Ottoman Empire Archives - Tales of Times Forgotten

How Vaccines Were Really Invented

I am greatly pleased to say that I am finally in the process of being vaccinated for COVID-19, since Indiana University (the university I am currently attending) has a huge stockpile of vaccines reserved for students. I received my first dose of the Pfizer vaccine on 8 April 2021 and I am scheduled to receive my second dose on 29 April. Since lots of people like me are now receiving the vaccine for COVID-19, I decided that now would be a good time to write an article about the history of vaccines.

The story that most people have been told is that Edward Jenner, a white English man, single-handedly invented the very first vaccine—a vaccine for smallpox—in 1796. The reality, though, is much more complicated. Notably, many people are not aware of the fact that Jenner’s vaccine was an improvement on the much older procedure of inoculation, which originally independently developed in at least three different parts of the world (in China, West Africa, and the Ottoman Empire) and only later spread to Europe and the Americas through a process of cultural diffusion.

Why Is Constantinople Now Called İstanbul?

When I was in seventh grade social studies class, we learned about how the city of Constantinople is now known as İstanbul. To make sure none of us ever forgot that Constantinople is İstanbul, my teacher played us the song “Istanbul (Not Constantinople),” which was originally written in 1953 by Jimmy Kennedy and Nat Simon, but is best known today from a cover released in 1990 by the alternative rock band They Might Be Giants. In case you’ve never heard it, here’s a video with the song on YouTube:

One thing my seventh grade social studies teacher never explained, though, is the reason why Constantinople is now known as İstanbul. It’s not just because “people liked it better that way”; there are actually a number of complex and fascinating political reasons why the name was changed. The story involves a single city with a half dozen different names, a dozen different kings with the same name, World War I, and an especially vicious Barbary macaque.

Who Was the Last Roman Emperor? A Harder Question than You Might Think.

Many different people throughout history have been described as “the last Roman emperor.” You may then be left wondering, “Who really was the last Roman emperor?” Unfortunately, a direct and concise answer to this question is impossible, because the answer depends entirely on who you think counts as a “Roman emperor.” The fact is that there are all kinds of different people who could potentially be considered the “last emperor of the Roman Empire,” many of whom were not even Roman.