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Operation Nemesis and Other Historic Paybacks

Khalid Elhassan November 17, 2019 32 min

Armenian Genocide - 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide

Expedition sent by Chin Shi Huangdi in search of the Elixir of Life. Wikimedia

5. Fame! I Wanna Live Forever

Another manifestation of Shi Huangdi’s megalomania – which eventually did him in – was his pursuit of immortality drugs. He lavishly funded searches for a “Life Elixir” that would keep him alive forever, including an expedition with hundreds of ships that sailed off into the Pacific in search of a mythical “Land of the Immortals”. It was never heard from again.

He also patronized alchemists who claimed that they were close to inventing the Life Elixir, but that their R&D was hobbled by a lack of funding – a problem which Shi Huangdi generously put to rights.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.