The world in 100 stories
Which stories from history should every kid grow up with?
We’re in the process of building the world’s most powerful history curriculum — one that opens kids’ eyes to the world, and helps supercharge everything they learn with meaning. It took a whole month, but I’ve now published the three posts outlining the blueprint of our K–12 history curriculum in elementary, middle, and high school.
Now comes the harder easier harder fun part: finding the stories.
Our goal is as simple as it is grandiose:
identify (roughly) 100 history stories that can carry the meaning of the entire human past
Imaginary Interlocutor: That’s so megalomaniacal that I fret for the soul of anyone who even imagines they’re up to the task.
Agreed! Yet it has to be done. (Every single history curriculum in existence has to go through the same step.)
And this is where you, delightful reader, come in. See this as an old-fashioned barn-raising: if a community (of parents, teachers, history buffs, and lovers of things that matter) comes together, we can make this good.
Which is all to say: we’d like your recommendations for great history stories.
What Makes a History Story “Great”?
The stories we’re looking for aren’t just fun facts — they should be the kind of stories that can grow with a person over time.
Specifically, they should pack a MYTHIC (🧙♂️), ROMANTIC (🦹♂️), and PHILOSOPHIC (👩🔬) punch. In elementary school, a story should center on a person in a vivid situation — danger, discovery, courage, foolishness, wonder — that a kid can picture clearly. In middle school, that same story should open onto competing ideals and complex decisions. And in high school, the story should deepen again, revealing larger historical forces — economics, ideas, technologies, cultures, and systems that shaped the world.
The best history stories — the ones that we’re hunting! — work at all three levels.
Nominate a Story
If you’re willing, set a timer for sixty seconds. If a history story comes to mind, suggest it in the comments.
It’ll help us if you can use this format:
1. Story/person:
2. Year:
3. What basically happens (in your memory):
4. Why you love it:
If you’d like to include anything else, go for it! If you follow that format, feel free to submit as many recommendations as you’d like.
I.I.: Any particular time that the stories should be from?
Our memory palace will cover everything from the Big Bang to the future, so any time or place at all.
I.I.: Are these guaranteed to be used?
We can’t guarantee that we’ll use them in our official version of this curriculum, but even if we don’t, others who are reading this and making their own versions1 might.
Ask Me Anything (history edition)
Finally — what would you like to ask about teaching/learning history? (Of all the academic subjects I’ll be writing about, I might have the most experience in history — I have hot takes!) Ask away.
And once again I point out that these posts carry a “CC BY 4.0” copyright, which gives everyone in the permission to steal these ideas and make money off of them.