Portal:History
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The History Portal
History (derived from Ancient Greek ἱστορία (historía) 'inquiry; knowledge acquired by investigation') is the systematic study and documentation of the human past. History is an academic discipline which uses a narrative to describe, examine, question, and analyze past events, and investigate their patterns of cause and effect. Historians debate which narrative best explains an event, as well as the significance of different causes and effects. Historians debate the nature of history as an end in itself, and its usefulness in giving perspective on the problems of the present.
The period of events before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well as the memory, discovery, collection, organization, presentation, and interpretation of these events. Historians seek knowledge of the past using historical sources such as written documents, oral accounts or traditional oral histories, art and material artifacts, and ecological markers.
Stories common to a particular culture, but not supported by external sources (such as the tales surrounding King Arthur), are usually classified as cultural heritage or legends. History differs from myth in that it is supported by verifiable evidence. However, ancient cultural influences have helped create variant interpretations of the nature of history, which have evolved over the centuries and continue to change today. The modern study of history is wide-ranging, and includes the study of specific regions and certain topical or thematic elements of historical investigation. History is taught as a part of primary and secondary education, and the academic study of history is a major discipline in universities.
Herodotus, a 5th-century BCE Greek historian, is often considered the "father of history", as one of the first historians in the Western tradition, though he has been criticized as the "father of lies". Along with his contemporary Thucydides, he helped form the foundations for the modern study of past events and societies. Their works continue to be read today, and the gap between the culture-focused Herodotus and the military-focused Thucydides remains a point of contention or approach in modern historical writing. In East Asia a state chronicle, the Spring and Autumn Annals, was reputed to date from as early as 722 BCE, though only 2nd-century BCE texts have survived. The title "father of history" has also been attributed, in their respective societies, to Sima Qian, Ibn Khaldun, and Kenneth Dike. (Full article...)
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Featured articles are displayed here, which represent some of the best content on English Wikipedia.
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Hove War Memorial is a First World War memorial designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and located on Grand Avenue in Hove, part of the city of Brighton and Hove, on the south coast of England. Hove was the site of one of the earliest recruiting events at the beginning of the war and later of several military hospitals. Over 600 men from the town were killed during the war, a quarter of them from the local regiment alone. A war memorial committee was established in 1919 and Lutyens was engaged as architect. A design was agreed in 1920 after two unsuccessful proposals; Lutyens chose the site from several options.
Lutyens designed a Tuscan column on a three-staged base, topped with a statue of Saint George, patron saint of England. George, cast in the studio of Sir George Frampton, holds a sword by the blade in one hand and a shield in the other. The same statue, with variations, appears on several of Frampton's other monuments, including Fordham War Memorial in Cambridgeshire, also by Lutyens. The base contains several dedicatory inscriptions but no names, which are instead recorded on plaques in the town's library. (Full article...) -
Stanley Melbourne Bruce, 1st Viscount Bruce of Melbourne CH MC PC FRS (15 April 1883 – 25 August 1967) was an Australian politician, statesman and businessman who served as the eighth prime minister of Australia from 1923 to 1929. He held office as the leader of the Nationalist Party, having previously served as the treasurer of Australia from 1921 to 1923.
Born into a briefly wealthy Melbourne family, Bruce studied at the University of Cambridge and played a leading role in his family's softgoods firm following the suicide of his father John Munro Bruce. He served on the front lines of the Gallipoli Campaign in World War I and returned to Australia wounded in 1917, becoming a spokesman for government recruitment efforts. He gained the attention of the Nationalist Party and prime minister Billy Hughes, who encouraged a political career. He was elected to the House of Representatives in 1918, becoming member of parliament (MP) for the seat of Flinders. He was appointed as treasurer in 1921, before replacing Hughes as prime minister in 1923. He established an anti-socialist coalition government with the agrarian Country Party, working closely with Country leader Earle Page in an arrangement that pioneered the modern Liberal–National coalition. (Full article...) -
Vannevar Bush (/væˈniːvɑːr/ van-NEE-var; March 11, 1890 – June 28, 1974) was an American engineer, inventor and science administrator, who during World War II headed the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), through which almost all wartime military R&D was carried out, including important developments in radar and the initiation and early administration of the Manhattan Project. He emphasized the importance of scientific research to national security and economic well-being, and was chiefly responsible for the movement that led to the creation of the National Science Foundation.
Bush joined the Department of Electrical Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1919, and founded the company that became the Raytheon Company in 1922. Bush became vice president of MIT and dean of the MIT School of Engineering in 1932, and president of the Carnegie Institution of Washington in 1938. (Full article...) -
SMS Hindenburg was a battlecruiser of the German Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy), the third ship of the Derfflinger class, built to a slightly modified design. She carried the same battery of eight 30.5 cm (12 in) guns, but in improved turrets that allowed them to fire further. The ship was also slightly larger and faster than her two sister ships. She was named in honor of Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, the victor of the Battle of Tannenberg and the Battle of the Masurian Lakes, as well as Supreme Commander of the German armies from 1916. The ship was the last capital ship of any type built for the German navy during World War I.
Hindenburg was commissioned late in the war and as a result had a brief service career. The ship took part in a handful of short fleet operations as the flagship of I Scouting Group in 1917–18, though saw no major action. The proposed final sortie of the fleet in the last weeks of the war came to nothing when the crews of the capital ships mutinied. Hindenburg was subsequently interned with the rest of the German battlecruisers at Scapa Flow in November 1918. Rear Admiral Ludwig von Reuter ordered the ships be scuttled on 21 June 1919. Hindenburg was the last of the ships to sink. She was raised in 1930 and broken up for scrap over the following two years. (Full article...) -
Operation Ten-Go (天号作戦, Ten-gō Sakusen), also known as Operation Heaven One (or Ten-ichi-gō 天一号), was the last major Japanese naval operation in the Pacific Theater of World War II. In April 1945, the Japanese battleship Yamato, the largest battleship in the world, and nine other Japanese warships, embarked from Japan for a suicide attack on Allied forces engaged in the Battle of Okinawa. The Japanese force was attacked by U.S. carrier-borne aircraft before it could reach Okinawa; Yamato and five other Japanese warships were sunk.
The battle demonstrated U.S. air supremacy in the Asiatic-Pacific Theater and the vulnerability of surface ships without air cover to aerial attack. The battle also exhibited Japan's willingness to make extreme sacrifices in kamikaze attacks aimed at delaying the Allied advance upon the Japanese home islands. (Full article...) -
The International Conference on the Holocaust and Genocide was the first major conference in the field of genocide studies, held in Tel Aviv on 20–24 June 1982. It was organized by Israel Charny, Elie Wiesel, Shamai Davidson, and their Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide, founded in 1979. The conference's objective was to further the understanding and prevention of all genocides; it marked the shift from viewing genocide as an irrational phenomenon to one that could be studied and understood.
The Turkish government tried to have the conference cancelled because it included presentations on the Armenian genocide, which is denied by Turkey. Turkey threatened to close its borders to Syrian and Iranian Jews fleeing persecution, thereby putting Jewish lives in danger. These threats led the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs to attempt to cancel the conference and persuade attendees not to come. The official Israeli Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem, and many high-profile participants, including Wiesel, withdrew from the conference. The organizers refused to remove the Armenian Genocide from the program and held the conference anyway. Both the Turkish and Israeli governments faced criticism for their infringement on academic freedom. (Full article...) -
SMS König Albert was the fourth vessel of the Kaiser class of dreadnought battleships of the Imperial German Navy. König Albert's keel was laid on 17 July 1910 at the Schichau-Werke dockyard in Danzig. She was launched on 27 April 1912 and was commissioned into the fleet on 31 July 1913. The ship was equipped with ten 30.5-centimeter (12 in) guns in five twin turrets, and had a top speed of 22.1 knots (40.9 km/h; 25.4 mph). König Albert was assigned to III Battle Squadron and later IV Battle Squadron of the High Seas Fleet for the majority of her career, including World War I.
Along with her four sister ships, Kaiser, Friedrich der Grosse, Kaiserin, and Prinzregent Luitpold, König Albert participated in most of the major fleet operations of World War I, though she was in drydock for maintenance during the Battle of Jutland between 31 May and 1 June 1916. As a result, she was the only battleship actively serving with the fleet that missed the largest naval battle of the war. The ship was also involved in Operation Albion, an amphibious assault on the Russian-held islands in the Gulf of Riga, in late 1917. (Full article...) -
The Battle of Heraklion was part of the Battle of Crete, fought during World War II on the Greek island of Crete between 20 and 30 May 1941. British, Australian and Greek forces of 14th Infantry Brigade, commanded by Brigadier Brian Chappel, defended Heraklion port and airfield against a German paratrooper attack by the 1st Parachute Regiment of the 7th Air Division, commanded by Colonel Bruno Bräuer.
The attack on Heraklion during the afternoon of 20 May was one of four airborne assaults on Crete that day, following German attacks against Maleme airfield and the main port of Chania in the west of Crete in the morning. The aircraft that dropped the morning attackers were scheduled to drop the 1st Regiment over Heraklion later the same day. Confusion and delays at the airfields in mainland Greece meant that the assault was launched without direct air support, and over several hours rather than simultaneously; some units were still at the airfields by the end of the day. Those German units dropping near Heraklion suffered very high casualties, both from ground fire and upon landing. Those dropping further away were severely hampered by armed Cretan civilians. The initial German attack failed; when it was renewed the next day it failed again. The fighting then settled into a stalemate. (Full article...) -
Operation Goodwood was a series of British carrier air raids conducted against the German battleship Tirpitz at her anchorage in Kaafjord in occupied Norway during late August 1944. It was the last of several attacks made by the Home Fleet during 1944 which sought to damage or sink Tirpitz and thereby eliminate the threat it posed to Allied shipping. Previous raids on Kaafjord conducted by Fleet Air Arm aircraft had involved only one air attack; in Operation Goodwood several attacks were made in a single week. The Royal Navy hoped that these raids would wear down the formidable German defences.
The British fleet departed its base on 18 August and launched the first raid against Kaafjord on the morning of 22 August. The attack failed, and a small raid that evening inflicted little damage. Attacks were conducted on 24 and 29 August and were also failures. Tirpitz had been hit by two bombs during the raid on 24 August, but neither caused significant damage. British losses during Operation Goodwood were 17 aircraft to all causes, a frigate sunk by a submarine, and an escort carrier badly damaged. German forces suffered the loss of 12 aircraft and damage to 7 ships. (Full article...) -
The Battle of Vrbanja Bridge ([ʋr̩baɲa], wer-bahn-yah) was an armed confrontation which took place on 27 May 1995, between United Nations (UN) peacekeepers from the French Army and elements of the Bosnian Serb Army of Republika Srpska (VRS). The fighting occurred at the Vrbanja Bridge crossing of the Miljacka river in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, during the Bosnian War. The VRS seized the French-manned United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) observation posts on both ends of the bridge, taking hostage 12 French peacekeepers. Ten were taken away, and two were kept at the bridge as human shields.
A platoon of 30 French peacekeepers led by Captain François Lecointre recaptured the bridge with the support of 70 French infantrymen and direct fire from armoured vehicles. During the French assault, elements of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ARBiH) opened fire on the VRS-held observation posts on their own initiative, accidentally wounding one French hostage. Two French soldiers were killed during the battle, and 17 were wounded. The VRS's casualties were four killed, several wounded and four captured. After the battle, VRS forces were observed to be less likely to engage French UN peacekeepers deployed in the city. In 2017, Lecointre, by then an army general, was appointed as France's Chief of the Defence Staff. (Full article...) -
Seal of the provisional government of Kentucky, showing an arm holding the 13th star of the Confederacy. The motto voce populi is Latin for "by the voice of the people".
The Confederate government of Kentucky was a shadow government established for the Commonwealth of Kentucky by a self-constituted group of Confederate sympathizers and delegates sent by Kentucky counties, during the American Civil War. The shadow government never replaced the elected government in Frankfort, in which the state legislature had strong Union sympathies while the governor was pro-Confederate. Neither was it able to gain the whole support of Kentucky's citizens; its jurisdiction extended only as far as Confederate battle lines in the Commonwealth, which at its greatest extent in 1861 and early 1862 encompassed over half the state. Nevertheless, the provisional government was recognized by the Confederate States of America, and Kentucky was admitted to the Confederacy on December 10, 1861. Kentucky, the final state admitted to the Confederacy, was represented by the 13th (central) star on the Confederate battle flag.
Bowling Green, Kentucky, was designated the Confederate capital of Kentucky at a convention in nearby Russellville. Due to the military situation in the state, the provisional government was exiled and traveled with the Army of Tennessee for most of its existence. For a short time in the autumn of 1862, the Confederate Army controlled Frankfort, the only time a Union capital was captured by Confederate forces. During this occupation, General Braxton Bragg attempted to install the provisional government as the permanent authority in the Commonwealth. However, Union General Don Carlos Buell ambushed the inauguration ceremony and drove the provisional government from the state for the final time. From that point forward, the government existed primarily on paper and was dissolved at the end of the war. (Full article...) -
The Kingdom of Mysore was a geopolitical realm in southern India founded in around 1399 in the vicinity of the modern-day city of Mysore and prevailed until 1950. The territorial boundaries and the form of government transmuted substantially throughout the kingdom's lifetime. While originally a feudal vassal under the Vijayanagara Empire, it became a princely state in British India from 1799 to 1947, marked in-between by major political changes.
The kingdom, which was founded and ruled for the most part by the Wadiyars, initially served as a feudal vassal under the Vijayanagara Empire. With the gradual decline of the Empire, the 16th-century Timmaraja Wodeyar II declared independence from it. The 17th century saw a steady expansion of its territory and, during the rules of Narasaraja Wodeyar I and Devaraja Wodeyar II, the kingdom annexed large expanses of what is now southern Karnataka and parts of Tamil Nadu, becoming a formidable power in the Deccan. (Full article...) -
Albert Ball, VC, DSO & Two Bars, MC (14 August 1896 – 7 May 1917) was a British fighter pilot during the First World War. At the time of his death he was the United Kingdom's leading flying ace, with 44 victories, and remained its fourth-highest scorer behind Edward Mannock, James McCudden, and George McElroy.
Born and raised in Nottingham, Ball joined the Sherwood Foresters at the outbreak of the First World War and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in October 1914. He transferred to the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) the following year, and gained his pilot's wings on 26 January 1916. Joining No. 13 Squadron RFC in France, he flew reconnaissance missions before being posted in May to No. 11 Squadron, a fighter unit. From then until his return to England on leave in October, he accrued many aerial victories, earning two Distinguished Service Orders and the Military Cross. He was the first ace to become a British national hero. (Full article...) -
The original Spurs cockerel
Tottenham Hotspur Football Club is a football club based in Tottenham, north London, England. Formed in 1882 as "Hotspur Football Club" by a group of schoolboys, it was renamed to "Tottenham Hotspur Football Club" in 1884, and is commonly referred to as "Tottenham" or "Spurs". Initially amateur, the club turned professional in 1895. Spurs won the FA Cup in 1901, becoming the first, and so far only non-League club to do so since the formation of the Football League. The club has won the FA Cup a further seven times, the Football League twice, the League Cup four times, the UEFA Cup twice and the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup in 1963, the first UEFA competition won by an English team. In 1960–61, Tottenham became the first team to complete The Double in the 20th century.
Tottenham played in the Southern League from 1896 until 1908, when they were elected to the Football League Second Division. They won promotion to the First Division the following year, and stayed there until the late 1920s. The club played mostly in the Second Division until the 1950s, when it enjoyed a revival, reaching a peak in the 1960s. Fortunes dipped after the early 1970s, but resurged in the 1980s. Tottenham was a founding member of the Premier League in 1992; they finished in mid-table most seasons, but now rank as one of the top six clubs. (Full article...) -
LCTs and LCMs land supplies on the beach west of Saint-Raphaël on 20 August 1944. Matted ramp in foreground is for DUKWs.
Logistics played a key role in the success of Operation Dragoon, the Allied invasion of Southern France during World War II that commenced with the US Seventh Army landings on the French Riviera on 15 August 1944. On 12 September, the Seventh Army made contact with Allied forces that had landed in Normandy earlier that year as part of Operation Overlord. The supporting logistical organizations continued to operate separately, with the Southern Line of Communications supporting the Seventh Army drawing its supplies from the North African Theater of Operations until it merged with the Communications Zone of the European Theater of Operations on 20 November.
The primary objective of the campaign was to capture the ports of Marseille and Toulon, preceding a drive northward up the Rhone valley to connect with Allied forces from Normandy. Both ports were captured, but they had been badly damaged by German demolitions and Allied bombing, so considerable effort was required to bring them into service. The unexpectedly rapid Allied advance was the principal cause of logistical problems, although a theater-wide shortage of service units and an unanticipated dearth of French civilian labor also contributed. (Full article...)
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Illustration credit: M. Jackson, Illustrated London NewsThe traditional clothing of the Māori can be seen in this engraving of a meeting between Māori and settlers in Hawke's Bay Province during the Invasion of Waikato in 1863. Muka, the fibre of New Zealand flax, was the basis of most clothing. -
Photo: Maison Bonfils; Restoration: Lise BroerA late nineteenth century photo of the partially excavated Great Sphinx of Giza, with the Pyramid of Khafre (left) and the Great Pyramid of Giza (right) behind it. The Sphinx is the oldest known monumental sculpture, and is commonly believed to have been built by ancient Egyptians of the Old Kingdom in the reign of the pharaoh Khafra. -
Photo: American Colony, Jerusalem
Restoration: Lise Broer/Fir0002Ottoman machine gun corps, before the Second Battle of Gaza, which took place on 19 April 1917. The First Battle of Gaza, just three weeks prior, had ended in defeat for the British Empire, and this second attempt to break through Turkish defenses was also unsuccessful. Six months later, on the third attempt, the Allied forces were finally able to break the Gaza–Beersheba line. -
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. -
Photo credit: United States Coast GuardLanding 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. -
Photograph: Andrew ShivaAn aerial view of Masada, an ancient fortification in the Southern District of Israel. Found atop an isolated rock plateau, it overlooks the Dead Sea. The first fortifications on the mountain were built by Alexander Jannaeus, and significantly strengthened by the Roman client king Herod between 37 and 31 BCE. During the First Jewish–Roman War of 66–73 CE, the fortress was besieged, falling only after the 960 Sicarii defending it committed mass suicide.
Masada is among the more popular tourist attractions in Israel, and in 2001 it was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site. -
"The Trumpet Calls", a recruitment poster for the Australian Army in World War I. When the United Kingdom declared war on Germany, Australia followed without hesitation. This was considered to be expected by the Australian public, because of the very large number of British-born citizens and first generation Anglo-Australians at the time. A total of 331,814 Australians were sent overseas to serve as part of the Australian Imperial Force with a casualty rate (killed or wounded) of 64%. -
Credit: anonymousA 1793 etching with watercolor of Jean-Paul Marat, a radical journalist and politician from the French Revolution, carried on shoulders with a crown of laurel leaves, celebrating his acquittal by the Revolutionary Tribunal. From January to May 1793, Marat fought bitterly with the Girondins, whom he believed to be covert enemies of republicanism. The National Convention ordered the trial, but his acquittal only served to increase his public profile and popular support. -
Graphic: Arne NordmannA color visual interpretation of the digital signal in the Arecibo message, sent in 1974 from the Arecibo Observatory. Broadcast into space via frequency modulated radio waves at a ceremony to mark the remodeling of the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico, the message consisted of 1,679 binary digits, approximately 210 bytes, transmitted at a frequency of 2,380 MHz. It was aimed at the Great Globular Cluster in Hercules, some 25,000 light-years away, and contains information related to mathematics, chemistry, and astronomy. -
Check used for the Alaska PurchaseCheck: William H. Seward; scan: Our Documents initiativeThe check used for the Alaska Purchase, issued on August 1, 1868, and signed by US Secretary of State William H. Seward. For a total of $7.2 million, the United States government purchased Russian America from the Russian Empire (represented here by Russian Minister to the United States Eduard de Stoeckl). The lands involved became the modern state of Alaska in 1959. -
The "Theatre" at PetraPhoto: Douglas PerkinsPetra 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. -
Photo credit: McPherson and OliverScars of a whipped slave named Peter, photo taken at Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 1863. In his own words, "Overseer Artayou Carrier whipped me. I was two months in bed sore from the whipping. My master come after I was whipped; he discharged the overseer." The slave pictured here escaped from a plantation in Mississippi, made his way to Union forces, and joined the U.S. Army at the Union garrison located at Baton Rouge.
Slavery in the United States began soon after the English colonists first settled in North America. From about the 1640s until 1865, people of African descent were legally enslaved within the boundaries of the present U.S. mostly by whites, but also by a comparatively tiny number of American Indians and free blacks. By 1860, the slave population in the U.S. had grown to 4 million. -
Banknote credit: Bank of Finland; photographed by Andrew ShivaThe Finnish markka was the currency of Finland from 1860 to 2002. The currency was divided into 100 pennies and was first introduced by the Bank of Finland to replace the Russian ruble at a rate of four markkaa to one ruble. The markka was replaced by the euro on 1 January 2002 and ceased to be legal tender on 28 February later that year.
This picture shows a 20-markka banknote issued in 1862, as part of the first issue of markka banknotes (1860 to 1862), for the Grand Duchy of Finland, then an autonomous part of the Russian Empire; 1862 was also the first year of issue for this particular denomination. The banknote's obverse depicts the coat of arms of Finland on a Russian double-headed eagle, and was personally signed by the director and the cashier of the Bank of Finland. The text on the obverse is in Swedish, whereas the reverse is primarily in Russian and Finnish. -
Painting credit: John TrumbullJohn Trumbull's Declaration of Independence, a 12 by 18 feet (3.7 by 5.5 m) oil painting depicting the presentation of a draft of the United States Declaration of Independence to the Second Continental Congress. While this event did take place, it was not actually in the presence of all the people in the picture. The painting can be found in the rotunda of the United States Capitol. -
Chromolithograph: Romanet & cie.A 19th-century set of ten cards depicting events in the history of ballooning and parachuting. These cards depict, from left to right:
Top row:- Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac and Jean-Baptiste Biot reaching an altitude of 4,000 metres (13,000 ft) (1804)
- André-Jacques Garnerin making a parachute descent in his gondola (1797)
- Louis-Sébastien Lenormand making the first witnessed parachute descent (1783)
- A series of fantastic flying machines dreamed up during the 18th century
- Use of balloons for reconnaissance during the Battle of Mainz (1795)
Bottom row:- The coronation balloon of Napoleon I (1804)
- The death of Sophie Blanchard (1819)
- Francesco Zambeccari and two companions adrift in the Adriatic Sea (1804)
- The death of Thomas Harris (1824)
- Francesco Arban is rescued by Italian fishermen (1846)
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Painting: Henry WaltonEdward Gibbon (1737–1794) was an English historian who published The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in six volumes between 1776 and 1788. Born in Putney, Surrey, he became a voracious reader while being raised by his aunt, and was sent to study at Magdalen College, Oxford, and in Switzerland. Returning to England, in 1761 Gibbon published his first book, Essai sur l'Étude de la Littérature. This was well received, but Gibbon's next book was a failure. In the early 1770s Gibbon began writing his history of the Roman Empire, which was received with great praise. -
Artist: William Simpson; Restoration: Lise BroerA 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. -
Photo credit: USHMMJews 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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This is a Featured article, which represents some of the best content on English Wikipedia.
King Arthur (Welsh: Brenin Arthur, Cornish: Arthur Gernow, Breton: Roue Arzhur, French: Roi Arthur), according to legends, was a king of Britain. He is a folk hero and a central figure in the medieval literary tradition known as the Matter of Britain.
In Welsh sources, Arthur is portrayed as a leader of the post-Roman Britons in battles against the Anglo-Saxons in the late 5th and early 6th centuries. He first appears in two early medieval historical sources, the Annales Cambriae and the Historia Brittonum, but these date to 300 years after he is supposed to have lived, and most historians who study the period do not consider him a historical figure. His name also occurs in early Welsh poetic sources such as Y Gododdin. The character developed through Welsh mythology, appearing either as a great warrior defending Britain from human and supernatural enemies or as a magical figure of folklore, sometimes associated with the Welsh otherworld Annwn. (Full article...)
On this day
Caroll Spinney with his Oscar the Grouch puppet
- 1599 – At the culmination of a Swedish civil war, supporters of the deposed King Sigismund III Vasa were publicly executed in the Åbo Bloodbath.
- 1969 – The children's television series Sesame Street (puppeteer pictured) premiered in the United States.
- 1972 – Three men hijacked Southern Airways Flight 49 and threatened to crash it into Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the U.S. state of Tennessee.
- 2006 – Nadarajah Raviraj, a prominent Sri Lankan Tamil politician and human rights lawyer, was assassinated in Colombo.
- 2009 – A skirmish occurred between South Korean and North Korean naval ships off Daecheong Island in the Yellow Sea.
- Afzal Khan (d. 1659)
- Scipione Piattoli (b. 1749)
- Andrés Manuel del Río (b. 1764)
- Elisa Leonida Zamfirescu (b. 1887)
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Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.
— Sun Tzu, Ancient Chinese military strategist
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- ... that the anti-religious campaign culminating in the Stalinist show trial of the Kraków Curia (pictured) led to the imprisonment of 123 Polish Roman Catholic priests in just one year?
- ... that Confederate brigadier general Alfred E. Jackson was pardoned by President Andrew Johnson because of his kindness toward Johnson's family during the Civil War?
- ... that after HMS Porcupine was nearly split in two by a torpedo, the halves were nicknamed HMS Pork and HMS Pine?
- ... that the Experiment was a boat powered by horses running on a treadmill and propelled by a then-novel type of screw propeller?
- ... that one of the highest-ranking generals in China was injured in battle nine times?
- ... that in Mesopotamian mythology, the Apkallu were sent by the god Enki, from Dilmun to teach human beings various aspects of civilization?
- ... that Karl Marx's theory of historical trajectory attempted to prove the long-term unsustainability of capitalism?
- ... that in November 1921, the schooner Cymric collided with a tram in Dublin?
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