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The Gold Trade of Ancient & Medieval West Africa
West Africa was one of the world's greatest producers of gold in the Middle Ages. Trade in the metal went back to antiquity but when the camel caravans...
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Map of the Russian Empire on the Eve of WWI, 1914
This map illustrates the Russian Empire on the eve of World War I in 1914. Spanning from Eastern Europe to the Pacific Ocean, it was the largest contiguous...
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Definition
Aethelstan
Aethelstan was the first King of England, ruling from 927 to 939. The son of Edward the Elder (reign 899-924) and grandson of Alfred the Great (reign...
Definition
Tsar Nicholas II - Last of the Romanovs
Tsar Nicholas II (reign 1894-1917) was the last of the Romanov emperors, murdered along with his family during the turmoil of the Russian Revolution...
Definition
Italo-Ethiopian Wars
Italy occupied Ethiopia for five years, from 1935 to 1941, following a mass-scale invasion launched by the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini (1883-1945...
Definition
Cleopatra of Macedon
Cleopatra of Macedon (355/4-308 BCE), daughter of Philip II of Macedon (reign 359-336 BCE) and his Molossian queen, Olympias of Epirus (c. 375-316 BCE...
Article
Battle of New Orleans - The American Agincourt
The Battle of New Orleans (8 January 1815) was the final major battle of the War of 1812, in which a ragtag American army under Major General Andrew...
Definition
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, signed on 3 March 1918, outlined the harsh conditions under which the crumbling Russian Empire withdrew from the First...
Definition
Bleeding Kansas - Dress Rehearsal for the American Civil War
Bleeding Kansas' was a term coined by the New York Tribune in 1856, referring to the escalating hostilities in the Kansas Territory between pro-slavery...
Article
Interview: Her Lotus Year. Wallis Simpson in China
Wallis Simpson (1896-1986) is often remembered as the wife of King Edward VIII, the Duke of Windsor. British monarch for less than a year in 1936, Edward...
Definition
Henry Clay - The Great Compromiser
Henry Clay (1777-1852) was an American lawyer and statesman, one of the defining political figures of his age. Over the course of his several decades...
Article
The Murder of the Romanov Family
The brutal murder of the entire Romanov family was the culmination of deep discontent across the Russian Empire with the persistently autocratic rule...
Definition
Dred Scott Decision - Worst Supreme Court Ruling in US History
The Dred Scott Decision (Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393 (1857) was the infamous ruling of the United States Supreme Court that, according...
Collection
12 Famous Ships in History
In this collection, we look at 12 of the most famous ships that have ever sailed the high seas. From antiquity to the 20th century, these ships were...
Definition
Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 - Northern Resistance and Tubman's Rescue of Charles Nalle
The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 (1850-1864) was part of the Compromise of 1850, drafted to diffuse tensions between Southern 'slave states' and Northern...
Article
Hildegard of Bingen's Unknown Language and Unknown Letters
Sometime in 1153 or 1154, the German nun Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) wrote a letter to the elderly Pope Anastasius IV (1073-1154). Her words were...
Definition
Compromise of 1850
The Compromise of 1850 was a series of five bills passed by the US Congress in September 1850 to diffuse a sectional crisis brewing between the 'free...
Article
Harriet Tubman's Escape from Slavery - Bound for the Promised Land
When Sojourner Truth (circa 1797-1883) escaped from slavery, she later said, "I did not run off, for I thought that wicked, but I walked off, believing...
