Among my friends, I am the one who enjoys learning history. Specifically, history from the Second World War to the Cold War. This period interests me because many events that occurred during this era influenced much of the modern world we know today.

Many of my kakis, though, think that history is either boring or just a subject filled with dates and places. Delving too deeply into a particular topic will lead to either blank stares or eye-rolling (typically both). It's a signal to keep my nerdiness in check.

When I'm not watching restoration videos, I'm looking for or watching ones about history. And while I'll keenly watch 50-minute-long documentaries, sometimes, short-format videos that are succinct are just as interesting, too. Especially when it comes to topics that I'm unfamiliar with but want to learn about.

By chance, I stumbled upon a channel called History Matters. At first, I was slightly put-off by the animations and simple graphics. But the narration, clear and straight to the point, with a bit of humour thrown in, quickly won me over.

Most of the videos on the channel are just over three minutes long, and the longest ones I've watched don't exceed 10 minutes. So, I can watch (and learn) more in a short amount of time.

Here's one question that never occurred to me till I saw this video: The Allies occupied Germany and Japan after World War 2 but not Italy. Why? Well, this video explains it.

During the 1980s when the Cold War was still red-hot, Czechoslovakia still existed. But I never learnt why it peacefully split into the Czech Republic and Slovak Republic until I came across this video.

To me, short clips are probably not the most optimal way to retain information. Knowledge that stays with you over time is typically the result of long periods of concentration, followed by revision, to 'lock' everything in. These videos are great because they give me light lessons, but they cannot say, prepare me to give a lecture.

Other interesting topics I've come across include the August 1991 coupe de état in the former USSR (yet another subject I knew little about till I watched clips from this channel), and the fact that there was opposition to the unification of East and West Germany.

Recently, I also learned why Ireland is divided and how the violence not only caused many deaths but also became a sore point and a reason for lingering grudges.

There are numerous other videos that I've yet to watch and countless events that I'm still unaware of. But thanks to channels like this one, I can plug these knowledge gaps, one three-minute video at a time.

– Jeremy