Today’s Wisdom - Offensives, Origins & Offsides

🪖 What The Tet Offensive Revealed

In January 1968, as Vietnam prepared for the lunar new year known as Tet, over 80,000 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops launched a stunning surprise assault. They targeted more than 100 cities and towns across South Vietnam including the unthinkable target, the U.S. Embassy in Saigon. It was one of the most audacious operations of the war. Militarily, it was a disaster for the North as tens of thousands were killed, but politically, Tet flipped the war on its head.

For years, American generals had promised victory was close. Then came the televised images: firefights in Saigon’s streets, Hue reduced to rubble, exhausted Marines fighting door-to-door. It was the first war fought in people’s living rooms and perception shifted overnight. When the revered broadcaster Walter Cronkite broke from script to declare the war “mired in stalemate,” President Lyndon Johnson reportedly sighed, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.” Within weeks, Johnson announced he would not seek re-election.

Historians now see Tet not as a battlefield defeat, but a psychological one, the moment Washington’s credibility collapsed. It proved that in modern warfare, victory depends not just on firepower, but on narrative. Once belief falters, even the strongest army can find itself fighting in the dark.

🎓 The Worlds First Universities

Long before lecture halls buzzed with laptops and coffee cups, higher learning thrived under the arches of the medieval Islamic world. In 859 CE, Al-Qarawiyyin University in Fez, Morocco opened its doors, founded by Fatima al-Fihri. The daughter of a wealthy merchant, Fatima invested her inheritance to build a place devoted to study. Recognized by UNESCO as the world’s oldest continuously operating university, it taught theology, mathematics, and astronomy centuries before Europe’s Renaissance had even begun.

The next great institution to emerge was Cairo's Al-Azhar University, founded in 970 CE, famously known for having the largest collection of Arabic manuscripts in the world. By the 11th and 12th centuries, Europe began to follow their lead. The University of Bologna, founded in 1088, established the framework of the modern university, complete with degrees and paid professors. Paris became the heart of theological study, and Oxford, growing out of cathedral schools, emerged as England’s intellectual powerhouse. For the first time, knowledge itself had an institution and a system to sustain it.

These early universities did more than preserve knowledge; they professionalized curiosity and turned education into a lifelong pursuit rather than a privilege of birth. From Fez to Oxford, the idea took root that truth is not inherited, but discovered. A thousand years later, that mission still stands, to question, to learn, and to illuminate the world through knowledge.

⚽ The Technology That’s Changing Football Forever

For over a century, football’s magic lived in its imperfections. Human error was part of the theatre. But in 2018, the sport took a leap into the digital age with the introduction of VAR, or Video Assistant Referee.

Using between four and eight cameras in a standard setup, VAR allowed officials to review crucial moments from multiple angles. Accuracy in refereeing decisions is at 95% but at a cost. Implementing the full VAR system can cost a major European league around $6.5 million per season and for smaller leagues the cost is estimated to be over $70,000 per match.

But technology couldn’t iron out emotion. Fans still bristle at the microscopic offside lines and the strange silence that replaces celebration while a decision hangs in the balance. In a YouGov survey referenced in 2020, only 4% of fans believed VAR in the Premier League had “worked very well”. In the 2023–24 season, 31 calls were still ruled wrong, proof that even precision has limits. In a match where the goal-line technology failed due to a protocol error Aston Villa earned a draw. The single point they secured later proved to be the difference that kept Villa in the Premier League and relegated Bournemouth, costing the latter an estimated £3 million in broadcast revenue.

VAR was built to make football fairer, and by the data, it has. Yet it also changed something harder to measure: the rhythm of the game itself. For the first time, the beautiful game began to resemble a system - accurate, efficient, and slightly less human.

History, knowledge, and sport all teach the same lesson: perception shapes reality, curiosity sustains progress, and precision always has limits.

You can also listen to this edition through the link at the top of the email. We hope you enjoyed reading and found a new lens on history, learning, and sport. We appreciate every one of you, please share this with others to help our community grow. Until next time — The A Little Wiser Team.

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