In this episode of Stat Cats I compare household appliance and electricity penetration between India and 20th century USA, adding some fun stories about power cuts in India during childhood vacations.

How does India today compare with the USA of 100 years ago? What can we learn from this about where India is going? Check out this season Stat Cats to find out.

Calouste Gulbenkian, also known as Mr. Five Percent, sets up the biggest oil deals in the 21st century and becomes one of Europe's wealthiest people in the process.

Two British businessmen influence the fate of the Middle East. The first is Paul Julius Reuter, founder of the Reuters news agency, who started life as a Jew in Germany and ended life as a lord in the British Empire and owner of both a global news corporation and Persia's central bank. The second is William Knox D'Arcy, a rags to riches entrepreneur who gambled on land to find gold in Australia, and gambled on oil exploration to find the first commercial quantities of oil in the middle east, crossing paths with spies, The Rothschild Family, Winston Churchill, British Petroleum and more.

Britain's early forays into the middle east weave threads of spirit with the 1962 film Lawrence of Arabia. Aashrit also colours the episode with personal stories from his childhood in Dubai.

Horses give way to horsepower. The allies float to victory on a wave of oil.

The United States of America discovers oil in the 1800s and quickly ascends to its status as the world eater.

A childhood friendship results in the creation of the most important canal of the modern world; The Suez Canal.

Napoleon sets sail to conquer Egypt en route to India in the footsteps of Alexander the Great, but his luck runs out he becomes stranded. He stays in Egypt, and unintentionally lays the sociopolitical foundations of the world's future oil infrastructure.

James Drax lands an island colony named Barbados in 1627 with 300 Pounds in pocket and a dream to turn it into 10,000. He starts by living in a cave and shooting hogs, but soon his lofty goals become grounded in reality when he sets up a money making machine in the form of a sugar plantation. The roots of capitalism are laid down by enslaved hands on lands vacated by a mountain of the dead.