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Spanish accounts and Mesoamerican ruins have ensured that 500 years later, people remain fascinated by civilizations like the Maya and Aztec, as well as sites such as Chichen Itza and Tikal. What is often overlooked is that the Maya and Aztec established kingdoms on lands that had been inhabited for millennia before them, and ancient cultures had not only left ruins but also influenced the civilizations that came after them. Thus, while sites like...
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The Third Reich's Luftwaffe began World War II with significant advantages over other European air forces, playing a critical role in the German war machine's swift, powerful advance. By war's end, however, the Luftwaffe had been decimated by combat losses and crippled by poor decisions at the highest levels of military decision-making, and it proved unable to challenge Allied air superiority despite a last-minute upsurge in German aircraft production.
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Most scientists believe the evolution of humans has a history nearly as long as life itself. Anatomically modern humans and all other life that has existed on the planet first came about from the single-celled microorganisms that emerged approximately 4 billion years ago. Through the processes of mutation and natural selection, all forms of life developed, and this continuous lineage of life makes it difficult to say precisely when one species completely...
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Since the early days of human warfare, which may date back to the Stone Age, combatants have sought to gain an advantage through the acquisition of secret information. With the growth of technology, a parallel advantage was sought through the application of numerous types of torture. In the 19th century, the concept of manipulation was added to military tactics, an attempt to influence the minds of assassins, double agents, and world leaders alike...
5) Spanish Empire in the Americas: The History of Spain's Colonization across Central America and South
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By the time Christopher Columbus started setting east from the New World, he had explored San Salvador in the Bahamas (which he thought was Japan), Cuba (which he thought was China), and Hispaniola, the source of gold. As the common story goes, Columbus, en route back to Spain from his first journey, called in at Lisbon as a courtesy to brief the Portuguese King John II of his discovery of the New World. King John subsequently protested that according...
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The concept of international trade was born in the ancient Mediterranean, which provided the perfect set of circumstances needed to produce an intricate trading system whose influence can still be seen in present-day economic practices. The ancient Mediterranean was home to a diverse range of cultures and landscapes, encompassing deserts, forests, islands and fertile plains. Different natural resources were available in different geographical areas,...
7) Slave Uprisings that Shook the South: The History and Legacy of America's Biggest Revolts in the 19t
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As the issue of slavery roiled the country, few people became as controversial or consequential as Nat Turner, who was one of millions of slaves in the South before the Civil War but ultimately led the nation's most notorious slave uprising. In August 1831, Turner led a rebellion that terrorized Virginia for several days, killing dozens of whites and freeing slaves as his band moved from plantation to plantation. The Richmond Enquirer reported, "A...
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Debates over paper money and banking are older than the United States of America itself. 18th and 19th century Americans were deeply ambivalent about paper money and central banks, and political fights over these issues were among the bitterest in American history. In fact, controversies over the country's central bank birthed both the first (1792-1824) and second (1828-1852) party systems; frequently, policymakers crafted responses to the crisis...
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The pages of world history textbooks contain a litany of "lost" empires and civilizations, but usually, upon further review, it is revealed that these so called lost empires are often just lesser known cultures that had a less apparent impact on history than other more well-known civilizations. When one scours the pages of history for civilizations that seem inexplicably lost but had a great impact during its time, a number of places in Asia Minor...
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By mid-1943, British leaders, particularly Churchill, believed that while the defeat of Germany and Italy were important, victory should not be achieved at the expense of ceding control of post-war Europe to the Soviets. What went unsaid was that Churchill's goal was British control over the Mediterranean, and his insistence on using Allied resources in the Mediterranean and working to block Russian gains even while the war was still in progress caused...
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During World War I, German U-boats operated solo except on one occasion. Initially, the British and nations supplying England with food and materiel scattered vessels singly across the ocean, making them vulnerable to the lone submarines. However, widespread late war re-adoption of the convoy system tipped the odds in the surface ships' favor, as one U-boat skipper described: "The oceans at once became bare and empty; for long periods at a time the...
12) 1811 German Coast Uprising and Nat Turner's Rebellion: The History and Legacy of America's Most F
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As the issue of slavery roiled the country, few people became as controversial or consequential as Nat Turner, who was one of millions of slaves in the South before the Civil War but ultimately led the nation's most notorious slave uprising. In August 1831, Turner led a rebellion that terrorized Virginia for several days, killing dozens of whites and freeing slaves as his band moved from plantation to plantation. The Richmond Enquirer reported, "A...
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The very name of the Louvre conjures up scenes of art and elegance, and of long halls filled with beauty and people strolling through them whispering quietly among themselves about the glories they are witnessing. Even those who have never been to the Louvre know some of its most prized possessions, from ancient statues to Leonardo Da Vinci's "Mona Lisa". As the world's largest museum, the Louvre is unquestionably the cultural highpoint of Paris,...
14) The Peninsula Campaign: The History and Legacy of the Union's Failed Attempt to Capture Richmond in
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As Union commander George McClellan moved the Army of the Potomac up the Peninsula in early 1862, the Union army still had a nearly 2-1 advantage in manpower, so Army of Northern Virginia commander Joseph E. Johnston continued to gradually pull his troops back to a line of defense nearer Richmond as McClellan advanced. In conjunction, the Union Navy began moving its operations further up the James River, until it could get within 7 miles of the Confederate...
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While modern technology has helped astronomers view the furthest reaches of the Solar System, it has also allowed scientists to start discovering planets orbiting distant stars. To make it easier to assess the relative mass and size of the new planets being discovered, scientists give these measurements as multiples of those properties for either Jupiter or Earth. In other words, if the planet is the same mass as Jupiter, then this measure would be...
16) Ancient and Medieval Conspiracy Theories: The History of the World's Most Persistent Conspiracy Theo
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Perhaps it should also not be surprising that the themes found in contemporary conspiracy theories are often echoed in ancient conspiracy theories. While some people still insist that Lyndon B. Johnson was in on John F. Kennedy's assassination, it was speculated across the ancient world that the young Macedonian king, Alexander the Great, conspired to have his own father, Philip II of Macedon, assassinated. Likewise, the New Age beliefs that Mesoamerican...
17) Underground Railroad to Mexico: The History and Legacy of the Southern Routes to Freedom for America
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The Underground Railroad is one of the most taught topics to young schoolchildren, and every American is familiar with the idea of fugitive slaves escaping to Canada and the North with the help of determined abolitionists and even former escaped slaves like Harriet Tubman. The secrecy involved in the Underground Railroad made it one of the most mysterious aspects of the mid-19th century in America, to the extent that claims spread that 100,000 slaves...
18) American Utopias: The History of Famous Attempts to Establish Utopian Societies in the United States
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In the 19th century, the young United States was exposed to the profound changes that historians call the Market Revolution. Cities experienced drastic changes as manufacturing and trade created jobs that hungry job seekers from the countryside migrated towards, but the hype triumphed over the realities, and more unemployed recent migrants lived in the cities than the number of gainfully employed workers. Urban stresses dominated American cities and...
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Human beings seem to have a particular fascination for microbiological threats. They are invisible, unpredictable and mysterious, and it is only in the past 150 years or so that scientists have begun to understand microorganisms and the maladies they can cause. Modern society has long been horrified and enthralled by accounts of such pestilences as the Black Death, which exterminated up to 60% of the population of Europe from 1347-1351. Less known...
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During the reign of the Artaxiad dynasty, Armenia became a hub of trade and commerce, connecting the Silk Road and the Mediterranean world. The Armenian kings encouraged the development of agriculture, commerce, and arts, and the kingdom became renowned for its skilled artisans, writers, and philosophers. Of course, given its central location, the dynasty also faced numerous challenges, including repeated invasions by the Roman and Parthian empires,...
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