The wreck of the RMS Titan­ic has nev­er ceased to com­mand atten­tion, from pop-cul­tur­al fas­ci­na­tion to sci­en­tif­ic scruti­ny and every­thing in between. That can make it seem, espe­cial­ly to the younger gen­er­a­tions, as if human­i­ty has been gaz­ing upon its remains since they first set­tled at the bot­tom of the North Atlantic Ocean. In fact, the pre­cise loca­tion of the ship­wreck went unknown for more than 73 years, between the day of the dis­as­ter, April 15th, 1912, and that of the dis­cov­ery, Sep­tem­ber 1, 1985. In the video above, you can watch the very moment debris from the Titan­ic first came into the view of Argo, the unmanned under­sea cam­era used by the researchers seek­ing it out.

“Some­body should get Bob,” says one of the crew as soon as it becomes clear, even on their low-res­o­lu­tion black-and-white mon­i­tor, that they’re look­ing at man-made objects on the sea floor. And well they should have: the Bob in ques­tion is oceanog­ra­ph­er and Argo inven­tor Robert Bal­lard, who’d been active­ly think­ing about how to find the Titan­ic since at least the ear­ly nine­teen-sev­en­ties and board­ed Woods Hole Oceano­graph­ic Insti­tute’s R/V Knorr with intent to find it.

In truth, the voy­age was financed by the U.S. Navy, which had much less inter­est in find­ing the wreck of the Titan­ic than those of the USS Scor­pi­on and Thresh­er, two nuclear sub­marines lost in the six­ties. If Bal­lard could look for them, so the deal went, he could use the expe­di­tion’s spare time and resources on his life’s mis­sion.

After deter­min­ing that the Scor­pi­on and Thresh­er had implod­ed, Bal­lard and the Knorr crew con­tin­ued on to the gen­er­al area in which the Titan­ic sank. Know­ing that the infa­mous­ly “unsink­able” ocean lin­er would have been sub­ject to the same mighty under­sea pres­sure, they kept their eyes open, through Argo, for sim­i­lar­ly scat­tered frag­ments rather than intact sec­tions of the hull. As the video shows us, the strat­e­gy worked: only when a trail of debris leads them to an iden­ti­fi­able boil­er, proof pos­i­tive that they’d found what they were look­ing for, does the cheer go up. Bal­lard would go on to dis­cov­er oth­er wide­ly known ship­wrecks — the bat­tle­ship Bis­mar­ck, the air­craft car­ri­er USS York­town in 1998 — but one sus­pects that noth­ing quite match­es that first Titan­ic high.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

The writ­ings of the Found­ing Fathers of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca include many a ref­er­ence to the likes of Cicero, Mon­tesquieu, and John Locke. That the names Hyder Ali and his son Tipu Sul­tan nev­er appear may not sound like much of a sur­prise, even if you hap­pen to know that they ruled the Indi­an region of Mysore, now offi­cial­ly called Mysu­ru, at the time. But his­to­ry records that more than a few Amer­i­cans, includ­ing Thomas Jef­fer­son and John Adams, fol­lowed with great inter­est the strug­gles of that father and son against the British. Those strug­gles took place from the mid-eigh­teenth to the ear­ly nine­teenth cen­tu­ry — a time when the Amer­i­can colonies, of course, had their own con­flict brew­ing with the moth­er­land.

Hyder became the Sul­tan of Mysore in the sev­en­teen-six­ties: “a dan­ger­ous time to come to pow­er in South Asia,” writes Blake Smith at Aeon, giv­en that “the British East India Com­pa­ny was expand­ing its pow­er through­out the Sub­con­ti­nent.” Ally­ing with France, much like the rebelling Amer­i­can colonists, Hyder “held off the British advance for anoth­er two decades, dying in 1782, just a year before the US tri­umphed in its own rebel­lion against Britain.”

Amer­i­ca’s fas­ci­na­tion with Hyder and his suc­ces­sor Tipu, who died in bat­tle with the East India Com­pa­ny in 1799, remained for some time. “Mysore’s rulers became famil­iar ref­er­ences in Amer­i­can news­pa­pers, poems and every­day con­ver­sa­tion. Yet, with­in a gen­er­a­tion, Amer­i­cans lost their sense of sol­i­dar­i­ty with the Indi­an Sub­con­ti­nent.”

You can learn more about this episode of his­to­ry from the PBS Ori­gins video above. It gets into detail about the life of Tipu, known as “the Tiger of Mysore,” a nick­name the man him­self did much to jus­ti­fy. He even “com­mis­sioned a near­ly life-sized automa­ton of a tiger eat­ing a British sol­dier,” says the video’s host, which “includ­ed a crank attached to a mech­a­nism inside the tiger’s body that simul­ta­ne­ous­ly lift­ed the dying man’s arm and pro­duced nois­es imi­tat­ing his final cries.” Though he and his army con­tin­ued to fight in that spir­it, Mysore’s sit­u­a­tion became unten­able after both the U.S. and France made their peace with Britain. Despite the recen­cy of the hos­til­i­ties, the new lib­er­at­ed colony soon became some­thing of an ally in the main­te­nance of the British Empire’s remain­ing ter­ri­to­ries, India includ­ed — and would ulti­mate­ly learn a les­son or two of its own about the glob­al exten­sion of pow­er.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion: A Free Course from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty

The Old­est Known Pho­tographs of India (1863–1870)

India on Film, 1899–1947: An Archive of 90 His­toric Films Now Online]

Watch the Rise and Fall of the British Empire in an Ani­mat­ed Time-Lapse Map ( 519 A.D. to 2014 A.D.)

200-Year-Old Robots That Play Music, Shoot Arrows & Even Write Poems: Watch Automa­tons in Action

Bertrand Russell’s Improb­a­ble Appear­ance in a Bol­ly­wood Film (1967)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

More than a few medieval­ists object to the term “Dark Ages” as applied to the peri­od in which they spe­cial­ize. That can seem wish­ful in light of most com­par­isons between medieval times and the Renais­sance that came after­ward, or indeed, the era of the Roman Empire that came before. Con­sid­er the state of Europe as the fourth cen­tu­ry began: “The great cities of antiq­ui­ty were depop­u­lat­ed, some left in ruins,” says the nar­ra­tor of the How So video above, telling the sto­ry of the con­ti­nen­t’s polit­i­cal and lin­guis­tic frag­men­ta­tion. “The Roman trans­porta­tion sys­tem decayed, erod­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion and long-dis­tance trade. Coins van­ished, leav­ing no eco­nom­ic sys­tem to sup­port pro­fes­sion­al armies. Lit­er­a­cy plum­met­ed, crip­pling admin­is­tra­tive sys­tems. And most notably, peace and secu­ri­ty were gone.”

But there’s plen­ty more his­to­ry to come there­after: about a mil­len­ni­um’s worth, in fact, which the video cov­ers in a mere twen­ty min­utes. Events of note in that grand sweep include Jus­tin­ian I’s attempt to expand the Byzan­tine Empire of the east; the cre­ation and spread of the Islam­ic caliphate; Charle­mag­ne’s uni­fi­ca­tion of most of west­ern Chris­ten­dom; inva­sions by Vikings, Mag­yars, and Mus­lim raiders; the rise of cas­tles and the feu­dal sys­tem that they came to sym­bol­ize; the cre­ation of the Holy Roman Empire; the flour­ish­ing of cities and uni­ver­si­ties; and the Nor­man Con­quest of Eng­land, as seen on the Bayeux Tapes­try. There’s also the unpleas­ant­ness of the Black Death, which swept through Europe from the mid-four­teenth to the ear­ly six­teenth cen­tu­ry — but as with oth­er medieval dis­as­ters, the plague held the seeds of a civ­i­liza­tion­al rebirth.

“For some sur­vivors, the con­se­quences of the plague were not so grim,” says the nar­ra­tor. “As the pop­u­la­tion dropped, land became wide­ly avail­able, and the demand for labor rose dra­mat­i­cal­ly.” Peas­ants demand­ed improved con­di­tions and revolt­ed against the rulers who refused; ulti­mate­ly, they “gained new free­doms and oppor­tu­ni­ties, and work­ers enjoyed high­er wages. Cre­ativ­i­ty and inno­va­tion in sci­ence and cul­ture fol­lowed, cre­at­ing the envi­ron­ment in which Euro­pean schol­ars “defined the past mil­len­ni­um as ‘Dark Ages,’ and so posi­tioned them­selves as the tran­si­tion between the medieval and mod­ern world.” Some liken the cur­rent state of the world to the decline of the Roman Empire; if they’re cor­rect, maybe we have anoth­er Renais­sance to look for­ward to about 40 gen­er­a­tions down the road.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Free Yale Course on Medieval His­to­ry: 700 Years in 22 Lec­tures

What Did Peo­ple Eat in Medieval Times? A Video Series and New Cook­book Explain

How Every­thing in a Medieval Cas­tle Worked, from Its Moats to Its Dun­geons

What Sex Was Like in Medieval Times?: His­to­ri­ans Look at How Peo­ple Got It On in the Dark Ages

How the Byzan­tine Empire Rose, Fell, and Cre­at­ed the Glo­ri­ous Hagia Sophia: A His­to­ry in Ten Ani­mat­ed Min­utes

Advice for Time Trav­el­ing to Medieval Europe: How to Stay Healthy & Safe, and Avoid­ing Charges of Witch­craft

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.