At the beginning of the American Civil War in 1861, the Confederacy consisted of eleven secessionist slave-holding states. Kentucky began the war as neutral, but came under Union control. Missouri began as a Union state, even though it was slave-owning and mostly pro-Confederate. During the war it split into two,... More
The advance into the Odon Valley began on 10 July with Operation Jupiter. It followed on from the advances made during Operation Charnwood, which successfully pushed the Germans south of the Odon river in Caen. Operation Jupiter succeeded in taking villages in the area but failed to take the important... More
In 1779 the British were embarrassed by the capture of their governor of Quebec, ‘the Hairbuyer General’ (for his commissioning of scalping raids), and made repeated attempts to regain the initiative in the western frontiers. The ambitious attempt of the former British officer and fur-trader Emanuel Hesse to sail down... More
1n 1787 Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance, which established the boundaries of the different areas within the northwestern territories. These included Michigan Territory, Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio. In 1802, the Ohio Enabling Act called for Ohio to be admitted into the United States of America. There had been a long-running... More
Since Medieval times Jerusalem’s Old City, within modern Jerusalem, was divided into four religious quarters: Muslim, Christian, Armenian and Jewish. The city’s walls, which include the Jaffa gate (rebuilt in 1898), were constructed in the 1600s by the Ottoman emperor, Suleiman the Magnificent. By c. 2000, the two largest quarters... More
Although hostile nomadic tribes were making Red Sea trade difficult for Egypt, the Wawat region in Nubia was beginning to pose a more serious threat to its economic interests. The corridor to sub-Saharan Africa depended on a compliant Nubia and now the Nile trade route from Elephantine to Yam was... More
Although aspects of capitalist policy were introduced under Gorbachev’s perestroika reforms in the late 1980s, large-scale privatization of Russia’s state-owned businesses did not take off until 1992. Russia initially pursued a process of voucher privatization, whereby all citizens received vouchers that could be used to obtain shares. Russia and much... More
The Ōnin War came about when a dispute over the succession of the Ashikaga Shogunate led to civil war. Individuals from the families of two powerful daimyo (feudal lords) led the fighting, namely Hosokawa Katsumoto and Yamana Sozen (the Red Monk), and most of the Shugos (feudal governors) took sides... More
During the Ordovician, there were no landmasses in the northern hemisphere, which was entirely covered by the global ocean of Panthalassa. The southern continents were fused into the supercontinent Gondwanaland, which started the period abutting the equator, but drifted steadily southward. To the west of Gondwana, between the equator and... More
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, several imperial powers including Spain, Russia, the United States and Great Britain, claimed North America’s Northwest coast. After 1824, only the United States, Russia and Britain maintained territorial claims in the region. Both Britain and the US claimed everything west of the... More
The Ostrogoths were eastern Goths (a Germanic tribe) who settled in the area around the Black Sea and constantly made incursions into the Roman provinces. Between 375–450, they were ruled by the Huns, a warrior people from the Eurasian steppes. When Attila the Hun died, they established the Ostrogoth Kingdom,... More
The Ottoman expansion that began in 1453 with the fall of Constantinople to Sultan Mehmed II saw a rapid growth in the Turks’ territorial dominion and a steady increase in their naval reach. Between 1459 and 1478 Mehmed took Serbia, Bosnia, Morea (the Greek Peloponnese), Anatolia, Trabzon and Albania, and... More