuals, and officials.

Pope Leo XIV, who was born Robert Francis Prevost, was elected the 267th Supreme Pontiff. Born in the south of Chicago in 1955, he is the first North American pope. Despite this, his relationship with US politics is more complex than his biography might suggest.

At the beginning of the 15th century, the threat of the Ottoman Empire to Eastern Europe was a painful certainty. The last Byzantines, aware of the ensuing disaster, called on Western aid, seeking political union with the Roman Catholic Church.