Resultados de "Hourly History" en Todas las categorias

What makes a shooting a massacre? If a mob of hundreds is facing down eight soldiers, and five citizens are killed, is that the Boston Massacre or the Incident on King Street? As was the case with so many of the tumultuous events in America’s colonial history, the answer depended upon whether one regarded oneself as a British subject or a free American.

After the shock and devastation of the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, the Americans were determined to take their revenge on the Empire of Japan. The Japanese were just as determined to become the dominant power in the Pacific, a goal they were well on their way to achieving as they occupied China, Hong Kong, Thailand, Malaya, Burma, Northern Borneo, the Dutch East Indies, and the Philippines.

The son of the second president of the United States, John Quincy Adams was prepped and primed from his youth to be the quintessential statesmen. At just 14 years of age, he was given a diplomatic post in St. Petersburg, Russia. This was the beginning of a political career that would last until his last breath. Adams became a one-term president thanks to the populism of his archrival Andrew Jackson, but even after being ousted from the White House, the unsinkable John Quincy Adams came right back to the fore, getting himself elected as a Congressman in the House of Representatives.

Discover the remarkable life of Brian Boru.... Ireland is a country steeped in history, myth, and legend. During ancient times a long line of kings reined over this fairytale land, and one of those kings was a man named Brian Boru. Ruling the Emerald Isle from 1002 to 1014, Brian’s tenure is indeed so immersed in mythology that it is sometimes hard to glean the fact from the fiction. But Brian Boru himself was not the product of a fanciful tale - he did indeed exist in the flesh.

Discover the remarkable history of the Crimean War...The Crimean War was one of the bloodiest conflicts of the 19th century, but it is also one of the least remembered. More men died in the Crimean War than in the American Civil War which followed soon after. Yet the Crimean War is important for a number of reasons. Although it did not change the map of Europe and did not directly cause the fall of any of the combatants, it did indirectly shape the second half of the 19th century and the early years of the twentieth century in Europe.

Discover the remarkable life of Virginia Woolf.... Virginia Woolf ranks among the most influential writers of the 20th century. Embracing the Post-Impressionist times in which she lived, her novels reflect the artistic shift from romanticism to abstract. Plot mattered very little to Woolf. Her writing was a stream of consciousness outside of time and place. Her novels, including her best-known work, Mrs. Dalloway, invariably dwell on gender roles and the concept of reality.

The Toltecs are one of the most mysterious and little understood of all the ancient cultures of Mesoamerica. This culture was venerated by later civilizations, such as the Aztecs. Even today, “Toltec knowledge” is used as a kind of shorthand for arcane wisdom from an ancient culture. However, discussing the actual history of the Toltecs is extremely difficult. Much of what we know of these people comes from writings and oral traditions of the Aztecs, as translated and interpreted by the European invaders.

Peaky Blinders is a popular BBC television series about an organized crime family in post-World War I Birmingham, England, but does this series depict the factual history of Birmingham? As it turns out, there were Peaky Blinders in Birmingham, and they terrorized those streets long before World War I. The Peaky Blinders rose to prominence in the overcrowded and unsanitary conditions of late Victorian Birmingham in the 1870s. Their ranks were composed of the working poor.

Cassius Clay Jr. The Greatest. The Louisville Lip. The People’s Champion. Muhammad Ali. All are names for one of the greatest boxers of all time. Muhammad Ali lived a life that produced some of the most notable boxing matches ever. He also had battles outside of the boxing ring - battles that included fighting with the federal government for his freedom, as well as fighting against his debilitating Parkinson’s disease.

One man has probably done more good and saved more lives than any single public official of the Victorian era. The man being described was an engineer, city planner, bridge builder, and landscape architect; his name was Sir Joseph Bazalgette. Probably best remembered as the man who designed the London sewer network, he almost single-handedly eliminated virulent epidemics and changed the River Thames from an open sewer into one of the cleanest urban rivers in the world. He also transformed the face of London forever.

Pierre-August Renoir, leader of the 19th-century Impressionist movement, spent his entire life perfecting his style. Rejected for decades, he depended on friends for a place to stay and money for painting supplies. Renoir lived in poverty until his 40's, and when he was finally discovered and hailed as a great artist, his health began to fail him. Still, Renoir never gave up his passion for painting. His need to create beauty was the driving force of his life, and throughout rejections and deteriorating health, Renoir retained an optimism that is reflected in his paintings.

Charles Manson is instantly recognizable as the deranged cult leader who was responsible for the deaths of nine people in the late 1960s. Manson was a career criminal who got his education in the US prison system and learned at an early age that only those who have power over others will survive. In less than three years, Manson transformed his followers from a group of freedom-loving, LSD-dropping hippies into a pack of blood-thirsty murderers who carried out acts of astounding brutality at his request.

Oscar Wilde was an Irish poet and playwright in the late 19th century. His controversial plays were riddled with mockery of social status, cleverly covered by the use of comedy. Wilde may have paved the way for people living a little off the center line. Full of flash and flare, he wrote some of those colorful traits into his literature. Take a journey into the world of Oscar Wilde, and find out just how individualistic he was.

The Irish War of Independence, which ended in July 1921, led directly to the agreement of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, an agreement that provided Ireland with a measure of independence. The Irish Free State was created, and Ireland was granted a level of autonomy it had not enjoyed for more than 100 years. However, the treaty contained a clause that was to divide Ireland, literally and politically.

One of the first independent female rulers of an ancient kingdom, Cleopatra was a gifted diplomat, efficient administrator, and accomplished linguist who ruled her kingdom with more courage than the majority of her male predecessors. Cleopatra’s death ended an era, but her life promised the dawn of a new age, one where women might dare to rule the world.

The Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union lasted from the end of World War II until the end of the 1980s. Over the course of five decades, they never came to blows directly. Rather, these two world superpowers competed in other arenas that would touch almost every corner of the globe. This overview of the Cold War provides the story of how these two countries came to oppose one another and the impact it had on them and others around the world.

The association of the name James Cook with ideas of seafaring adventure and discovery is truly an indelible one. In this audiobook, we will explore the life of James Cook from his birth in 1728 in a humble Yorkshire village all the way to his death on the newly discovered Sandwich Islands - today known as Hawaii - in 1779.

According to history books, the Roman Empire ended in 476 CE with the fall of Rome. But if you asked most people alive at that time, they would have pointed you to what they considered the continuation of the Roman Empire - the civilization we now call the Byzantine Empire. The Byzantines, however, were more than just a remnant of Roman glory. At its geographical peak, the Byzantine Empire stretched out across the Mediterranean world.

The man that the world knows as Winston Churchill looms large on the stage of world history. Like some sort of colossus from antiquity, Churchill strides between two major epochs in the world, one foot planted in the glory days of the British Empire when the sun never set on history’s largest known conglomeration of imperial holdings, and the other planted firmly in the aftermath of World War Two, and a post-war order that saw that empire collapse, with Britain barely hanging on to its own sovereignty in the wake.

Founded at the dawn of the 17th century as European nations were establishing global empires, the English East India Company would become a vital part of burgeoning British supremacy. Begun as a joint-stock company for trade with the East Indies, this organization would evolve into one of the world's first capitalistic corporations.