History of Athens returned under Darius's son Xerxes. When a small Greek force holding the pass of Thermopylae was defeated, the Persians proceeded to capture an evacuated Athens. The city of Athens got captured and sacked twice by the Persians within one year after Thermopylae. Subsequently, the Athenians (led by Themistocles), with their allies, engaged the much larger Persian navy at sea in the Battle of Salamis. Xerxes built a throne on the coast in order to watch the Greek navy being defeated, but instead, the Persians were routed. This established a great turning point in the war. In 479 BC, the Athenians
Methuselah Foundation the organization. The initiative was named after the 300 Spartans who held the pass at Thermopylae in 480 BC during the Greco-Persian Wars. In addition, in 2015, the foundation began memorializing The 300 donors with a monument at St. Thomas Island in the U.S. Virgin Islands. On September 16, 2006, Peter Thiel announced a pledge of $3.5 million to the Methuselah Foundation and the SENS program to "support scientific research into the alleviation and eventual reversal of the debilities caused by aging." In January 2018, the anonymous principal of the Pineapple Fund donated $1 million to the Methuselah Foundation. Methuselah