Portal:History

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The History Portal

The Historians' History of the World

History is the systematic study of the past. As an academic discipline, it analyzes and interprets evidence to construct narratives about what happened and explain why it happened, focusing primarily on the human past. Some theorists categorize history as a social science, while others see it as part of the humanities or consider it a hybrid discipline. Similar debates surround the purpose of history—for example, whether its main aim is theoretical, to uncover the truth, or practical, to learn lessons from the past. In a more general sense, the term history refers not to an academic field but to the past itself, times in the past, or to individual texts about the past.

Historical research relies on primary and secondary sources to reconstruct past events and validate interpretations. Source criticism is used to evaluate these sources, assessing their authenticity, content, and reliability. Historians integrate the perspectives of several individual sources to develop a coherent narrative. Different schools of thought, such as positivism, the Annales school, Marxism, and postmodernism, have distinct methodological approaches.

History is a broad discipline encompassing many branches. Some focus on specific time periods, such as ancient history, while others concentrate on particular geographic regions, such as the history of Africa. Thematic categorizations include political history, social history, and economic history. Branches associated with specific research methods and sources include quantitative history, comparative history, and oral history.

History emerged as a field of inquiry in antiquity to replace myth-infused narratives, with influential early traditions originating in Greece, China, and later in the Islamic world. Historical writing evolved throughout the ages and became increasingly professional, particularly during the 19th century, when a rigorous methodology and various academic institutions were established. History is related to many fields, including historiography, philosophy, education, and politics. (Full article...)

Featured articles –

Featured articles are displayed here, which represent some of the best content on English Wikipedia.

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  Khrushchev in 1962

  
  Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (15 April [O.S. 3 April] 1894 – 11 September 1971) was a Soviet politician who led the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964. He held power as First Secretary of the Communist Party from 1953 to 1964 and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers from 1958 to 1964. During his rule, Khrushchev stunned the communist world with his denunciation of his predecessor Joseph Stalin and embarked on a policy of de-Stalinization with his key ally Anastas Mikoyan. He sponsored the early Soviet space program and enacted reforms in domestic policy. After some false starts, and a narrowly avoided nuclear war over Cuba, he conducted successful negotiations with the United States to reduce Cold War tensions. In 1964, the Kremlin circle stripped him of power, replacing him with Leonid Brezhnev as First Secretary and Alexei Kosygin as Premier.
  
  Khrushchev was born in 1894 in a village in western Russia. He was employed as a metal worker during his youth, and he was a political commissar during the Russian Civil War. Under the sponsorship of Lazar Kaganovich, Khrushchev worked his way up the Soviet hierarchy. He originally supported Stalin's purges and approved thousands of arrests. In 1938, Stalin sent him to govern the Ukrainian SSR, and he continued the purges there. During the Great Patriotic War, Khrushchev was again a commissar, serving as an intermediary between Stalin and his generals. Khrushchev was present at the defense of Stalingrad, a fact he took great pride in. After the war, he returned to Ukraine before being recalled to Moscow as one of Stalin's close advisers. (Full article...)
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  L 20e α was a design for a class of battleships to be built in 1918 for the German Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy) during World War I. Design work on the class of battleship to succeed the Bayern-class battleships began in 1914, but the outbreak of World War I in July 1914 led to these plans being shelved. Work resumed in early 1916 and lessons from the Battle of Jutland, fought later that year, were incorporated into the design. Reinhard Scheer, the commander of the fleet, wanted larger main guns and a higher top speed than earlier vessels, to combat the latest ships in the British Royal Navy. A variety of proposals were submitted, with armament ranging from the same eight 38 cm (15 in) guns of the Bayern class to eight 42 cm (16.5 in) guns.
  
  Work on the design was completed by September 1918, but by then there was no chance for them to be built. Germany's declining war situation and the reallocation of resources to support the U-boat campaign meant the ships would never be built. The ships would have been significantly larger than the preceding Bayern-class battleships, at 238 m (780 ft 10 in) long, compared to 180 m (590 ft 7 in) for the preceding ships. The L 20e α class would have been significantly faster, with a top speed of 26 knots (48 km/h; 30 mph), compared to the 21-knot (39 km/h; 24 mph) maximum of the Bayerns and would have been the first German warships to have mounted guns larger than 38 cm. (Full article...)
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  Brigadier General Joseph O. Shelby was a key Confederate commander at Little Blue River

  
  The Battle of Little Blue River was fought on October 21, 1864, as part of Price's Raid during the American Civil War. Major General Sterling Price of the Confederate States Army led an army into Missouri in September 1864 with hopes of challenging Union control of the state. During the early stages of the campaign, Price abandoned his plan to capture St. Louis and later his secondary target of Jefferson City. The Confederates then began moving westwards, brushing aside Major General James G. Blunt's Union force in the Second Battle of Lexington on October 19. Two days later, Blunt left part of his command under the authority of Colonel Thomas Moonlight to hold the crossing of the Little Blue River, while the rest of his force fell back to Independence. On the morning of October 21, Confederate troops attacked Moonlight's line, and parts of Brigadier General John B. Clark Jr.'s brigade forced their way across the river. A series of attacks and counterattacks ensued, neither side gaining a significant advantage.
  
  Meanwhile, Blunt had received permission from Major General Samuel R. Curtis to make a stand at the Little Blue River, and he and Curtis returned to the field with reinforcements that brought total Union strength up to about 2,800 men. More Confederate soldiers from the divisions of Brigadier Generals Joseph O. Shelby and John S. Marmaduke arrived on the field, bringing Confederate strength to about 5,500 men. One regiment of Confederate cavalry threatened the Union flank, and Brigadier General M. Jeff Thompson's Confederate brigade pressed the Union center. The Union line fell back and the fighting largely ending around 16:00, when the Union troops reached Independence. The Union soldiers later fell back to the Big Blue River, abandoning Independence. (Full article...)
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  Peter Badcock c. 1954

  
  Peter John Badcoe, VC (11 January 1934 – 7 April 1967) was an Australian recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest award for gallantry in battle that could be awarded at that time to a member of the Australian armed forces. Badcoe, born Peter Badcock, joined the Australian Army in 1950 and graduated from the Officer Cadet School, Portsea, in 1952 as a second lieutenant in the Royal Australian Artillery. A series of regimental postings followed, including a tour in the Federation of Malaya in 1962, during which he spent a week in South Vietnam observing the fighting. During the previous year, Badcock had changed his surname to Badcoe. After another regimental posting, he transferred to the Royal Australian Infantry Corps, and was promoted to major.
  
  In August 1966, Badcoe arrived in South Vietnam as a member of the Australian Army Training Team Vietnam. He was initially a sub-sector adviser, but in December became the operations adviser for Thừa Thiên-Huế Province. In this role, between February and April 1967, he displayed conspicuous gallantry and leadership on three occasions while on operations with South Vietnamese Regional Force units. In the final battle, he was killed by machine-gun fire. He was highly respected by both his South Vietnamese and United States allies, and was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross for his actions. He was also awarded the United States Silver Star and several South Vietnamese medals. He was buried at Terendak Garrison Cemetery in Malaysia. (Full article...)
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  Neal Dow (March 20, 1804 – October 2, 1897) was an American Prohibition advocate and politician. Nicknamed the "Napoleon of Temperance" and the "Father of Prohibition", Dow was born to a Quaker family in Portland, Maine. From a young age, he believed alcohol to be the cause of many of society's problems and wanted to ban it through legislation. In 1850, Dow was elected president of the Maine Temperance Union, and the next year he was elected mayor of Portland. Soon after, largely due to Dow's efforts, the state legislature banned the sale and production of alcohol in what became known as the Maine law. Serving twice as mayor of Portland, Dow enforced the law with vigor and called for increasingly harsh penalties for violators. In 1855, his opponents rioted and he ordered the state militia to fire on the crowd. One man was killed and several wounded, and when public reaction to the violence turned against Dow, he chose not to seek reelection.
  
  Dow was later elected to two terms in the Maine House of Representatives, but retired after a financial scandal. He joined the Union Army shortly after the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861, eventually attaining the rank of brigadier general. He was wounded at the siege of Port Hudson and later captured. After being exchanged for another officer in 1864, Dow resigned from the military and devoted himself once more to prohibition. He spoke across the United States, Canada, and Great Britain in support of the cause. In 1880, Dow headed the Prohibition Party ticket for President of the United States. After losing the election, he continued to write and speak on behalf of the prohibition movement for the rest of his life until his death in Portland at the age of 93. (Full article...)
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  Portrait of Klenau (1814) by Austrian painter Lampi the Younger

  
  Johann Josef Cajetan Graf von Klenau, Freiherr von Janowitz (Czech: Jan hrabě z Klenové, svobodný pán z Janovic; 13 April 1758 – 6 October 1819) was a field marshal in the Habsburg army. Klenau, the son of a Bohemian noble, joined the Habsburg military as a teenager and fought in the War of Bavarian Succession against Prussia, Austria's wars with the Ottoman Empire, the French Revolutionary Wars, and the Napoleonic Wars, in which he commanded a corps in several important battles.
  
  In the early years of the French Revolutionary Wars, Klenau distinguished himself at the Wissembourg lines, and led a battle-winning charge at Handschuhsheim in 1795. As commander of the Coalition's left flank in the Adige campaign in northern Italy in 1799, he was instrumental in isolating the French-held fortresses on the Po River by organizing and supporting a peasant uprising in the countryside. Afterward, Klenau became the youngest lieutenant field marshal in the history of the Habsburg military. (Full article...)
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  Crean on the Endurance Expedition, February 1915

  
  Thomas Crean (Irish: Tomás Ó Cuirín; c. 16 February 1877 – 27 July 1938) was an Irish seaman and Antarctic explorer who was awarded the Albert Medal for Lifesaving (AM).
  
  Crean was a member of three major expeditions to Antarctica during the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, including Robert Falcon Scott's 1911–1913 Terra Nova Expedition. This saw the race to reach the South Pole lost to Roald Amundsen and ended in the deaths of Scott and his party. During the expedition, Crean's 35-statute-mile (56 km) solo walk across the Ross Ice Shelf to save the life of Edward Evans led to him receiving the Albert Medal. (Full article...)
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  Lithograph of SMS Brandenburg in 1902

  
  SMS Brandenburg was the lead ship of the Brandenburg-class pre-dreadnought battleships, which included Kurfürst Friedrich Wilhelm, Weissenburg, and Wörth, built for the German Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy) in the early 1890s. She was the first pre-dreadnought built for the German Navy; earlier, the navy had only built coastal defense ships and armored frigates. The ship was laid down at the AG Vulcan dockyard in 1890, launched on 21 September 1891, and commissioned into the German Navy on 19 November 1893. Brandenburg and her three sisters were unique for their time in that they carried six heavy guns instead of the four that were standard in other navies. She was named after the Province of Brandenburg.
  Brandenburg served with I Division during the first decade of her service with the fleet. This period was generally limited to training exercises and goodwill visits to foreign ports. These training maneuvers were nevertheless very important to developing German naval tactical doctrine in the two decades before World War I, especially under the direction of Alfred von Tirpitz. The ship saw her first major deployment in 1900, when she and her three sister ships were deployed to China to suppress the Boxer Uprising. In the early 1900s, all four ships were heavily rebuilt. She was obsolete by the start of World War I and only served in a limited capacity, initially as a coastal defense ship. In December 1915, she was withdrawn from active service and converted into a barracks ship. Brandenburg was scrapped in Danzig, after the war, in 1920. (Full article...)
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  Shells from a British Pacific Fleet cruiser falling on Japanese oil tanks at Truk during the 15 June 1945 bombardment

  Shells from a British Pacific Fleet cruiser falling on Japanese oil tanks at Truk during the 15 June 1945 bombardment

  
  Operation Inmate was an attack by the British Pacific Fleet against Japanese positions on Truk Atoll in the central Pacific Ocean during the Second World War. The attacks against the isolated islands on 14 and 15 June 1945 were conducted to provide combat experience for the aircraft carrier HMS Implacable and several of the fleet's cruisers and destroyers ahead of their involvement in more demanding operations off the Japanese home islands.
  
  On 14 June 1945 British aircraft conducted a series of raids against Japanese positions at Truk. The next morning, several islands were bombarded by British and Canadian cruisers, though only one of the four warships involved achieved any success. Further air strikes took place in the afternoon and night of 15 June before the Allied force returned to its base. (Full article...)
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  Jesus (c. 6 to 4 BC – AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, and many other names and titles, was a 1st-century Jewish preacher and religious leader. He is the central figure of Christianity, the world's largest religion. Most Christian denominations believe Jesus to be the incarnation of God the Son and the awaited messiah, or Christ, a descendant from the Davidic line that is prophesied in the Old Testament. Virtually all modern scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus existed historically. Accounts of Jesus's life are contained in the Gospels, especially the four canonical Gospels in the New Testament. Academic research has yielded various views on the historical reliability of the Gospels and how closely they reflect the historical Jesus.
  
  Jesus was circumcised at eight days old, was baptized by John the Baptist as a young adult, and after 40 days and nights of fasting in the wilderness, began his own ministry. He was an itinerant teacher who interpreted the law of God with divine authority and was often referred to as "rabbi". Jesus often debated with his fellow Jews on how to best follow God, engaged in healings, taught in parables, and gathered followers, among whom twelve were appointed as his chosen apostles. He was arrested in Jerusalem and tried by the Jewish authorities, turned over to the Roman government, and crucified on the order of Pontius Pilate, the Roman prefect of Judaea. After his death, his followers became convinced that he rose from the dead, and following his ascension, the community they formed eventually became the early Christian Church that expanded as a worldwide movement. It is hypothesized that accounts of his teachings and life were initially conserved by oral transmission, which was the source of the written Gospels. (Full article...)
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  George Washington (John Trumbull, 1780), with William Lee, Washington's enslaved personal servant

  
  The history of George Washington and slavery reflects Washington's changing attitude toward the ownership of human beings. The preeminent Founding Father of the United States and a hereditary slaveowner, Washington became uneasy with it, though kept the opinion in private communications only. Slavery was then a longstanding institution dating back over a century in Virginia where he lived; it was also longstanding in other American colonies and in world history. Washington's will immediately freed one of his slaves, and required his remaining 123 slaves to serve his wife and be freed no later than her death; they ultimately became free one year after his own death.
  
  In the Colony of Virginia where Washington grew up, he became a third generation slave-owner at 11 years of age upon the death of his father in 1743, when he inherited his first ten slaves. In adulthood his personal slaveholding grew through inheritance, purchase, and the natural increase of children born into slavery. In 1759, he also gained control of dower slaves belonging to the Custis estate on his marriage to Martha Dandridge Custis. Washington's early attitudes about slavery reflected the prevailing Virginia planter views of the day, which included few moral qualms, if any. In 1774, Washington publicly denounced the slave trade on moral grounds in the Fairfax Resolves. After the Revolutionary War, he continued to own slaves, but supported the abolition of slavery by a gradual legislative process. (Full article...)
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  View of the dome of La Coupole

  
  La Coupole (English: The Dome), also known as the Coupole d'Helfaut-Wizernes and originally codenamed Bauvorhaben 21 ('Building Project 21') or Schotterwerk Nordwest (Northwest Gravel Works), is a Second World War bunker complex in the Pas-de-Calais department of northern France, about 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) from Saint-Omer, and some 14.4 kilometers (8.9 miles) south-southeast from the less developed Blockhaus d'Éperlecques V-2 launch installation in the same area. It was built by the forces of Nazi Germany between 1943 and 1944 to serve as a launch base for V-2 rockets directed against London and southern England and is the earliest known precursor to modern underground missile silos still in existence.
  
  Constructed in the side of a disused chalk quarry, the most prominent feature of the complex is an immense concrete dome, to which its modern name refers. It was built above a network of tunnels housing storage areas, launch facilities and crew quarters. The facility was designed to store a large stockpile of V-2s, warheads and fuel and was intended to launch V-2s on an industrial scale. Dozens of missiles a day were to be fuelled, prepared and launched in rapid sequence against London and southern England. (Full article...)
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  Conquistador Pedro de Alvarado led the initial efforts to conquer Guatemala.

  
  In a protracted conflict during the Spanish colonization of the Americas, Spanish colonisers gradually incorporated the territory that became the modern country of Guatemala into the colonial Viceroyalty of New Spain. Before the conquest, this territory contained a number of competing Mesoamerican kingdoms, the majority of which were Maya. Many conquistadors viewed the Maya as "infidels" who needed to be forcefully converted and pacified, disregarding the achievements of their civilization. The first contact between the Maya and European explorers came in the early 16th century when a Spanish ship sailing from Panama to Santo Domingo (Hispaniola) was wrecked on the east coast of the Yucatán Peninsula in 1511. Several Spanish expeditions followed in 1517 and 1519, making landfall on various parts of the Yucatán coast. The Spanish conquest of the Maya was a prolonged affair; the Maya kingdoms resisted integration into the Spanish Empire with such tenacity that their defeat took almost two centuries.
  
  Pedro de Alvarado arrived in Guatemala from the newly conquered Mexico in early 1524, commanding a mixed force of Spanish conquistadors and native allies, mostly from Tlaxcala and Cholula. Geographic features across Guatemala now bear Nahuatl placenames owing to the influence of these Mexican allies, who translated for the Spanish. The Kaqchikel Maya initially allied themselves with the Spanish, but soon rebelled against excessive demands for tribute and did not finally surrender until 1530. In the meantime the other major highland Maya kingdoms had each been defeated in turn by the Spanish and allied warriors from Mexico and already subjugated Maya kingdoms in Guatemala. The Itza Maya and other lowland groups in the Petén Basin were first contacted by Hernán Cortés in 1525, but remained independent and hostile to the encroaching Spanish until 1697, when a concerted Spanish assault led by Martín de Ursúa y Arizmendi finally defeated the last independent Maya kingdom. (Full article...)
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  The Secretum (Latin for 'hidden away') was a British Museum collection of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that held artefacts and images deemed sexually graphic. Many of the items were amulets, charms and votive offerings, often from pre-Christian traditions, including the worship of Priapus, a Greco-Roman god of fertility and male genitalia. Items from other cultures covered wide ranges of human history, including ancient Egypt, the classical era Greco-Roman world, the ancient Near East, medieval England, Japan and India.
  
  Many of the early donations or sales to the museum, including those from the collectors Sir Hans Sloane, Sir William Hamilton, Richard Payne Knight and Charles Townley, contained items with erotic or sexually graphic images; these were separated out by museum staff and not put on public display. Modern scholars believe the segregation was probably motivated by a paternalistic stance from the museum to keep what they considered morally dangerous material away from all except scholars and members of the clergy. By the 1860s there were around 700 such items held by the museum. In 1865 the antiquarian George Witt donated his phallocentric collection of 434 artefacts to the museum, which led to the formal setting up of the Secretum to hold his collection and similar items. (Full article...)
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  Group Captain Bill Hely on Bougainville, January 1945

  
  Air Vice Marshal William Lloyd Hely, CB, CBE, AFC (24 August 1909 – 20 May 1970) was a senior commander in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). He graduated from the Royal Military College, Duntroon, in 1930 before transferring to the RAAF as a cadet pilot. Hely came to public attention in 1936–37, first when he crashed on a survey flight in the Northern Territory, and later when he undertook two successful missions to locate missing aircraft in the same vicinity. His rescue efforts earned him the Air Force Cross. After occupying staff positions during the early years of World War II, Hely was appointed Officer Commanding No. 72 Wing in Dutch New Guinea in May 1944. Later that year he formed No. 84 (Army Cooperation) Wing, commanding it during the Bougainville campaign until the end of the Pacific War.
  
  Hely spent the immediate post-war period on the staff of RAAF Headquarters, Melbourne. From 1951 to 1953 he served as Air Officer Commanding (AOC) Western Area Command in Perth, after which he was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire. He was Deputy Chief of the Air Staff from 1953 to 1956, AOC Training Command from 1956 to 1957, and Head of the Australian Joint Services Staff in Washington, D.C. from 1957 to 1960. He then served as Air Member for Personnel (AMP) for six years, his tenure coinciding with a significant increase in manpower to meet commitments in South East Asia and the demands of a major re-equipment program. Having been promoted acting air vice marshal in 1953 (substantive in 1956), he was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath in 1964 for his service as AMP. He retired from the Air Force in 1966 and made his home in Canberra, where he died in 1970 at the age of sixty. (Full article...)

Featured picture

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  Borobudur

  Photo: William Henry Jackson; Restoration: Lise Broer

  A man climbs a statue of a Buddhist idol at Borobudur, a 9th-century Mahayana Buddhist monument near Magelang, Central Java, Indonesia, in this 1895 hand-tinted lantern slide. The monument comprises six square platforms topped by three circular platforms, and is decorated with 2,672 relief panels and 504 Buddha statues. The monument is both a shrine to the Lord Buddha and a place for Buddhist pilgrimage. Evidence suggests Borobudur was abandoned following the 14th-century decline of Buddhist and Hindu kingdoms in Java, and the Javanese conversion to Islam. The monument is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is the most popular tourist attraction in the country.
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  Map of the Battle of the Somme

  Map: Grandiose

  The Battle of the Somme was a battle of the First World War fought between 1 July and 18 November 1916 by the armies of the British and French empires against the German Empire. The largest battle of World War I on the Western Front, it was fought on both sides of upper reaches of the River Somme in France. More than one million men were wounded or killed, making it one of the bloodiest battles in human history.
  
  This map shows the situation on the first day on the Somme, as well as Allied gains up to 19 November 1916.
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  Shiva

  Photo: Los Angeles County Museum of Art

  A Chola dynasty sculpture depicting Shiva. In Hinduism, Shiva is the deity of destruction and one of the most important gods; in this sculpture he is dancing as Nataraja, the divine dancer who unravels the world in preparation for it being remade by Brahma.
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  Rajputs

  Image: The Illustrated London News
  Restoration: Adam Cuerden

  An 1876 engraving of Khokar Rajputs of Punjab. The Rajputs are one of the major Hindu Kshatriya (warrior) groups of India. Rajputs rose to prominence during the 9th to 11th centuries, and by the time of Indian independence, they ruled more than two-thirds of the estimated six hundred princely states, including three-quarters of the salute states.
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  Apollo 11

  Photograph credit: Neil Armstrong

  Apollo 11 was the fifth crewed mission of NASA's Apollo program. After launching from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on July 16, 1969, commander Neil Armstrong and Apollo Lunar Module pilot Buzz Aldrin landed Eagle in Mare Tranquillitatis on July 20, at 20:17:40 UTC, while command module pilot Michael Collins remained on Columbia in lunar orbit. Armstrong was the first to exit the spacecraft, stepping onto the surface 6 hours and 39 minutes later, on July 21, at 02:56:15 UTC; nineteen minutes later, Aldrin joined him on extravehicular activity, which lasted 2 hours, 31 minutes and 40 seconds. Armstrong and Aldrin lifted off from Tranquility Base after almost 22 hours on the lunar surface and rejoined Collins in the command module, before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean on July 24.
  
  The mission was planned to the minute, with the majority of the photographic tasks performed by Armstrong with a single Hasselblad camera. Most of the photographs taken on the Moon that include an astronaut are of Aldrin; there are only five images of Armstrong partly shown or reflected, as in this photograph, with Armstrong and the lunar module reflected in Aldrin's helmet visor. "As the sequence of lunar operations evolved," Aldrin explained, "Neil had the camera most of the time [...] It wasn't until we were back on Earth and in the Lunar Receiving Laboratory looking over the pictures that we realized there were few pictures of Neil."
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  Temple Square

  Photo: William Henry Jackson; restoration: Tom dl and Mmxx

  An 1899 photochrom showing Temple Square, a 10-acre (4.0 ha) complex located in the center of Salt Lake City, Utah, US. The location is owned by and serves as headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and was selected by Church president Brigham Young in 1846. Temple Square is home to several buildings; depicted here are the Salt Lake Temple, Salt Lake Tabernacle and Salt Lake Assembly Hall.
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  Nefertiti Bust

  Photo: Philip Pikart

  The Nefertiti Bust is a 3300-year-old painted limestone bust of Nefertiti, the Great Royal Wife of the Pharaoh Akhenaten and one of the most copied works of Ancient Egypt. It is believed to have been crafted in 1345 BC by the sculptor Thutmose, in whose workshop it was discovered in 1912 by a German archaeological team led by Ludwig Borchardt. It is part of the Egyptian Museum of Berlin collection, currently on display in the Neues Museum and has been the subject of an intense argument between Egypt and Germany over the Egyptian demands for its repatriation.
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  Alexander the Great

  Mosaic: Unknown

  Alexander the Great (356–323 BC), the King of Macedonia, as depicted in a detail from the Alexander Mosaic. Originally from the House of the Faun in Pompeii and dated to c. 100 BC, the mosaic depicts a battle between the armies of Alexander the Great and Darius III of Persia. It is believed to be a copy of an early 3rd century BC Hellenistic painting, probably by Philoxenos of Eretria. The whole mosaic measures 2.72 × 5.13 m (8 ft 11 in × 16 ft 9 in).
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  Siege of Sevastopol (1854–1855)

  Artist: William Simpson; Restoration: Lise Broer

  A lithograph of a watercolour painting depicting soldiers transporting winter clothing, lumber for huts, and other supplies through a snow-covered landscape, with partially buried dead horses along the roadside, to the British camps, during the Siege of Sevastopol of the Crimean War. In the winter, a storm ruined the camps and supply lines of the Allied forces (France, Britain and the Ottoman Empire). Men and horses became sick and starved in the poor conditions.
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  Arg-e Bam

  Photograph credit: Diego Delso

  The Arg-e Bam, in Kerman Province in southeastern Iran, is the largest adobe building in the world and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The ancient citadel has a history dating back around two thousand years, to the Parthian Empire (248 BC – 224 AD), but most of its buildings were constructed during the Safavid dynasty. A strong earthquake on 26 December 2003 largely devastated the fortress and the nearby modern city of Bam. The Arg-e Bam, including the governor's residence, the main tower, the Four Seasons Palace and the hammam, were nearly totally destroyed; this photograph from 2016 shows the citadel partially reconstructed.
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  Invasion of Normandy

  Photo credit: United States Coast Guard

  Landing ships putting ashore on Omaha Beach at low tide during the first days of the Invasion of Normandy, mid-June, 1944. Barrage balloons fly overhead and U.S. Army "half-tracks" form a convoy on the beach. The Normandy landing was the largest seaborne invasion in history, with almost three million troops crossing the English Channel.
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  First permanent photograph

  Photo credit: Nicéphore Niépce

  The first successful permanent photograph, created in 1826, is titled "View from the Window at Le Gras". It required an eight-hour exposure in bright sunshine and was printed on a polished pewter plate covered with a petroleum derivative called bitumen of Judea. Due to the long exposure, the buildings are illuminated by the sun from both right and left.
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  US Brig Niagara

  Photo credit: Unknown

  The original US Brig Niagara, which played a pivotal role in defeating the British at the Battle of Lake Erie. It was sunk in 1820 for preservation but raised again in 1913 for the centennial anniversary of the battle (seen here). A modern replica based out of Erie, Pennsylvania now travels the Great Lakes as an educational and training vessel.
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  Army of the Republic of Vietnam

  Photo credit: J.F. Fitzpatrick, Jr., SPC5, U.S. Army Signal Corps

  This twelve-year old ARVN Airborne trooper poses with an M79 grenade launcher during a sweep through the devastated Plantation Road area after a day-long battle near Tan Son Nhut during the Vietnam War. The young soldier had been "adopted" by the US Army Airborne Division.
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  The "Theatre" at Petra

  Photo: Douglas Perkins

  Petra is an archaeological site in Jordan, lying in a basin among the mountains which form the eastern flank of Wadi Araba, the great valley running from the Dead Sea to the Gulf of Aqaba. It is famous for having many stone structures carved into the rock.
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  Boxer Rebellion

  Artist: Kasai Torajirō; Restoration: Staxringold

  Japanese and British troops attack members of the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists ("Boxers") at Beijing Castle during the Boxer Rebellion of 1899–1901. The Boxers, angered by foreign imperialist expansion into Qing Dynasty China, had engaged in looting, arson, and killings of foreigners. In 1900, the Empress Dowager Cixi employed the Boxers to attack foreign settlements in Beijing. The uprising was eventually put down by 20,000 troops from the Eight-Nation Alliance.
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  Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

  Photo credit: USHMM

  Jews captured by SS and SD troops during the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising are forced to leave their shelter and march to the Umschlagplatz for deportation. The SD trooper pictured second from the right, is Josef Blösche, who was identified by Polish authorities using this photograph. Blösche was tried for war crimes in Erfurt, East Germany in 1969, sentenced to death and executed in July of that year.
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  Kalmar Union

  Image credit: Julius Magnus Petersen

  A medieval ship flag captured by forces from Lübeck in the 1420s showed the arms of Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Pomerania. At the time, Denmark, Norway and Sweden were united in the Kalmar Union. The flag is believed to originate from the reign of king Eric of Pomerania due to its inclusion of Pomerania's griffin symbol. For the following five hundred years, the flag was displayed as a war trophy in a Lübeck church until destroyed during a World War II air raid on the city. An 1880s copy of the flag is preserved in the museum at Frederiksborg Palace, Denmark. The saint accompanying the Virgin Mary and infant Christ is Saint James the Greater, identified by his scallop shell emblem. The flag was made of coarse linen. All figures and heraldic insignia were created using oil-based paint.

Did you know (auto generated)

• ... that a historical society celebrated the 50th anniversary of its acquisition of Armstrong House by hosting a murder mystery?
• ... that 104 miners were killed in the 1995 Vaal Reefs mining disaster when a locomotive fell on an elevator, making it history's deadliest elevator disaster?
• ... that West Auckland is home to the largest stratovolcano in the geologic history of New Zealand?
• ... that a poem by Moses da Rieti includes an encyclopedia of the sciences, a Jewish paradise fantasy, and a post-biblical history of Jewish literature?
• ... that historically, native mercury was extracted from rocks mined in Idrija by washing them in the stream Nikova?
• ... that a 2001 book shares the history of a small Tudor community through a 54-year-long "running commentary" by "a somewhat unamiable busybody"?

Featured biography –

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Pankhurst, c. 1913

Emmeline Pankhurst (/ˈpæŋkhɜːrst/; née Goulden; 15 July 1858 – 14 June 1928) was a British political activist who organised the British suffragette movement and helped women to win in 1918 the right to vote in Great Britain and Ireland. In 1999, Time named her as one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century, stating that "she shaped an idea of objects for our time" and "shook society into a new pattern from which there could be no going back". She was widely criticised for her militant tactics, and historians disagree about their effectiveness, but her work is recognised as a crucial element in achieving women's suffrage in the United Kingdom.

Born in the Moss Side district of Manchester to politically active parents, Pankhurst was introduced at the age of 16 to the women's suffrage movement. She founded and became involved with the Women's Franchise League, which advocated suffrage for both married and unmarried women. When that organisation broke apart, she tried to join the left-leaning Independent Labour Party through her friendship with socialist Keir Hardie but was initially refused membership by the local branch on account of her sex. While working as a Poor Law Guardian, she was shocked at the harsh conditions she encountered in Manchester's workhouses. (Full article...)

On this day

March 20: Nowruz (2025)

Chemical structure of zidovudine

• 1724 – Following the death of Pope Innocent XIII, a papal conclave convened in Rome to elect a new pope.
• 1861 – An earthquake occurred in the Argentine province of Mendoza, causing at least 6,000 deaths and destroying most of the buildings in the province's capital city.
• 1922 – The United States Navy commissioned its first aircraft carrier, USS Langley.
• 1944 – World War II: U.S. Marines made a landing on Emirau Island in the Bismarck Archipelago to develop an airbase as part of Operation Cartwheel.
• 1987 – The antiretroviral drug zidovudine (chemical structure pictured) became the first treatment approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for HIV/AIDS.
• 2014 – Taliban militants killed nine civilians in a mass shooting at the Kabul Serena Hotel in Afghanistan.

• Maud Menten (b. 1879)
• Willie Brown (b. 1934)
• Fernando Torres (b. 1984)
• Christel Boom (d. 2004)

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Selected quote

I hate this fast growing tendency to chain men to machines in big factories and deprive them of all joy in their efforts — the plan will lead to cheap men and cheap products.

— Richard Wagner, 19th century German composer

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• ... that Dacian bracelets were used as currency and votive offerings?

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