Definitions

James 'Jim' Bowie (1796-1836) was a frontiersman, land speculator, slave trader, and militia officer who became a legendary figure following the Sandbar Fight in 1827, an event that also made the Bowie Knife famous, and an international hero...

King George's War (1744-1748) was the third great colonial conflict fought in North America between Great Britain and France, each side aided by their respective Native American allies. Like the previous two major colonial wars, it coincided...

The Paris Peace Conference, held from January 1919 to January 1920 and attended by the victorious Allied powers, debated and agreed the terms of the peace settlement that formally ended the First World War (1914-18). As four empires were...

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: Perhaps more than anyone of his time, David...

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 its interests in the West Indies, Britain provoked a war...

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 conquest. Emerging from a time of societal...

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 Kansas, and struck young, healthy adults...

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 equipment were amongst the...

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,' these agricultural feats of engineering...

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 ongoing campaign against Japan as the Second World War...