In 1328, a census reported 61,098 households in Paris, with perhaps 250,000 inhabitants. In the following century plague and war would halve the population. Its nerve centre was the Île de la Cité, where both the Royal Palace and the Cathedral of Notre-Dame were situated. The Palace also housed the... More
Archaeologists have concluded that the south Mesopotamian city of Ur (in modern Iraq), first established in 3800 BCE, covered 60 acres and was enclosed by a city wall, made of fired bricks. Although it was a desert city, its position between two rivers meant it was well irrigated. By 600... More
From the Wright Brothers’ first successful flight in 1903, early American aviation was initially unregulated. In 1915, the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics was established to promote and coordinate research and development in the field. US involvement in World War I stimulated aviation manufacturing and technology. In 1918, the Post... More
The heartland of the early Indus civilization appears to have been situated to the northwest in Baluchistan, where Neolithic remains display evidence of domesticated crops, including wheat, the herding of animals, and basic tool making dating back to c. 7000 BCE. The subsequent early Harappan phase (c. 3300–2600 BCE) is... More
This Cistercian monastery, founded by St Bernard, was located in Ville-sous-la-Ferté in Burgundy. St Bernard had joined the new Cistercian foundation of Cîteaux in 1112 or 1113, and was sent out in 1115 to found Clairvaux. The growth of the Cistercians was phenomenal; by the time Bernard died 68 monasteries... More
Early on in the American Revolutionary War, George Rogers Clark was a captain of the Virginia militia tasked with organizing the defence of settlers in Kentucky, who were threatened by Indian raids, incited and armed by the British and their lieutenant-governor, Henry Hamilton, based at Fort Detroit. Chafing at a... More
At the outbreak of war, supposedly neutral Missouri was a soup of intrigue. The flashpoint was the ‘Camp Jackson Massacre’ (10 May) in St Louis, when the the Union commander of the city’s arsenal, General Lyon, opened fire on a mob trying to free paramilitaries he had arrested for plotting... More
In 1978, Cleveland became the first American city since the Depression to default on its debts: with a rapidly shrinking population it was the embodiment of Rust Belt decline. Half a century earlier, it had been the ‘melting pot of nationalities’, the fifth largest city in the Union with a... More
Following the failure of the German counterattack during Operation Lüttich, the German army in northern France found itself in a perilous position. Its entire fighting force had been worn down by two months of fighting and the Americans were rapidly advancing along the southern flank. The Allies opted to enclose... More
By 16 August the Canadian Operation Tractable had succeeded in wearing down German resistance and had taken Falaise, further closing the gap with the Americans in the south. The second part of the operation then began with Polish and Canadian forces moving east towards Trun, through which one of the... More
The pocket began to shrink drastically as pressure was exerted around Falaise and further east between Trun and Chambois. The final thrust of Operation Tractable saw the Polish and Canadians converge on Trun. The American army was moving towards Chambois to the south, in readiness to seal the gap. Trun... More
The Frontier, trailbazed by legendary pioneers like Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett, was declared closed, with exquisite bathos, by the American Census Bureau in 1890. Its demise owed less to iconic pacifiers like Wyatt Earp and Pat Garrett than to America’s rocketing population growth. The insatiable pursuit of land was... More