Truths & Tools is where writing gets sharper, stories get deeper, and facts find their place. Here, we explore the intersection of narrative and knowledge, offering lessons in storytelling, insights and facts into real-world truths, and practical ideas to help you grow as a writer while gaining more knowledge about the world. All grounded in the present moment.
The Great Depression was a worldwide economic downturn that started off as an ordinary recession in the summer of 1929. The economic downturn worsened by the end of 1929 and lasted a full decade, until about 1939. And while the…
Reading an article regarding the facts about Cleopatra may take you back to your social-science class in primary school. Or that afternoon when you had decided to flip through the unbelievably heavy Encyclopedia. If it wasn’t Tutankhamun’s ascension to the…
History often seems like a closed chapter with the names and faces of people fixed for all eternity, far removed from today’s news and headlines. But unsuspectingly, there are many more celebrities related to historical figures than we realize, with…
Viking mythology has a serious presence in our imagination. We picture them as those with horned helmets, the berserkers foaming at the mouth, the merciless raiders landing from nowhere. But what if that picture is almost entirely wrong? The problem…
Some children are handed keys or cake or champagne when they grow up, while others are handed a spear, a silence, or a ceremony that leaves the body a little more altered than before. Across time and oceans, coming of…
Everyone knows that laws are meant to set the rules for what is and what is not allowed in society. But no one ever said they had to make sense. The weirdest laws around the world seem to belong to…
You might think that cultural taboos are bizarre, outdated, and even illogical! Well, if you pause and dig into their backstories, you’ll be surprised! What looks like superstition is actually a survival strategy, social order, or really clever public health…
The man. The myth. The legend. It is, incidentally, difficult to note unusual facts about Shakespeare because there is little to no information we have of William Shakespeare on a personal level. Shakespeare was known for his plays, and he is…
The most popular kind of best-sellers are those that leave you in shock. The feeling of not seeing it coming, or even a single gasp, is difficult to achieve on the writer’s part. But what is it about plot twist…
Poetry is the response to the everydayness of life. It’s the hush between the dishes clattering, the ache between two jobs, the moment your heart does something strange, and language tries to catch up. But poems don’t always find their…