Showing results by author "Charles Rivers" in All Categories

In 1769, Captain James Cook’s historic expedition in the region would lead to an English claim on Australia, but before he reached Australia, he sailed near New Zealand and spent weeks mapping part of New Zealand’s coast. Thus, he was also one of the first to observe and take note of the indigenous peoples of the two islands.

At the start of Operation Barbarossa in June 1941, the Soviets were so caught by surprise at the start of the attack that the Germans were able to push several hundred miles into Russia across a front that stretched dozens of miles long, reaching the major cities of Leningrad and Sevastopol in just three months. The first major Russian city in their path was Minsk, which fell in only six days. In order to make clear his determination to win at all costs, Stalin had the three men in charge of the troops defending Minsk executed for their failure to hold their position.

The Whig Party: The History and Legacy of the Influential Political Party in 19th Century America looks at how the party came into being, its most important leaders and ideas, and why the party disappeared shortly before the Civil War. Along with pictures depicting important people, places, and events, you will learn about the Whig Party like never before.

Outside of the Midwest, the Chippewa are not as well known as other Native American tribes like the Sioux or Cherokee, but they have long been one of the biggest groups in all of North America. Not surprisingly their presence around the Great Lakes region made them especially important to early European explorers who sailed the St. Lawrence and came into contact with the natives as they continued searching for the Northwest Passage.

Of all the peoples of the ancient Near East, the Phoenicians are among the most recognizable but also perhaps the least understood. The Phoenicians never built an empire like the Egyptians and Assyrians; in fact, the Phoenicians never created a unified Phoenician state. Instead, they existed as independent city-state kingdoms scattered throughout the Mediterranean region.

The modern history of Africa was, until very recently, written on behalf of the indigenous races by the white man, who had forcefully entered the continent during a particularly hubristic and dynamic phase of European history. The embrace of Christianity and Islam, even today, is not necessarily to the exclusion of ancestral spirits, nor the essentials of witchcraft and sorcery. The precarious security of albino people in east and central Africa, whose body parts are sought after in traditional “medicine,” is testimony to the fact that these superstitions are alive and well.

The American occupation of Japan holds a singular and problematic place in the histories both of Japan and of American foreign policy. For the Japanese, the occupation marked the transition from war to peace, from authoritarianism to democracy, and from privation to plenty, making it a passage from one of the darkest chapters in Japanese history to one of the brightest.

During the first half of the 1st millennium CE, an empire arose in Persia that extended its power and influence to Mesopotamia in the east, Arabia in the south, the Caucasus Mountains in the north, and as far east as India. This empire, known alternatively as the Sasanian Empire or Sassanid Empire, was the last of three great dynasties in Persia - the Achaemenid and the Parthian being the first two dynasties - before the rise of Islam.

The Sea Peoples remain as mysterious as they were influential; while the Egyptians documented their presence and the wars against them, it has never been clear exactly where the Sea Peoples originated or what compelled them to invade various parts of the region with massive numbers. Whatever the reason, the Sea Peoples posed an existential threat to the people already living in the region, as noted by an Egyptian inscription.

Even after Greek power waned, the Romans borrowed Greek culture, so it should come as little surprise that various Greeks continued to be influential in antiquity. In fact, if people in the third century CE were asked which religious or philosophical figure from the first century CE was most likely to found or inspire a global religion that would attract millions of followers and last for centuries, they would not have answered Jesus of Nazareth.

The time of the American mountain man was not to reach its peak until the mid-19th century, but the man who served as the prototype for the cultural genre hailed from an earlier age in which the new United States had scarcely established its most basic structural tenets. A member of the original Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery commissioned by Thomas Jefferson, John Colter’s multiple journeys to the northwest country of present-day Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho were first-time events in the development of the continent.

On March 9, 1522, a band of about a dozen rebellious Christians gathered in a printer's workshop in Grabengasse, Zurich, fully resolved to march to the beat of their own drum. These renegades were intent on broadcasting a message to the corrupt and increasingly dishonorable Catholic Church...Ulrich Zwingli: The Life and Legacy of the Swiss Reformer Who Fought the Catholic Church during the Reformation chronicles the reformer’s life and teachings, and the influence he had on religion.

The Civil War was the deadliest conflict in American history, and had the two sides realized it would last four years and inflict over a million casualties, it might not have been fought. Since it was, however, historians and history buffs alike have been studying and analyzing the biggest battles ever since. Americans have long been fascinated by the Civil War, marveling at the size of the battles, the leadership of the generals, and the courage of the soldiers.

It's no surprise that the Shawnee continue to be closely associated with their most famous leader, Tecumseh, the most famous Native American of the early 19th century. While leading the Shawnee, he attempted to peacefully establish a Native American nation east of the Mississippi River in the wake of the American Revolution. Together with his brother Tenskwatawa, Tecumseh was in the process of forming a wide-ranging, Native American confederacy that they hoped would stem the westward flow of Anglo-American settlers.

The ‘Ndrangheta (pronounced an-drang-et-ah) is a close neighbor of the Cosa Nostra and currently considered the most powerful (and difficult to spell) criminal organization in Italy. The ‘Ndrangheta is centered around Calabria, the most southwestern region of Italy, almost touching the Sicilian city of Messina. Though it began as far back as the late 19th century, it was not until the 1950s that the ‘Ndrangheta started to spread its tentacles throughout Italy and then across the entire globe, forming an empire that now ranges from Australia and Turkey, to Chile to Canada.

Caesar is still remembered for winning a civil war and helping bring about the end of the Roman Republic, leaving a line of emperors in its place, but it’s quite possible that none of what Caesar did would’ve happened without the template for such actions being set 40 years earlier.

The ancient Greeks used a number of forms of divination to determine the future and seek advice from the gods as to which actions they should take in any given situation. The most popular of these ways to consult the Gods was through a visit to an oracle - usually a person - at a fixed shrine. The oldest of these Greek sites was at Dodona in Epirus, and while it continued to be a major oracle for the Greek world through antiquity, it was quickly overtaken by the oracle at Delphi as the most consulted by kings, politicians, and ordinary Greeks alike.

Alan Turing: The Life and Legacy of the English Computer Scientist Who Became World War II’s Most Famous Codebreaker looks at the life of one of World War II’s unsung heroes. You will learn about Alan Turing like never before.

Emerging from France's catastrophic 1940 defeat like a bedraggled and rather sinister phoenix, the French State – better known to history as Vichy France or the Vichy Regime after its spa-town capital, stands in history as a unique and bizarre creation of German Fuhrer Adolf Hitler's European conquests. A patchwork of paradoxes and contradictions, the Vichy Regime maintained a quasi-independent French nation for some time after the Third Reich invasion.

When the Spanish came into contact with different tribes in the Southwest, they were so intrigued by the structure of the communities that they gave the natives the name Pueblo, a term they used to measure certain sizes for their own settlements. Thus, while most Americans have heard of the Pueblo and Navajo, many remain unfamiliar with distinctions within the tribes.