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Lord Byron
The poet's own friends burned his memoirs a month after he died, which means the most candid record of his life was destroyed by the people who claimed to be protecting his reputation.
Greece
The classical inheritance, and the modern state that has to live beside it.
- 2
- in history
- 13:00
- average
- 26 min
- in total
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Greek War of Independence
The rebellion Greeks fought alone for six years is remembered in the West largely for the one naval battle three foreign fleets fought for them almost by accident.
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Adolf Hitler
Hitler's earliest written statement calling for the removal of Jews predates his rise to power by fourteen years, and historians now largely agree it grew out of a specific wartime myth rather than any lifelong conviction.
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Ahmad Baba al-Timbukti
A jurist exiled for fourteen years after a foreign invasion still produced work specialists treat as the best surviving source on his field, proof of how portable book-based scholarship could be.
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Akbar
A widely repeated legend has two Rajput warriors' statues honouring their loyalty to Akbar, but a modern historian traced the story back only as far as a Dutch chronicle written decades after the event it claims to describe.
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