Southern Shore, Mediterranean Style

Alexander the Great, the ancient Macedonian leader who counted Aristotle as a personal tutor, was the last great military general to ride on the front of the charge. He was a pragmatic ruler, trying to not upset the provinces he conquered too much, understanding that the continuity of commerce was the true key.

He also didn't desire to destroy cities as much as build. He founded a great city on the southern Mediterranean coast of present-day Egypt, called it Alexandria, and for more than a thousand years it was the greatest Old World city the world had scene.

The library was the crown jewel of the city, as Alexander considered knowledge was power, and a great city would accumulate knowledge. It's one of the world's great tragedies when the Christians came through and sacked the joint, burning nearly a thousand years of scholarship and study. Ideas collected from all of the world gone in a cloud.

I've read that the destruction of the great library of Alexandria set scientific inquiry back many centuries. One idea I've seen being passed around is that it's conceivable that had the steam engine, which was literally months from discovery, been discovered in that era, ballistic rocketry and splitting the atom could have been accomplished during the 1400-1600s.

Can you imagine how the world might look if flight and other advanced technologies were normal during our Civil War? Would there have even been a Civil War?

Would there even be an America?

Well, here's the flag for the city of Alexandria. On it is the famed Lighthouse, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the location of which I believe has been discovered.