Robert Nivelle came to prominence in the Battle of the Marne when the devastating artillery fire he organized helped stem the German advance on Paris. Promoted to General, he went on to lead the fêted defence of Verdun, using his tactical innovation of saturation bombardment followed by the creeping barrage,... More
The Norfolk and Western Railway (NW) began life as the Atlantic, Mississippi & Ohio Railroad and operated from 1870, after damaged railway systems were restored following the US Civil War. The Railway was owned by William and Otelia Mahone, Virginians, rumoured to have created the acronym, AM&O, to mean ‘All... More
Norman castles were a foreign intrusion on the British landscape. The signature Saxon defensive structure was the burh, a fortified settlement that protected ruler and ruled alike. The Normans, greatly outnumbered by a hostile native population, used earthwork motte-and-bailey structures for the first-wave of subjugation, following up with massive ‘statement’... More
The North German Confederation was formed after Prussia’s victory over Austria in the Austro-Prussian War in 1866. Austria was excluded from Germany, and Prussia established hegemony over a federation of 22 German states. These states had federal autonomy, but were ultimately controlled by a constitution whose head of state, the... More
Approved in 1864, work did not begin on the Northern Pacific Railroad until 1870, owing to what would become a perennial struggle for financing. Intended to link the Great Lakes with the Puget Sound on the Pacific, the designated route traversed some of America’s most rugged wilderness: early work parties... More
In 960, military general Zhao Kuangyin led a military coup to overthrow the Later Zhou dynasty (the last of the Five Dynasties), enabling him to establish both the Song dynasty and himself as Emperor Taizu. The first era of the Song, known as Northern Song, was a prosperous time of... More
The Allied occupation of Austria began on 27 April 1945, and the US, UK, USSR and France agreed the borders of their occupation zones in July 1945. Vienna was also divided between the four Allied powers, although the historical centre of the city was declared an international zone, and the... More
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