Capsules

Morden

Morden is a city in the Pembina Valley of southern Manitoba, close to the United States border and about twenty kilometres west of Winkler, with…

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Aug 7, 2026

Selkirk

Selkirk is a city on the Red River about twenty-two kilometres northeast of Winnipeg, with 10,504 residents at the 2021 census. It came close to…

Thompson

Thompson is the largest city in northern Manitoba, roughly 650 kilometres north of Winnipeg on the Burntwood River, with 13,035 residents at the 2021…

Portage la Prairie

Portage la Prairie is a city in central Manitoba on the Assiniboine River, about eighty kilometres west of Winnipeg, with 13,270 residents at the…

Winkler

Winkler is the fourth-largest city in Manitoba, in the Pembina Valley about twenty kilometres north of the United States border, with 13,745…

Steinbach

Steinbach is the third-largest city in Manitoba, about sixty kilometres southeast of Winnipeg, with 17,806 residents at the 2021 census. Founded by…

Winnipeg

Winnipeg is the capital and largest city of the Canadian province of Manitoba, built where the Red and Assiniboine rivers meet near the longitudinal…

The Telegraph

Communication by coded electrical signal over wires. It was the first technology to separate the speed of a message from the speed of travel, and…

Radio

Communication using electromagnetic waves without a conductor between sender and receiver. It was the first medium to reach a mass audience…

Salt

Sodium chloride. It is physiologically essential, it was the only reliable food preservative for most of history, and its scarcity relative to demand…

Livestock

Domesticated animals kept for food, fibre, labour and other products. Livestock made agriculture viable on land that grows no crops, and they are now…

Fishing

Catching aquatic animals for food. It is the last major food source still taken from the wild at scale, which is precisely why it is the one where…

Nursing

The care of the sick, injured and dependent. Nursing is the largest health profession by a wide margin, its outcomes are measurable and substantial,…

Surgery

Treatment by physical intervention in the body. Surgery was limited for millennia not by knowledge of anatomy but by three specific obstacles, and…

Museums

Institutions that collect, preserve, study and display objects. What they display is a small fraction of what they hold, how they came to hold it is…

Libraries

Organised collections of recorded knowledge, held for use. Libraries are older than most of the writing systems that survive, their defining problem…

Accounting

The systematic recording and reporting of financial activity. Double-entry bookkeeping is among the more consequential inventions in the history of…

Insurance

The transfer of risk from an individual to a pool in exchange for a payment. It works because large numbers behave predictably even when individuals…

Banking

Institutions that take deposits and make loans. The central fact about banking is that it creates money rather than merely storing it, and almost…

Sanitation

The safe management of human waste. It has saved more lives than any medical treatment, it is the least discussed of the major public health…