North Korea's 105-Story (Pet-Friendly) Hotel

The Ryugyong Hotel is a 105-story skyscraper under construction in Pyongyang, North Korea. Construction began in 1987 with planned completion in 1989. However, after several delays, construction was eventually halted in 1992; due to widespread economic disruptions in North Korea and shortages of raw materials. The massive concrete shell stood topped out but without windows or interior fittings for the next sixteen years.

The building rises to a height of 330 meters (1,080 ft), making it the most prominent feature of Pyongyang’s skyline and by far the largest structure in North Korea. Construction of the Ryugyong was intended to be completed in time for the 13th World Festival of Youth and Students in June 1989; had this been achieved, it would have held the title of world’s tallest hotel. 

 In 2008 construction resumed, and the exterior was completed in 2011. It was planned to open the hotel in 2012, the centenary of Kim Il-sung's birth. A partial opening was announced for 2013, but this was canceled. As of 2018, the building remains unopened and has been called the tallest unfinished building in the world. 

America's Endless Inventory of Purple Hearts

Nearly 500,000 Purple Heart medals were manufactured in anticipation of the casualties resulting from the invasion of Japan. To the present date, all the American military casualties of the sixty years following the end of World War II—including the Korean and Vietnam Wars—have not exceeded that number. In 2003, there were still 120,000 of these Purple Heart medals in stock. There are so many in surplus that combat units in Iraq and Afghanistan were able to keep Purple Hearts on-hand for immediate award to wounded soldiers on the field.

The Rise of the Anti-Pope

An antipope is a person who, in opposition to the one who is generally seen as the legitimately elected Pope, makes a significantly accepted competing claim to be the Pope, the Bishop of Rome and leader of the Roman Catholic Church. At times between the 3rd and mid-15th century, antipopes were supported by a fairly significant faction of religious cardinals and secular kings and kingdoms.

The period in which antipopes were most numerous was during the struggles between the popes and the Holy Roman Emperors of the 11th and 12th centuries. The emperors frequently imposed their own nominees to further their own causes. The popes, likewise, sometimes sponsored rival imperial claimants (anti-kings) in Germany to overcome a particular emperor.

The Western Schism—which began in 1378, when the French cardinals, claiming that the election of Pope Urban VI was invalid, elected Clement VII as Pope—led to two rival lines of claimants to the papacy: the Roman line and the Avignon line (Clement VII took up residence in Avignon, France). To end the schism, with the support of King Sigismund of Germany, a special Catholic council was created to force the competing popes to abdicate, so that another could be chosen.

In May 1415, the Council of Constance forced Pope Gregory XII of the Roman line to resign in July 1415. In 1417, the Council also formally deposed Benedict XIII of Avignon, but he refused to resign. Afterwards, Pope Martin V was elected and was accepted everywhere except in the small and rapidly diminishing area that remained faithful to Benedict XIII. 

The scandal of the Western Schism created anti-papal sentiment and fed into the Protestant Reformation at the turn of the 16th century.

A Soviet Solution to the Capitalist Olympics

The Spartakiad was the name of an international sports event that the Soviet Union invented in the late 1920s to both oppose and supplement the Olympics.

The name, derived from the name of the slave rebel leader,Spartacus, was supposed to symbolize proletarian internationalism because Spartacus’ revolt united slaves from diverse ethnic backgrounds within the Roman Empire. As a Classical figure, Spartacus also stood directly in contrast to the aristocratic nature of the Ancient Olympic Games on which the modern “capitalist” Olympics were, according to the Soviet hierarchy, supposedly based.

The first Winter Spartakiad was held in February 1928 in Oslo, and the first Summer Spartakiad was held in August 1928 in Moscow.  In 1952 the Soviet Union decided to join the Olympic movement, and international Spartakiads ceased. However the term persisted for internal sports events in the Soviet Union of different levels, from local up to the Spartakiad of the Peoples of the USSR. The latter event was held twice in four years: Winter Spartakiad and Summer Spartakiad, with international participation.

The first Soviet Spartakiad was held in 1956. These events were of huge importance for Soviet sports. Everyone could participate in them - from ordinary people to top-level athletes. The number of participants, for example, in the 6th Summer Spartakiad of the Peoples of the USSR, was 90 million people (twice the number of athletes in the USSR in that time). 

The President's Madman Theory

The madman theory was a primary characteristic of the foreign policy conducted by U.S. President Richard Nixon. His administration, attempted to make the leaders of other countries think Nixon was mad, and that his behavior was irrational and volatile. Fearing an unpredictable American response, leaders of hostile Communist Bloc nations would avoid provoking the United States.

Nixon explained the strategy to his White House Chief of Staff, H. R. Haldeman:

I call it the Madman Theory, Bob. I want the North Vietnamese to believe I’ve reached the point where I might do anything to stop the war. We’ll just slip the word to them that, “for God’s sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about communism. We can’t restrain him when he’s angry—and he has his hand on the nuclear button” and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace.

In October 1969, the Nixon administration indicated to the Soviet Union that “the madman was loose” when the United States military was ordered to full global war readiness alert (unbeknownst to the majority of the American population), and bombers armed with thermonuclear weapons flew patterns near the Soviet border for three consecutive days.

The administration employed the “madman strategy” to force the North Vietnamese government to negotiate a peace to end the Vietnam War. Along the same lines, American diplomats (Henry Kissinger in particular) portrayed the 1970 incursion into Cambodia as a symptom of Nixon’s supposed instability.

The madman strategy can be related to Niccolò Machiavelli, who, in his Discourses on Livy (book 3, chapter 2) discusses how it is at times “a very wise thing to simulate madness.”