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1) Shays' Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion: The History and Legacy of Early America's Domestic In
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Even as the young United States successfully secured its independence, the new nation was beset by problems. The drafters of the Articles of Confederation had deliberately avoided giving the national legislature the power to tax, because Parliament had so abused that authority against the colonies, but this proved to be a severe limitation on the national government. Besides hampering the Continental Army, the inability of the national government...
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When American archaeologists discovered a collection of cuneiform tablets in Iraq in the late 19th century, they were confronted with a language and a people who were at the time only scarcely known to even the most knowledgeable scholars of ancient Mesopotamia: the Sumerians.
The exploits and achievements of other Mesopotamian peoples, such as the Assyrians and Babylonians, were already known to a large segment of the population through the Old...
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On paper, the extraordinarily unorthodox ideology spouted by Heaven's Gate ranks near the top of the list of most outlandish end-of-the-world prophecies, and it was built on a blend of Christian, Gnostic, supernatural, New Age, and extraterrestrial lore. Although the cult did not speak in Christian terms, it was clearly apocalyptic, and its belief system was a strange mix between science fiction and the basic message of Revelation. The cult's leader,...
4) Great Northern War: The History of the Conflict that Made Russia the Dominant Empire in the Baltic
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The Great Northern War, fought from 1700-1721, gets its name from the fact the war focused on the Baltic, but the battlefields extended into Germany and deep into Poland and Ukraine. Sweden was a military power with a small empire in the Baltic, while Russia was still a landlocked place, backward when compared to the rest of Europe, not very powerful, and highly xenophobic. The Poland-Lithuanian Commonwealth was still powerful, and the Cossacks were...
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For the most part, the Uighurs are based in East Turkestan, more commonly referred to as the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China. This prodigious plot of land boasts a total land area of over 1. 665 million km², or 640,000 mi², and is, as China puts it, the largest administrative division in the country. The pro-independence inhabitants of East Turkestan, on the other hand, have been fighting for decades to regain...
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At the start of the 1840s, the Oregon Country had no political boundaries or effective government. The only administrative organization in the territory was the Hudson's Bay Company, which applied only to British subjects, and aside from natives, the region was populated by a handful of independent traders, hunters, and prospectors, as well as those employed in the various company depots.
The first to begin showing up in large numbers were missionaries....
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Perhaps not surprisingly given how advanced they were in comparison to contemporaries, the Egyptians invented one of the first writing systems ever, and for centuries, people thought these ancient texts held some sort of secret, be it aliens, advanced technology lost to the world, or mystical cures for all of the world's ills. Even the ancient Egyptians saw their writing systems as full of mystery and hidden knowledge - according to Egyptian mythology,...
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As archaeologists quickly learned, there are numerous temples dedicated to Quetzalcoatl all across Mesoamerica. From the Aztec to the Maya, Quetzalcoatl - the Feathered Serpent - rears his beautiful head from magnificent relief carvings in temples no less grandiose than the largest pyramid in the region, that of Cholula in Mexico. Furthermore, thousands of people still gather in the great Mayan city of Chichén Itzá during the spring and autumn equinoxes...
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"The Dodo never had a chance. He seems to have been invented for the sole purpose of becoming extinct and that was all he was good for." — Willy Cuppy, 19th century American humorist and literary critic
At one point or another, just about everyone has heard of the dodo bird, which is almost universally described as a cuddly, whimsical creature renowned for its alleged stupidity. This prehistoric avian had been known for hundreds of years before...
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For a period of just under 100 years, the city of Mari in northern Mesopotamia-eastern Syria was one of the most, if not the most, important cities in the Near East. Mari was ruled by a dynasty of powerful Amorite kings who were not afraid to use their military power to keep subordinate provinces in line and their enemies at bay, but more often, they relied upon a combination of diplomacy and trade to establish their dominance. Founded by semi-nomadic...
11) Operation Mockingbird: The Controversial History of the CIA's Efforts to Manipulate American Medi
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Freedom of the press isn't just a fundamental right in America but a key part of the democratic process. When the United States secured its independence against Britain in the War of Independence in 1783, there was no certainty about what the new country would look like in terms of national governance. In 1787, delegates from the various states convened in Philadelphia to draft a constitution that would define this.
Freedom of the press became one...
12) Ancient and Medieval Conspiracy Theories: The History of the World's Most Persistent Conspiracy Theo
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Perhaps it should also not be surprising that the themes found in contemporary conspiracy theories are often echoed in ancient conspiracy theories. While some people still insist that Lyndon B. Johnson was in on John F. Kennedy's assassination, it was speculated across the ancient world that the young Macedonian king, Alexander the Great, conspired to have his own father, Philip II of Macedon, assassinated. Likewise, the New Age beliefs that Mesoamerican...
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The technology that culminated in the Transcontinental Railroad's completion changed the life of every resident in America by connecting the two coasts, not only in the mind, but by the clock. In tandem with that, a new tide of powerful American industrialists had their way, to the benefit and consternation of the general public, and while decrying the avarice of steel and railroad giants, well-to-do politicians, and titans of the banking system back...
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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. In 1884, Prince Otto von Bismark, the German chancellor, brought the plenipotentiaries of all major powers of Europe together, to deal with Africa's colonization in such a manner as to avoid provocation of war. This event-known...
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At the forefront of the Three Kingdoms was one of ancient China's most famous battles, fought in late 208 CE. An area of the Yangtze River located near modern Chibi City in the central Chinese province of Hubei was filled with ships as far as the eye could see. They were swift wooden vessels, built for speed and filled with hard faced men, arrows strung on their backs, ready to be released on the enemy. Massive warships with imposing war towers piled...
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Shaped like an uneven triangle, Catalonia is comprised of four provinces that occupy an area of 12,390 square miles: Girona, Barcelona, Tarragona and Lleida. Catalonia also has a variety of different kinds of communities surrounding it, as its northern neighbors include the powerful country of France and the tiny nation of Andorra. To the south it has the autonomous community of Valencia, to the west is the autonomous community of Aragon, and on the...
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On October 21, 1600, two massive Japanese armies, totaling an estimated 200,000 soldiers armed to the teeth with swords, yari (spears), arrows, muskets and cannons, faced off on a battlefield near the town of Sekigahara. A bitter fight to the death ensued, and the results would determine the course of Japanese history for the next 250 years. On the battlefield was the warlord Ieyasu Tokugawa, a man desiring domain over the entire island of Japan,...
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Carl Philipp Gottfried von Clausewitz died almost 200 years ago, yet he remains one of the most important and influential of all military thinkers. His teachings combined strategy with military knowledge to produce a dialectic approach to the philosophy of warfare, and his work is still widely taught in military academies around the world. There are few senior military leaders anywhere who are not familiar with his seminal book, On War. In fact, with...
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Otto von Bismarck, the leading German statesman of the 19th century, once joked, "There is a Providence that protects idiots, drunkards, children, and the US of America." He said this not because the Americans were a great concern for him - his main interest in the US was trade, but as the architect of the first unified German state, he was setting the tone for what two generations of German nationals would feel about America's apparent invulnerability....
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It was not until the excavations of the 1930s that many of the relics, reliefs, and clay tablets that offer so much information about Persian life could be studied for the first time. Through archaeological remains, ancient texts, and work by a new generation of historians, a picture can today be built of this remarkable civilization and their capital city. Although the city had been destroyed, the legacy of the Persians survived, even as they mostly...
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