Definitions

David 'Davy' Crockett (1786-1836) was a soldier, frontiersman, politician, storyteller, and, long before his famous death at the Alamo on 6 March 1836, a celebrity. Scholar Michael Wallis writes...

The War of Jenkins' Ear (1739-1748) was a colonial conflict fought between Great Britain and Spain, primarily in the Caribbean and off the coast of South America. Looking to protect...

The Florentine Codex is an encyclopedic accounting of life in 16th-century Mexico and an invaluable resource for understanding the exchange between European and Indigenous cultures during...

The Spanish flu (so-named because the Spanish press openly reported on the outbreak while other World War I belligerents suppressed the news) broke out in March 1918 at Camp Funston, an army camp in...

Lend-Lease (sometimes called Lease-Lend) was a programme of financial and material aid given by the United States to its allies during the Second World War (1939-45). Food, weapons, ammunition, and agricultural...

Chinampas are human-made islands built in shallow lakebeds that have fed the people of Mesoamerica and shaped local ecosystems for over a thousand years. Sometimes referred to as 'floating gardens,'...

The Potsdam Conference, held from 17 July to 2 August 1945 in Potsdam in eastern Germany, decided how the Allies would deal with a defeated Germany and how they could best conduct the...

William Barret Travis (1809 to 1836) is best known as the commander of the Alamo during the 13-day siege (23 February to 6 March 1836), dying in the Battle of the Alamo on 6 March at the age of 26...

Queen Anne’s War (1702-1713) was the second major colonial conflict in North America, fought between the colonies of England – Great Britain after 1707 – and those of France and...

King William’s War (1688-1697) was the first of four major colonial conflicts fought between England, France, and their respective Native American allies in the 17th and 18th centuries...