(Reuters) -Elon Musk said in a social media post that his proposed cage fight with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg would

Australia can deliver the final blow to old enemy England's dismal World Cup campaign on Saturday with memories of their...

By Luc Cohen NEW YORK The sole person convicted at trial of defrauding donors to an online campaign

If TikTok is to be believed, American men are absolutely obsessed with ancient Rome – and now a historian has explained why. The trend: “How often do you think about the Roman Empire?” has swept the social media platform in recent weeks. Scores of women have posted about how often their husbands or boyfriends said they think about it. More often than not, it’s more than once a day. But why the fascination? Historian Tom Holland could have the answer – and it doesn’t reflect well on America. Firstly, he writes in Time magazine, it is likely to be something more “visceral” than the great orators and writers like Cicero and Ovid, whose work still gets academics excited 2,000 years later. Instead, he says, it is because the Roman empire was “the apex predator of antiquity: powerful, terrifying, box-office”. Not only this, he adds, but the fact that it was so long ago means modern audiences don’t feel as uncomfortable with the cruel and violent acts of the Roman Empire as with more recent examples. “The Romans, much like the dinosaurs, are not merely glamorous—they are also safely extinct.” However, writes Holland, an author and co-host of podcast The Rest Is History, there is more to it than that: “Romans, more than any other ancient people, seem to offer America a distorted reflection of itself.” @theyaresam_ the roman empire is actually fascinating “Just as American conservatives today look back wistfully to the Founding Fathers as patrons of an age of rugged independence and virtue, so did the Founding Fathers look back with an equal wistfulness to the early years of Rome. “There, for any infant republic victorious in a war against a great monarchy, was a morality tale to be found that could hardly help but serve as inspiration. “The Romans, like the Americans, had originally been ruled by a king; then, resolved no longer to live in servitude, they had dared all in a heroic and ultimately successful campaign to expel him.” The picture gets less rosy when you look to 21st century comparisons, he continues. Both the US and Rome suffered from from wars in Iraq, the rise of rival superpowers, “political vendettas pursued in the law courts” and “the emergence of radicals preaching that the last will be first, and the first will be last, to the excitement of many, and the consternation of others”. When Americans think of Rome, Holland concludes, they are thinking of a civilisation that is both “strange and familiar; terrifying and glamorous; safely extinct and the image of themselves”. Let's just hope the US doesn't suffer the same fate as the Roman Empire any time soon. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Twitter/X is continuing to throw monetisation plans against the wall to see what sticks. Its

The US is days away from a shutdown. Here's a summary of why it's happening and what to expect.

The plane crash that killed 3 members of Lynyrd Skynyrd came days after release of the band's album 'Street Survivor'

Arguably the two most surprisingly good teams in the American League, the Texas Rangers and Baltimore Orioles, will play a three-game series over the weekend with Game 1 set to take place on Friday night at Camden Yards.The two teams are sitting in second and third in the American League with th...

Ronald Acuña Jr. hit a grand slam on his wedding night to become the first player with 30 homers and 60 stolen bases in a season, and the Atlanta Braves overcame a pair of Mookie Betts home runs to beat the Los Angeles Dodgers 8-7

Tucked into a narrow tree line on Ukraine's southern front, a young Ukrainian soldier wearing an American flag patch talks about how frightening it was the first time his team assaulted the densely mined Russian positions in the offensive launched a month ago.

Rex Heuermann was arrested on Thursday by plainclothes police near his office in Fifth Avenue, midtown Manhattan

A top Russian official has addressed the whereabouts of a senior general who has not been seen in public since the Wagner mutiny. Andrei Kartapolov, head of the state Duma defence committee, said that general Sergei Surovikin is “resting” and “not available right now”. It follows reports that Wagner boss Yevgeny Priogozhin has likely been murdered or incarcerated after leading a failed rebellion against the Kremlin regime. General Surovikin is known to have a close relationship with Mr Priogozhin who last month ordered his soldiers to march on Moscow in what the Kremlin referred to as an aborted mutiny. The incident formed part of an ongoing feud with Russia’s top military brass about its strategy in the Ukraine war. Media reports claim Mr Surovikin was being interrogated by security forces at an unknown location over his connection to warlord Mr Priogozhin. However, the British Ministry of Defence suggested Mr Surovikin had been “sidelined following the mutiny”, the Guardian reported. The ministry cited the “increased public profile” of his deputy Viktor Afzalov as evidence of why he has disappeared from public view. In a televised appearance, Afzalov was shown briefing chief of general staff Valery Gerasimov on July 10, according to the ministry. “Afzalov’s increased public profile, while Surovikin’s whereabouts remains unclear, adds further weight to the hypothesis that Surovikin has been sidelined following the mutiny,” it said. Meanwhile, Russian major general Ivan Popov, who was the commander of Russia’s 58th Combined Arms Army fighting near Zaporizhzhia, has said that he was fired as a commander after telling his superiors “the truth” about the dire situation on the frontlines in Ukraine. Maj Gen Popov told his troops in an audio statement that he was dismissed after a meeting with the top military brass in what he described as a “treacherous” stab in the back to the Russian forces fighting in Ukraine. He added that the military leadership was angered by his frank talk about the challenges faced by his forces. “The top officers apparently saw me as a source of threat and rapidly issued an order to get rid of me, which was signed by the defence minister in just one day,” he said. Read More Russia-Ukraine war – live: Wagner forces training soldiers in Belarus after Prigozhin exile Wagner mercenaries are in Belarus and training the country’s soldiers Putin wants to attend an August summit. Host country South Africa doesn't want to have to arrest him The Body in the Woods | An Independent TV Original Documentary The harrowing discovery at centre of The Independent’s new documentary