T.L. Winslow (TLW), 1953- Historyscoper Logo

What Is a Historyscope?

By T.L. Winslow (TLW), the Historyscoper™

© Copyright by T.L. Winslow. All Rights Reserved.

Last Update: Mar. 12, 2020.


Short url to this page:
http://tinyurl.com/whatisahistoryscope






Guardian of Forever from 'Star Trek'

"To be ignorant of what happened before one was born is to remain ever a child." - Cicero (-106 to -43)

"The highest reward for a man's toil is not what he gets out of it but what he becomes by it." - John Ruskin (1819-1900)

"The one who thinks over his experiences most, and weaves them into systematic relations with each other will be the one with the best memory." - William James (1842-1910)

"Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention." - Sir Francis Bacon (1562-1626)

"A little learning is a dang'rous thing;/ Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring." - Alexander Pope (1688-1744)

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." - Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727)

"Knowledge is of itself one of the highest enjoyments. The ignorant man passes through the world dead to all pleasures, save those of the senses... Every human being has a great mission to perform, noble faculties to cultivate, a vast destiny to accomplish. He should have the means of education, and of exerting freely all the powers of his godlike nature." - Samuel Smiles (1812-1904)

"The last thing that an explorer arrives at is a complete map that will cover the whole ground he has travelled, but for those who come after him and would profit by and extend his knowledge his map is the first thing with which they will begin." - Sir Julian Corbett (1854-1922)

"History becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe... Yet, clumsily or smoothly, the world, it seems, progresses and will progress." - H.G. Wells (1866-1946)

"There are obviously two educations. One should teach us how to make a living and the other how to live. Surely these should never be confused in the mind of any man who has the slightest inkling of what culture is. For most of us it is essential that we should make a living... In the complications of modern life and with our increased accumulation of knowledge, it doubtless helps greatly to compress some years of experience into far fewer years by studying for a particular trade or profession in an institution; but that fact should not blind us to another - namely, that in so doing we are learning a trade or a profession, but are not getting a liberal education as human beings." - James Truslow Adams (1878-1949)

"Liberal education is education in culture or toward culture. The finished product of a liberal education is a cultured human being... Liberal education is literate education of a certain kind: some sort of education in letters or through letters. There is no need to make a case for literacy. Every voter knows that modern democracy stands or falls by literacy... Liberal education consists in listening to the conversation among the greatest minds. Liberal education is liberation from vulgarity. The Greeks had a beautiful word for vulgarity; they called it apeirokalia, lack of experience in things beautiful. Liberal education supplies us with experience in things beautiful." - Leo Strauss (1899-1973)

"A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions." - Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (1841-1935)

"The only thing new in the world is the history you don't know." - Harry S. Truman (1884-1972)

"The view, expressed nowadays by far too many educators, [is] that history is a boring and antiquarian diversion, that we should let bygones be bygones, free ourselves from a dismal and oppressive past, and concentrate on a fresh and better future. I have long and fervently believed that a consciousness of history is one of the key factors that distinguishes us from all other animals - I mean the ability to transcend an illusory sense of NOW, of an eternal present, and to strive for an understanding of the forces and events that made us what we are. Such an understanding is the prerequisite, I believe, for all human freedom." - David Brion Davis (1927-)

""The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn." - Alvin Toffler (1928-2016)

"You have to study and learn so that you can make up your own mind about history and everything else but you can't make up an empty mind. Stock your mind, stock your mind. It is your house of treasure and no one in the world can interfere with it... Your mind is your house and if you fill it with rubbish from the cinemas it will rot in your head. You might be poor, your shoes might be broken, but your mind is a palace." - Frank McCourt (1930-), Angela's Ashes, 1996

"Professor Johnston often said that if you didn't know history, you didn't know anything. You were a leaf that didn't know it was part of a tree." - Michael Crichton (1942-2008), Timeline, 1999

"An education without the humanities would be like waking up on a desert island with no senses, no memory, no reason... lost in sand yet guided by the illusion of certainty. What an awful fate." - Alicia Christian "Jodie" Foster (1962-)

"I believe in a future where the point of education is not to prepare you for another useless job, but for a life well-lived." - Rutger Bregman (1988-)

"Alenda lux ubi orta libertas." - Let learning be cherished where liberty has arisen


Jellyfish Brains

You're born not knowing history, and you'll die not knowing history, unless you take the time and effort to learn history to find out where you and everything comes from. When you've shot your wad in life and look back, will your biggest regret be that you didn't learn history? Too bad, there's no school that teaches you all of world history, only bits and pieces - except the Historyscoper™, a revolution in history teaching, founded by a real deal history genius, a lone wolf who did it all outside the academic system and is offering it to you straight in your browser. Do you have all the time in the world? Then you don't need us. Otherwise there's no place else. If you can't buy this then sayonara, else read on.

The world is a cornucopia of books, why drop everything and read this one? You just read Howard Zinn and know that all of history is written by liars, except his? Not so fast. In the modern sciences, mere facts are discounted in favor of grand theories. When it comes to history, however, you either know the facts or are full of it. Every theory of history ultimately finds itself in conflict with some pesky facts, Zinn included. Unless you believe that a history writer is getting his facts straight from God and can't be questioned, facts verified by all the available evidence still rule, and if you want to know history you have to do all you can to fill your brain with as many verified facts as you can, and most importantly, connect them together to see the flow of time and fill in the great jigsaw puzzle. The solution to false facts is more facts, and the solution to true facts is more true facts. Therefore, you need to find a way to scope out and verify as many facts as fast as humanly possible, then scope for a long long time, and after enough scoping your mind will have the best picture of history you have ever had, allowing you to better evaluate historical theories, including Zinn's and your own. TLW's World Historyscope is a User's Manual of the Human Race, covering all books ever written and putting them into their place in history.



What is a Historyscope? Historyscoping is like ice cream, I scope, you scope, we all scope. A Historyscope is the Historyscoper's patented trademarked knowledge product that turns your browser into a Portal of Time, allowing you to peer back and scope the past as easily as it gets, via words, powered by hyperlinks that you can click whenever you want to check facts or go deeper. Think of it as an enhanced or expanded timeline, a timeline on steroids, but more importantly, an Internet-powered timeline. Yes, it is usually a huge Web page, that means it's loaded with knowledge, but once loaded you just keep it in your browser and page up and down along the Great Track of Time, reading and sponging up more and more until it forms a mental map in your mind that will never fail you. Since every Historyscope is subject to change without notice, it's important to refresh it in your browser regularly to always have the freshest. The top-level text is written to be self-contained so that you don't need to click any hyperlinks, but in practice serious historyscopers will routinely click all the links as they read then take some time to at least glance at them and try to absorb some extra depth, remembering that a historyscope isn't an article but a living text database and 3-D scope on history.

All You Can Eat

In the retro paper past, history knowledge was hard to come by, usually requiring access to academic libraries, files, etc., not to mention hard wooden benches in dusty dank corridors, and file cards, paper clips, and other lame technology. In the Internet Age, every day is free day at the all-you-can-eat restaurant, with the challenge being how fast you can sponge the material up, because it's there there there all the time whether you know it or not. The purpose of a historyscope is to make it the fastest and easiest and most orderly to sponge it from there to here, namely, your brain. It's your time that is precious, and if you want to learn the past you have to devote a percentage of your future, so why not get the most bang for the buck? And in contrast to real food, the mental food you consume will never make you get fat or explode, because your mind expands as required, always giving you the go signal for more.

Let's pause right now and view an actual historyscope so you can see what we're talking about. For example, the 1770s. Think you know all about it because you took American History in high school and saw some movies? Click this:

Historyscope of the 1770s C.E.

Now click this:

Historyscope of the 1700s C.E.


Historyscopes are kept up to this very year. Click this:


Historyscopes of the 2010s


Historyscopes of the 2020s

Now imagine pages for each decade and century going all the way back, and you see the big picture. Each historyscope has the name timeaxx, meaning the a00s, or timeabcx, meaning the abc0s, or time abcdx, meaning the year abcd, all C.E. For the B.C.E.s, there's timebce100.html for -100 to -1, timebce200.html for -199 to -101... timebce500.html for -499 to 401, then timebce1000.html for -1000 to -501, timebce4000.html for -4000 to -1001, and timedawn.html for -3999 back to the dawn of time. Each historyscope is mainly a bunch of sentences, many containing a bunch of semicolons. Each is to be treated as one history nugget, a self-contained atom in the Great Track of Time, a little self-contained history lesson.

Spend awhile paging up and down and trying to soak it in, then click this:

Gateway to the Master Historyscope

Notice 1770 displayed on the page. That's what you click to get the 1770s C.E. Historyscope. For funners try clicking some of the others. You will soon 'get' the idea that you have at your fingertips complete Historyscopes covering all of history back to the Dawn of Time, and even some going into the future. Welcome to my world, or I should say, our world. You've got your hands on great intellectual power.

But there's more. Click this:

TLW's Mini-Historyscopes (tm)

This is the menu for our Mini-Historyscopes (tm), consisting of historyscopes mainly cut-and-pasted from the Master Historyscope that follow a single thread, e.g., the history of explorers:

TLW's Explorerscope

Or for history pros, the history of historians, a revelation, Historyscoping gazes at its own navel:

TLW's Historianscope

For total newbies, the best Mini-Historyscope to start with is:

The Monarchs of England, by TLW

The next best is my cool World Cityscope, which gets you into world history knee-deep fast:

TLW's World Cityscope

To get into recent history fast, try my United Nationsscope:

TLW's United Nationsscope

Or if you're an unapologetic lamer, try my ETscope:

TLW's ETscope

These Mini-Historyscopes are often arranged with one history nugget per paragraph. Until you feel the call to take on the Master Historyscope, Mini-Historyscopes are the easiest and fastest way to get into historyscoping and develop a mastery of some segment of the Great Track of Time AKA the Golden Brick Road of Time to get your feet wet and develop a sense of the passage of time.

Educational institutions: Feel free to use them in your courses. Just don't print any of them out; read them only in your browsers, please. Historyscopes don't like paper, it's lame city. Besides, they're a bitch to print with all them images and different-colored underlines, and you'll likely run out of colored ink fast :)

Practical note: No matter what historyscope you're studying, you should try to keep up with current history by daily reading of my historyscope for the current year, which is updated daily. Currently this would be TLW's 2019 Historyscope

Largest Swamp in Europe Yellow Brick Road

Let's reiterate the subject at hand, historyscopes.

The structure is simple: Each year is a new paragraph, with a string of "history nuggets" following in chronological order, each starting with a date and sometimes a time of day. A history nugget is a logical whole meant to be taken in at the same time, using strings of sentences separated by semicolons instead of periods. Think of each history nugget as being a chunk of the Great Track of Time, which can be molded together to form history golden bricks for the Golden Brick Road of Time. History nuggets are NOT usually separated by line breaks, because that would take up too much page space and break your train of thought, except for fat history nuggets, which are useful in Mini-Historyscopes. Instead, they are separated by single spaces, making a typical full screen on your viewer, a veritable treasure chest of pure concentrated knowledge. At first this might make you think your mind will explode trying to take it all in, but trust me, after you get used to it you won't want it any other way, because the second and subsequent times you read the material it will be far easier to read and retain, forming a mental map of history in your mind that you can rely on forever.

In short, a Historyscope is a mental map, think of it like a normal map only with all gloss, and after sponging it all you will really enjoy hitting the PgUp and PgDn keys over and over and seeing the map crystallize and come alive in your mind, all of history in your hands. And yes, it will take a lot of work, but the good news is that it's the least work you need to do to master history, because the Historyscoper has created a Golden Brick Road of Time with sure steps to help you bridge the murky swamp fast, sure, and safe, filling your brain with the most knowledge with the least effort, and making other types of history knowledge products a waste of time, pucker up buttercup. A historyscope covers the same ground as an old-fashioned history book in only 20% of the space (really 0.02%-0.002% if you count the material in the hyperlinks), while serving as a gateway to the entire Internet's resources for those who wish to go deeper.

For each year in the historyscope, after the year's events there are one or more special sections that go with the year as supplementary information, including Sports, Architecture, Inventions, Science, Poetry, Nonfiction, Fiction, Plays, Music et al. Some sections are arranged chronologically, some alphabetically (author's last name).

Finally there are Births and Deaths sections. Typically, when scoping individual people you use your electronic search function to follow their name from birth to death with all significant events in the middle. Reading straight through these sections is often useful to improve your mental picture of history, as is Birth/Death surfing to immerse yourself in a selected year or range of years.

Pedagogically speaking, the reduction of historical facts to pithy memorable history nuggets, combined with chronological ordering and a broad-first approach, with extensive hyperlinking for depth, along with forward and backward in-place repetition to bring out the flow of time (pardon my French, Golden Brick Road of Timeizing?) is the winning formula to turn history ignoramuses into righteous dood Historyscopers even if they play hooky like Ferris Bueller, go explore Chicago's entire history with the Historyscoper.

Why bother? Why not just get a paper book on World War II and read it through and take notes, yellow-line it, and leave bookmarks? Because a vivid command of history requires you to rescope the scope of the scope, recursively, and that's the power of Historyscoping. It's the difference between a horse and buggy and a jet airplane, unless you're a god or angel from heaven and don't need either, like when John Travolta became a phenomenon and could instantly recall all the mammals that start with the letter P, or was it 1928, I forget, scope it for me.



TLW's Master World Historyscope is a mental map of the last 6,000 years, a total of 300K Map Points (a birth, death, marriage, battle, election, coronation, legislative act, publication, dedication, discovery, invention, etc.), presented via a literary grand tour that averages only 20 words per map point, for a total of 6 million words. Yes, it's a lot of reading, but there's a lot of history, and movies won't cut it, imagine trying to watch six thousand years of them. Only reading can powerfully compress time into a stream of abstract facts, the next best thing to mathematical equations, it's us from the future.

But history is so dry and boring? Not the way I do it. My historyscopes use a unique literary language I invented that's quirky and fun and designed to make it hard to forget facts as they come up. Plus it makes you believe that every fact fits into a giant jigsaw puzzle, and you can't give up until you see it in your mind. You can't get such a humongous knowledge of world history by trading beads with the natives, but only from moi.

But I look like a crackpot and you want to study somebody else's historyscopes? Duh, there aren't any. Where else can you come to learn all of world history starting with square one? Harvard? Yale? Oxford? Cambridge? Sorry, you can't learn it in academia, yet, only from moi, if you're interested the line forms here.

Better yet, TLW has taken the subject itself completely out of academia, so it's all at an 8th-10th grade reading level, with no academic trappings such as references, footnotes, or bibliography. It's like a long newspaper written by an omniscient reporter, like World News of the Week all the way back, almost as if you really lived all those years. The historians are made invisible, and only the history remains, if you had access to a car like this would you take it back right away, neither would I. It's the book of the century, like Clifford Irving only for real, more interesting than any novel ever written because it's the story of the human race, and you and everybody you know come in it somewhere, along with your entire culture.

And it's a pure mind thang. Let me put it plainly. You can go to Ivy League colleges for 10 straight years and wrack up a 5-figure student loan and not know diddly compared to what you can learn by just finding a nice place to study and simplifying your lifestyle so you have the time, and scoping history here in your browser, I've been living in a fool's paradise.

In short, don't underestimate the power of the Historyscope. It's not diluted, it's totally phat, highly accurate, and almost omniscient, something's coming, it's going to be big, we didn't blow the breaker, I think we blew the whole block, hand me my nail file. And not just stale text but wired for power, the juice, with every map point connected to a hyperlink so you can verify it and go deeper. At any time you can re-Google what TLW Googled, or Google on your own, because you never have to take TLW's word for anything, he's just your Daniel Boone, guiding you through the Cumberland Gap.

Why not just learn history from Wikipedia? Go right ahead and check back with me after you read all 5+ million articles. :) A historyscope inverts the encyclopedia, turns it inside out and linearizes it along the Great Track of Time so that you end up learning the most history facts with the minimum reading, with the ability to consult encyclopedias as you go, the best of both worlds. Ah yes, a historyscope contains extensive links to online encyclopedias, particularly Wikipedia when they are appropriate, think of it as an underskeleton that allows you to go deeper whenever you feel the need; repeat after me, a historyscope is the encyclopedia turned inside-out by a pansophist history freak that's always jacked-in. To flog a dead horse, let's say you want to study the history of Jazz. What do you do? Currently, almost everybody reads the Wikipedia article on Jazz, then if they want to go deeper, a few come to my Jazz Historyscope and learn that they've wasted a bunch of time and have to start over. One day when my Historyscoping Revolution storms the Bastille, everybody will come to my Jazz Historyscope first, and click the Wikipedia article second, from inside my historyscope.

Fishing with Hand Grenades Sonarscope

How are Historyscopes created? How do I catch fish? With a hand grenade. By mucho Googling. Think of Google as a sonar into the murky swamp of history, that I ping over and over to build up a map which eventually gets so good it's as if the swamp were drained. Give me a stopwatch and a map, and I'll fly the Alps in a plane with no windows. Give me a ping, Vasily, one ping only please. Or as a camera, with a lens that opens wide and collects all the light it can to form a better and better picture. So a Historyscope is like turning the Internet into a sonarscope, a radarscope, a telescope, a microscope of history, all at the same time, based on Googling. Not that it's as easy as operating some equipment. Google is a syntactic search engine, with no semantic awareness, and it takes the Historyscoper's brainpower to do all the reading and make sense of it in order to build the map, a job they'll never automate, load my German luger just in case.

Horse and Buggy Jet Airplane

Before Google, in the horse-and-buggy days of paper-based books, history was about reading without the aid of electronic search and other computing tools, requiring historians to specialize for a lifetime on a handful of map points. That's why the academic system has failed students when it comes to history, because the historians can't teach what they don't know, they don't have the word power. The jet, er, Internet-powered Historyscoping Approach is to use the power of Google to go broad first and deep second, because once one goes deep one can almost never go broad, stuck in a rut. A historian can spend his/her entire career on a handful of map points not even knowing there are other map points.

That's why the new field of Historyscoping is wide open for a crop of new stars, since being a historian is no leg up, and might even be an impediment. Not that TLW is trying to put them out of a job, since a Historyscoper isn't a historian, he/she takes the outputs of all historians and weaves them together into a Historyscope where the historians become invisible. TLW never wants to be reduced to going through old trunks digging for letters and all that jazz. At least one day TLW hopes to see all historians being required to become Historyscopers first, and assume in their publications that their readers are Historyscopers. The market for their books might actually skyrocket, look what Uncle TLW has for you.

How do I decide what is and is not a map point? Because a map point adds to the flow, it's a simple as that. Many map points are obvious, like battles, while others aren't obvious, but emerge from the flow, like if Cleopatra's nose had been shorter, the whole face of the world would have been changed.

In short, it's about figuring out what the map points are called, after which the Googling is the easy part, try Cleopatra's nose. Each time you Google some history map point, say, the Battle of Gettysburg, you get anywhere from zero to a zillion hits, zero being your worst nightmare of course, requiring you to find a different name for the map point, or even decide if it is a real map point.

Let's say you Google a map point and get a zillion hits. Then you are forced to choose. After you begin delving into the hits on the Battle of Gettysburg, you will find a lot of repetition, indeed you will find that you can spend your entire lifetime on it if you really want to dig up every grave in the graveyard, but either way you will soon know when you've learned enough about it to get the picture, and it's time to move onto another map point, say the next Civil War battle, or the Gettysburg Address, or the music scene in Austria that year.

The music scene in Austria, yes. TLW's Historyscopes aren't limited to a single country or region of the world. They cover the entire world's history in sequential order, as if one were sitting in a spaceship looking at the Earth turning and observing everything, but also as if one were immortal and omniscient, compressing all the raw data into the least number of words to help yourself and other Historyscopers master and later remember or remaster the map points, structure, and flow in the least amount of time. That's why the Googling process is also like panning for gold in a stream, sifting through the massive sludge to find flakes and chunks, then collecting enough to make a nugget, then collecting the nuggets to make gold bricks, and finally building a complete golden brick road. That brings up a big point.

Sausage King of Chicago 'Daniel Boone' TV series, 1964-70 The Flash

How much Googling did TLW do? Why can't I do it myself, I'm the Sausage King of Chicago? Duh, would you want to spend 10 years discovering the Calculus like had-no-life Newton, or learn it in high school while taking several other courses? Let's back up and get a few things about TLW straight. One, he reads faster than anybody, and has read more history than anybody, the original Flash. Two, he has Googled every map point in history back 6,000 years, and used the results to build up a mental picture of history, along with a secret database that he can use to create specialized historyscopes at will. He's not like most world history teachers, pikers who never learned what they profess to teach, but try to teach what they don't know. Three, he had to discover what the map points were as he went along, making him have to iterate and recurse time and again until he straightened it all out, like Daniel Boone blazing the Wilderness Trail, only for all 6,000 years, talk about having no life. Four, he had to create a special literary style for Historyscoping, allowing apprentice historyscopers to sponge the knowledge faster with mnemonics and telegraphing. Yes, it turned his hair white, but he doesn't want a bottle of hair color, he earned it. Doesn't TLW like a lot like some ancient Greek historian or philosopher? How about a Greek god, say Neptune, or maybe Zeus? 6,000 is the new 30. So, do you want to reblaze the trail by redoing all my work, or would you like to stand on my shoulders as we all stand on the shoulders of the Internet? Maybe you can become a Historyscoper and still be under 30, I'm hoping to live long enough to see it. Don't get left behind, the first class of 100 still has vacancies, TLW hopes to live to see a million historyscopers.

Colossus

In short, through historyscoping TLW made himself the king of history studies, and doth bestride the narrow world like a Colossus, whether the public figures it out or not. So, I'm laying out the challenge to catch up with the Headmaster. Starting with a good enough map of history, mine, that describes all the map points along with the structure and flow, and then sponging it intensely until it sinks into your brain and becomes a part of your everyday working toolkit, you might finally reach a point where you too can call yourself a Historyscoper and become the next Thomas Jefferson or Henry Kissinger, in demand by everybody to help them decide what to do next. And did I mention that there's no need to go to college, since you can't learn Historyscoping in college yet, even an Ivy League college, you either have to do it from scratch like TLW or come to my online school for help, my Master Historyscope currently runs 6 million words, stay in the bed and watch your language you're not in the jungle.

IBM Think

But you don't want to take on a reading project of 6+ million words? Like IBM says, Think. A lot of people read a million words of romance novels a year, and what do they get out of it? A lot of "his throbbing manhood" maybe, but not much historical knowledge. Mastering every romance novel that came out might be nice, but wouldn't it be far nicer to become an old soul that knows da history of da human race, including the history of romance novels, the humanist dream. Those who read a million words of newspaper articles a year are better off than romance novel readers, but without the grounding in world history I provide, they're forever lame, walking in quicksand. So the really good news is that it only takes 6 million words of reading to take my world history course and be ready to rumble.

Note: I have to admit that the number 6 million was for so long my ideal goal (probably because of the Holocaust) that I passed it long ago and fudged it. At first I tried to keep it at the 6 million level by re-editing the material to compress it and still incorporate the extra material, but time marches on, and after years more of furious historyscoping the Master Historyscope is closer to 10 million words, sorry. The Mini-Historyscopes add another 5 million, and might one day grow bigger than the Master Historyscope, they're proving so useful they might become mandatory.

To risk beating the dead horse too much, other history Web sites might be cool, but they only offer pages full of history materials, while the Historyscoper Web site is a total world history course that covers everything in all of them, and always gives you a more concise, concentrated, and brilliant treatment. I'm working to found the first and best online world history school, the Harvard of the Internet for history. One day I hope the established world school system will sign up and adopt my approach and curriculum to give each of their students a chance to develop a working mental map of the last 6,000 years before releasing them into society to take their place, after which they won't be on their own but can deepen their knowledge with a lifetime account while making history of their own. As the world's only Historyscoper I feel sorry for everybody because they're like dinosaurs, cavemen, lost in impenetrable ignorance, oblivion on Blue Ray isn't the perfect hi-def movie experience, and here I am just waiting for them to take my hand so they won't be forever lost, hand me a hanky.

You can't stop your merry-go-round and go back to school since you're already a history teacher with tenure? Good news, there's more than one way to skin a cat. The GTT is set up chronologically so that you can use it as a reference work, a dictionary of time to amplify your teaching. Get used to looking up every event you can and see how the GTT summarizes it beautifully, shows you the surrounding context even more beautifully, gets the little details straight for you, and gives you hyperlinks to go deeper. It's the ultimate resource for history teachers, and the ultimate cheat sheet for students.

Right now, though, my site is still looking for investors, and it has virtually no software, just huge Web pages with complete one-size-fits-all courses that are best suited for top students and future leaders who are totally self-motivated, not spoon-size dynamic pages tailored on-the-fly to the student, course, level, and lesson by the full suite of advanced online educational software that I'd like to provide. That makes you pioneers. TLW is waiting to hear stories of how new Historyscopers did it and how long they took, could it be you? Until then TLW is the world's only Historyscoper, but one day he hopes to see millions of Historyscopers. A world full of Historyscopers will be a safer world, this magic moment, tomorrow night at eight, only on Historyscoper Channel.

But your teacher didn't give you PERMISSION to study this that and the other thing in my historyscopes? Look, you're not damaged goods. I AM YOUR TEACHER NOW, and I give you permission to STUDY IT ALL ALL ALL ALL ALL. You do need to know that. And that. And that. Tell your so-called teacher to stuff it, you're in life for keeps and will just have to pass him/her up if he/she gets in your way, because you don't want to be left behind in the Big Race to Know.

Warning 1

Warning 1: When you first encounter a Historyscope, you will likely experience a future shock as you are stymied by the denseness of the knowledge presented, which is way beyond the works of mere historians who strew their facts along amid mucho verbiage, often revealing their own ignorance. That's because a Historyscope is a new type of literary product powered by the Internet that is like a gold brick of knowledge that has been distilled from the oceans of mere information into the most powerful form for Historyscoping. It's the work of a pansophist super-generalist, not a narrow-minded super-specialist. A Historyscope lives on the Internet, existing among billions of lesser Web pages that can't hold a candle to it. In contrast to blogs and such, each hyperlink doesn't call up an ad or other irrelevancy, it's a portal to deeper knowledge about a map point. Okay, maybe a few ads, I am human :)
Yes, at first there's a learning curve as you get used to sponging the golden nuggets and bricks of pure honey being presented, but rest assured that you will not only get used to it, you will thrive on it and gradually learn to sponge the nuggets and bricks faster and faster, gulping the honey. Will you learn so much that your brain explodes? Good news, no matter how much you learn, your brain expands to hold it and still feels empty, wanting more more more more more as it starts to fit together like a jigsaw puzzle and make sense.
Be sure and study the first lesson for Historyscopers linked to below to learn about the hidden mnemonics and other neat things that let you dress properly for the mental symphony to come.

Warning 2

Warning 2: While the Historyscoper tries to provide a hyperlink for all map points, we can't be responsible for others' Web sites, and they are liable to change or be deleted. No problemo, just Google the underlined text in the hyperlink and possibly the surrounding text and choose your own sites; for YouTube videos that have gone stale, just stay in YouTube and type the name of the video into the search window. Also beware that Historyscopes are updated frequently, so always hit the refresh button before resuming a scoping session.

Warning 3

Warning 3: When historyscoping, you must always respect the distance of time. For instance, so-called political correctness is a recent development, and people even a few decades ago didn't know or care. At all past times the serious people thought they were right, no matter how ludicrous their beliefs seem today, and fought and died for them, like Edward R. Murrow chain-smoking on his TV show sponsored by Kent. And maybe you hadn't even been thought of yet, was it an accident or did they plan you? You will never understand history until you respect that distance.
You also need to respect geography, they screwed in the meadows, drowned in floods from the rivers, fought for key mountain passes, and left their dead in graveyards and battlefields, the map is not only 4-dimensional but there's the 5th dimension of the mind.

Warning 4

Warning 4: While technically speaking a historyscope is independent of all historians, and all historyscopers too, it's irresistible for TLW to refrain from making all kinds of personal comments. Good news, he strives to keep them separated from the main text with italics, so you can skip over them if you want and not miss anything essential.
Better news, he doesn't actually make any comments, but just provides suggested comments, ending with question marks, using the opportunities for teachable moments, using his mnemonic system and all kinds of mind tricks such as off-the-wall remarks to make you remember the material, yes, it's an art and TLW's the pioneer, now that your husband's dead you inherited the title to his estate and can't prove your innocence, get it?
Note: This applies to the Master Historyscope only. In his numerous Mini-Historyscopes, he does frequently indulge, so if you just can't stand it stick with the Master Historyscope.

Luddites

Lamer/Luddite warning: Yes, one can print out a Historyscope on paper and try to read it that way, but it's totally lame since you need the power of clicking hyperlinks to check facts and go deeper. The main message we're trying to get across is that the Internet IS your personal Historyscope after you load a Historyscope into your browser as a map, guide, or overlay. Don't be a turkey. Read your Historsycope, er, Historyscope on your Internet terminal and fly with the eagles. Okay, I cut some slack for those who want a printed Historyscope sitting on their lap under a tree while Googling on their laptop or tablet, as long as I get a royalty check.

This is about mastering reality so let's get serious. On Apr. 7, 2013 TLW announced that the human mind is a quantum entanglement device, who knows how long the world will take to 'get' it. To become a Historyscoper like TLW you must quantum entangle your mind with him so that he can help you take off and soar far above the crowd.

Final warning: The Historyscoper isn't a politician. He/she doesn't care whom is offended, he/she scopes history and tries to find the truth, and provides links to check facts. If you can't stand being offended, your brain is stuck on stupid, sorry it's your problem, get over yourself and keep scoping, you can handle anything.

Ready? Let's go.


TLW's Fabled Red Pill - Blue Pill Warning

Red Pill or Blue Pill? Rabbit Hole Rabbit Hole Rabbit Hole

Westerners are not only known as history ignoramuses, but double dumbass history ignoramuses when it comes to xxxx. Since I'm currently the world's only Historyscoper (tm), meaning my giant spongelike brain is well-versed in all of the last 6K years of world history like nobody else, I could publish a New York Times bestseller and rake in the dough like Sarah Palin, but it's getting so dangerous to wait any longer that I'm doing it for free, so please allow me to quickly bring you xxxx history ignoramuses up to speed. There's yyyy years to cover, so expect it to take a couple of hours, so turn off your TVs and other distractions, get serious and relive your past and change your destiny, you can be both beautiful and smart. Knowledge is power, and this is pure concentrated gold bricks, with links provided to check my facts so you don't have to take my word for anything. Knowledge doesn't necessarily give you wisdom, but it sure beats lack of knowledge. Sorry if you don't have a giant sponglike brain like me, you'll just have to force yourself to open it up to all this new knowledge and get used to being more aware about the world than you used to be, grin. I have nothing to hide or cover up, rather, I'm trying to uncover the truth. So take the red pill and come down the rabbit hole with me and see how deep it goes. Seriously, this is the most powerful historyscope of xxxx yet devised, because Master Historyscoper TLW rules. What is a historyscope? TLW's trademark Internet-powered sequential word map technique for history, laying out the map points, structure and flow in your mind to guide you afterward when you want to go deeper, like a real map does. Some xxxx history ignoramuses might go nonlinear if they read it without permission of their mental overlords, and may try to spread disinformation to keep you from reading it, so enjoy it all the more, it's A-List with Rollover. Ouch, I burned my ass with my finger.

Big BicepThis is your brain on TLW.

A couple of hours on the first read, that is. The recommended way to study it is to read through it four times, slower each time, starting by paging quickly to the end to see how much there is to read and how cool it will be to read it, the shocking power of TLW to open up a crystal ball of history to you, you want to read it, you need to read it, go read it, followed by your first read, a speed-read of each paragraph and the images to fix the map points in your mind, then the second read at normal speed to obtain full comprehension, how's he doing, I don't want to look, then the third read, slow and deliberate for memorizing as much as possible and trying to see the flow of time in your mind, your wonderful mental activity has some fuel. Another read would be nice, in which you go backwards paragraph by paragraph, hindsight is 20/20. Finally you are ready to begin going deeper, clicking all the links (again, like you should have done earlier) and trying to sponge their contents in light of the knowledge the historyscope gave you, and coming back without clicking links in the links until you've gone over all the top links, after which you can go as deep as you want, see ya in a couple of years.

Just kidding, I've been working on it well over a decade, and my job is to give you enough info. that you don't need to click the links in the links unless you really want to. Unlike other Web pages, it has no subpages, but is meant to be kept in your browser in its entirety like a satellite map of time itself that you can scroll around in and watch history unfold beneath you, then pick a section to focus in on, reading my text to get a bird's-eye view, after which only if you feel the need should you click on outside Web sites to go deeper. With a simple tap of your finger you can see the history flow, and focus in on what you want, when you want, that's the power of the Internet to be your portal to history, with my Historyscopes as the master map, drum roll please.

To reiterate, Historyscopes go broad first, deep second, not the reverse like the works of mere historians, one day I hope I'll cause a revolution. Not that you have to read it in the first place. You're born not knowing history and can die not knowing history, but if you want to learn history you've come to the right place. Think of it as a complete course without a diploma, rewarding you with the wisdom that comes with real knowledge not hazy generalities. You're the ping pong ball, serve yourself to me and I'll smack you right back, like Brooke Shields with a mullet, all business up front, party in the back. Be sure and keep it always loaded for continual reading, use electronic search on keywords when necessary, and refresh it daily in case it has been updated.

A last word, let's get serious. The world is filled with people who don't have even 1000 map points of history in their heads, yet are charged with the responsibilities of citizenship. Chances are this includes you. What Historyscoping is about is helping you load as many map points in your brain as you can and enlightening you about this crazy thing called life. Despite being the closest thing next to God you will ever quantum entangle minds with, TLW isn't in this for personal glory, he's in life just like you, for keeps. He never wanted to become a Howard Zinn, David Irving, David Barton, or Lyndon LaRouche, a hawker of a bestselling moose hockey pocket-size conspiracy-coverup rewrite of history that ultimately beckons you not to really learn too much as they trot off to the bank and relax as if their life work is done because you bought it. Instead, TLW wants to start a revolution in history teaching where millions learn how to use the Internet to scope history and verify facts to check or refute theories and think for themselves, keeping their minds always open for new map points and deeper understanding and/or reinterpretation of old map points, scoping until their last breath.

So Historyscoping isn't about me, it's about you, I don't want to own you but to free you, and hope you admire me for it like they do George Washington for turning down a crown. So please try dropping your defenses for awhile and try my way on a trial basis, and see if your grasp of history doesn't improve immediately and keep improving beyond anything you ever thought possible. Join the ranks of historyscoping students and let's change the future for the better, with better knowledge. Scope history with the Historyscoper (tm) or ever remain a piker.

Load how many map points in my brain? Good news. You can give the knowledge a structure using the Method of Loci AKA the Memory Palace Technique. For starters, think of each century as a floor in your memory palace. 60 floors will cover 6K years. Think of the basement as the murky beginning of time, and the roof as the future. Then divide each floor into 10 rooms, once for each decade. Now as you fill your mind with map points, just lay them out in the appropriate room, just like you arrange your real rooms, a place for everything, everything in its place. Believe me, no matter how many map points you absorb, you will always find plenty of space for them in your Memory Palace. As you grow older and more knowledgeable, you will enjoy the thrill of conducting yourself through your Memory Palace, or of giving others tours either verbally or in writing. You will become a 6K-year-old soul, with not just a lifetime but zillions of lifetimes of memories. You will become a Historyscoper. And unlike a real palace, you will be able to zoom from room to room and floor to floor at the speed of thought. How can I tell you the thrill? Find out by devoting a percentage of your future to the study of the past, and check back with me one day. Note: As you progress from apprentice Historyscoper to journeyman Historyscoper, you will begin to realize that your knowledge of history is controlled by TLW's Master Historyscope. In other words, when you try to jog your memory for some history, even if it's in your Memory Palace you will tend to reach a mental block unless you can recall where in TLW's Master Historyscope it is, and go back and consult it. In short, you will discover that TLW owns history, he's indispensable, the Master Architect of your Memory Palace. Not that this is bad, it's good. Only after you become a Master Historyscoper can you dream of... I leave it to your imagination.

Oh yes. How long does it take? If you want to become a Master Historyscoper, you should realistically plan on an all-out effort for 10 years at least, make that 20. Why? As a rough estimate, you need to plan on reading 10 million words of my historyscopes, plus another 10 million words of other material off the hyperlinks just to finish the basic course, and let's say you study for 1000 hours a year, and read at an average speed of 1000 words an hour, that's 1 million words a year, do the math. If your goals are more modest, for instance, mastering the history of science and technology, or the history of science fiction or Hollywood, you might only need 100 years :) Duh, unless you learn it broad you'll be getting into a trap trying to learn it deep first, remember the Tortoise and the Hare? Not that you shouldn't wet your whistle with one of TLW's Mini-Historyscopes and find out for yourself what I mean.

Proof you have the time.

Another big point. This site is not a blog or newsletter that posts daily articles and relies on you surfing to them via Google, Twitter, or anything else, hoping to use click bait articles to amass "eyeballs" in the hopes of some of them clicking offensive pop-up ads to make a buck. Our visitors aren't cattle, they're apprentice Historyscopers, the future intellectual elite, pulling ahead of the retro academics and pundits daily on their own initiative. We're a school, the top history school ever, and you're expected to visit it on your own daily to study hard and absorb the gigantic load of educational material offered. If anything, it would hurt this site if it went viral and drew scads of lookieloos who downloaded huge historyscope pages and never studied them, sucking all the bandwidth and leaving none for the serious students. For the time being we're operating as an open free school with no registration required and charging nothing in order to attract a nucleus of first generation students along with a buck investor who will likely start charging and use the revenue to build our own server farms as we grow. So you're too lucky for words now, and to not mess it up, please only tell friends who want a serious study site about history, and don't broadcast it to the hoi poloi that aren't elite enough to make good use of it, pretty please with sugar on top.

A technical note. Historyscoping can be done on a smart phone with a dinky 320x480 screen, if you've got a lot of patience, and it will work with a 10" Netbook or 13" Notebook but the best way is with a desktop with a 19" (1440x900) or larger monitor so that you can see a large number of words at one time. Why? Because as you learn to read faster, your mind will take more words in at one time, be able to swim in a larger pond to fill-in your mental jigsaw puzzle and make sense of history. You should always be striving to view larger chunks of the Great Track of Time at a single glance, after which you can use your Page Up and Page Down keys to fly through history and make it yours.

The race is on. Don't get left behind.

The Haunted Forest - Go BackExperience the awesome astounding power of TLW to fill your mind with concentrated gold nuggets of history knowledge as fast as you can take it. Warning: This is the HARDEST WEB SITE IN THE WORLD. Don't try it unless you want to strain if not bust your brain! You're probably not smart enough anyway, so think twice. Only the top 1% of the top 1% can probably hope to succeed. It's your right to try, but proceed at your own risk. You've been warned :)

Gandhi's Good Leaders Don't Fall Behind One Bite At a Time Yellow Brick Road Start

The First Lesson for All Historyscopers

The Master Gateway to the World Historyscope


Abbreviations Used

Reporting Errata





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