Portal:History
The History Portal
Historia by Nikolaos Gyzis
History is the systematic study of the past. As an academic discipline, it analyzes and interprets evidence to construct narratives about what happened and explain why it happened, focusing primarily on the human past. Some theorists categorize history as a social science, while others see it as part of the humanities or consider it a hybrid discipline. Similar debates surround the purpose of history—for example, whether its main aim is theoretical, to uncover the truth, or practical, to learn lessons from the past. In a slightly different sense, the term history refers not to an academic field but to the past itself or to individual texts about the past.
Historical research relies on primary and secondary sources to reconstruct past events and validate interpretations. Source criticism is used to evaluate these sources, assessing their authenticity, content, and reliability. Historians integrate the perspectives of several individual sources to develop a coherent narrative. Different schools of thought, such as positivism, the Annales school, Marxism, and postmodernism, have distinct methodological approaches.
History is a broad discipline encompassing many branches. Some focus on specific time periods, such as ancient history, while others concentrate on particular geographic regions, such as the history of Africa. Thematic categorizations include political history, social history, and economic history. Branches associated with specific research methods include quantitative history, comparative history, and oral history.
History emerged as a field of inquiry in the ancient period to replace myth-infused narratives, with influential early traditions originating in Greece, China, and later also in the Islamic world. Historical writing evolved throughout the ages and became increasingly professional, particularly during the 19th century, when a rigorous methodology and various academic institutions were established. History is related to many fields, including historiography, philosophy, education, and politics. (Full article...)
Featured articles –
Featured articles are displayed here, which represent some of the best content on English Wikipedia.
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Beograd was the lead ship of her class of destroyers, built for the Royal Yugoslav Navy in France during the late 1930s, and designed to be deployed as part of a division led by the flotilla leader Dubrovnik. She entered service in April 1939, was armed with a main battery of four 120 mm (4.7 in) guns in single mounts, and had a top speed of 35 knots (65 km/h; 40 mph).
When Yugoslavia entered World War II due to a German-led Axis invasion in April 1941, she was damaged by a near miss during an air attack, and was then captured by the Italians. After refitting, she saw extensive service with the Royal Italian Navy from August 1941 to September 1943, completing over 100 convoy escort missions in the Mediterranean under the name Sebenico, mainly on routes between Italy and the Aegean and North Africa. Following the Italian armistice in September 1943, she was captured by the German Navy and redesignated TA43. They enhanced her anti-aircraft armament and she served with the 9th Torpedo Boat Flotilla on escort and minelaying duties in the northern Adriatic. TA43 was sunk or scuttled at Trieste on 30 April or 1 May 1945. Raised in June 1946, probably to remove her as a navigation hazard, she was scuttled again in either July 1946 or in 1947. (Full article...) -
The Battle of Dyrrhachium took place on October 18, 1081 between the Byzantine Empire, led by the Emperor Alexios I Komnenos (r. 1081–1118), and the Normans of southern Italy under Robert Guiscard, Duke of Apulia and Calabria. The battle was fought outside the city of Dyrrhachium (present-day Durrës in Albania), the major Byzantine stronghold in the western Balkans, and ended in a Norman victory.
Following the Norman conquest of Byzantine Italy and Saracen Sicily, the Byzantine emperor, Michael VII Doukas (r. 1071–1078), betrothed his son to Robert Guiscard's daughter. When Michael was deposed, Robert took this as an excuse to invade the Byzantine Empire in 1081. His army laid siege to Dyrrhachium, but his fleet was defeated by the Venetians. On October 18, the Normans engaged a Byzantine army under Alexios I Komnenos outside Dyrrhachium. The battle began with the Byzantine right wing routing the Norman left wing, which broke and fled. Varangian troops joined in the pursuit of the fleeing Normans, but became separated from the main force and were massacred. Norman knights attacked the Byzantine centre and routed it, causing the bulk of the Byzantine army to rout. (Full article...) -
USS Constitution, also known as Old Ironsides, is a three-masted wooden-hulled heavy frigate of the United States Navy. The ship is the world's oldest commissioned naval warship still afloat. The ship was launched in 1797, one of six original frigates authorized for construction by the Naval Act of 1794 and the third constructed. The name "Constitution" was among ten names submitted to President George Washington by Secretary of War Timothy Pickering in March or May for the frigates that were to be constructed. Joshua Humphreys designed the frigates to be the young Navy's capital ships, and so Constitution and its sister ships were larger and more heavily armed and built than standard frigates of the period. The ship was built at Edmund Hartt's shipyard in the North End of Boston, Massachusetts. Its first duties were to provide protection for American merchant shipping during the Quasi-War with France and to defeat the Barbary pirates in the First Barbary War.
Constitution is most noted for its actions during the War of 1812 with the United Kingdom, when the ship captured numerous British merchantmen and five warships: HMS Guerriere, Java, Pictou, Cyane, and Levant. Its capture of Guerriere earned itself the nickname "Old Ironsides", adding on the public adoration that had repeatedly saved it from scrapping. The ship continued to serve as flagship in the Mediterranean and African squadrons, and the ship circled the world in the 1840s. During the American Civil War, the ship served as a training ship for the United States Naval Academy. The ship carried American artwork and industrial displays to the Paris Exposition of 1878. (Full article...) -
The Battle of Saipan was an amphibious assault launched by the United States against the Empire of Japan during the Pacific campaign of World War II between 15 June and 9 July 1944. The initial invasion triggered the Battle of the Philippine Sea, which effectively destroyed Japanese carrier-based airpower, and the battle resulted in the American capture of the island. Its occupation put the major cities of the Japanese home islands within the range of B-29 bombers, making them vulnerable to strategic bombing by the United States Army Air Forces. It also precipitated the resignation of Hideki Tōjō, the prime minister of Japan.
Saipan was the first objective in Operation Forager, the campaign to occupy the Mariana Islands that got underway at the same time the Allies were invading France in Operation Overlord. After a two-day naval bombardment, the U.S. 2nd Marine Division, 4th Marine Division, and the Army's 27th Infantry Division, commanded by Lieutenant General Holland Smith, landed on the island and defeated the 43rd Infantry Division of the Imperial Japanese Army, commanded by Lieutenant General Yoshitsugu Saitō. Organized resistance ended when at least 3,000 Japanese soldiers died in a mass gyokusai attack, and afterward about 1,000 civilians committed suicide. (Full article...) -
The North Carolina class were a pair of fast battleships, North Carolina and Washington, built for the United States Navy in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
In planning a new battleship class in the 1930s, the US Navy was heavily constrained by international treaty limitations, which included a requirement that all new capital ships have a standard displacement of under 35,000 LT (35,600 t). This restriction meant that the navy could not construct a ship with the firepower, armor, and speed that they desired, and the balancing uncertainty that resulted meant that the navy considered fifty widely varying designs. (Full article...) -
Soldiers of the 4185th Quartermaster Service Company load trucks with rations at Liege in Belgium.
American services and supply played a crucial part in the World War II Siegfried Line campaign, which ran from the end of the pursuit of the German armies from Normandy in mid-September 1944 until December 1944, when the American forces were engulfed by the German Ardennes offensive. In August 1944, the Supreme Allied Commander, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, elected to continue the pursuit of the retreating German forces beyond the Seine and across France and Belgium to the German border instead of pausing to build up supplies and establish the line of communications as called for in the original Operation Overlord plan. The subsequent advance to the German border stretched the American logistical system to breaking point, and the advance came to a halt in mid-September.
Problems with port capacity and transportation created many shortages, but many others were the result of mismanagement and underestimating requirements. A critical shortage of winter clothing developed from a reluctance to accept new items and a failure to order adequate quantities in the mistaken belief that the war would end before they were required. The winter of 1944–1945 in Northwest Europe was unusually cold and wet, and American soldiers were not trained in how to avoid cold injury. The American forces suffered 71,000 casualties from trench foot and frostbite. (Full article...) -
Rochester Castle stands on the east bank of the River Medway in Rochester, Kent, South East England. The 12th-century keep or stone tower, which is the castle's most prominent feature, is one of the best preserved of its time in England or France.
Situated on the River Medway and Watling Street, Rochester was a strategically important royal castle. During the late medieval period, it helped protect England's south-east coast from invasion. The first castle at Rochester was founded in the aftermath of the Norman Conquest. It was given to Bishop Odo, probably by his half-brother William the Conqueror. During the Rebellion of 1088 over the succession to the English throne, Odo supported Robert Curthose, the Conqueror's eldest son, against William Rufus. It was during this conflict that the castle first saw military action; the city and castle were besieged after Odo made Rochester a headquarters for the rebellion. After the garrison capitulated, this first castle was abandoned. (Full article...) -
Marwan ibn al-Hakam ibn Abi al-As ibn Umayya (Arabic: مروان بن الحكم بن أبي العاص بن أمية, romanized: Marwān ibn al-Ḥakam ibn Abī al-ʿĀṣ ibn Umayya; 623 or 626 – April/May 685), commonly known as Marwan I, was the fourth Umayyad caliph, ruling for less than a year in 684–685. He founded the Marwanid ruling house of the Umayyad dynasty, which replaced the Sufyanid house after its collapse in the Second Fitna and remained in power until 750.
During the reign of his cousin Uthman (r. 644–656), Marwan took part in a military campaign against the Byzantines of the Exarchate of Africa (in central North Africa), where he acquired significant war spoils. He also served as Uthman's governor in Fars (southwestern Iran) before becoming the caliph's katib (secretary or scribe). He was wounded fighting the rebel siege of Uthman's house, in which the caliph was slain. In the ensuing civil war between Ali (r. 656–661) and the largely Qurayshite partisans of A'isha, Marwan sided with the latter at the Battle of the Camel. Marwan later served as governor of Medina under his distant kinsman Caliph Mu'awiya I (r. 661–680), founder of the Umayyad Caliphate. During the reign of Mu'awiya's son and successor Yazid I (r. 680–683), Marwan organized the defense of the Umayyad realm in the Hejaz (western Arabia) against the local opposition which included prominent companions as well as Muhammad’s own clan, the Bani Hashim, who revolted under the banner of Muhammad’s grandson, Husayn ibn Ali. After Yazid died in November 683, the Mecca-based rebel Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr declared himself caliph and expelled Marwan, who took refuge in Syria, the center of Umayyad rule. With the death of the last Sufyanid caliph Mu'awiya II in 684, Marwan, encouraged by the ex-governor of Iraq Ubayd Allah ibn Ziyad, volunteered his candidacy for the caliphate during a summit of pro-Umayyad tribes in Jabiya. The tribal nobility, led by Ibn Bahdal of the Banu Kalb, elected Marwan and together they defeated the pro-Zubayrid Qays tribes at the Battle of Marj Rahit in August of that year. (Full article...) -
The Battle of the Defile or Battle of the Pass (Arabic: وقعة الشعب, romanized: Waqʿat al-Shʿib) was fought in the Takhtakaracha Pass (in modern Uzbekistan) between a large army of the Umayyad Caliphate and the Turkic Türgesh khaganate over three days in July 731 CE. The Türgesh had been besieging Samarkand, and Samarkand's commander, Sawra ibn al-Hurr al-Abani, had sent a request for relief to the newly appointed governor of Khurasan, Junayd ibn Abd al-Rahman al-Murri. Junayd's 28,000-strong army was attacked by the Türgesh in the pass, and although the Umayyad army managed to extricate itself and reach Samarkand, it suffered enormous casualties; Sawra's 12,000 men, who had been commanded to attack the Türgesh from the rear in a relief effort, were almost annihilated.
The battle, for which one of the most detailed accounts of the entire Umayyad era survives in the History of al-Tabari, halted or reversed Muslim expansion into Central Asia for a decade. The losses suffered by the Khurasani army also led to the transfer of reinforcements from the metropolitan regions of the Caliphate, which in the long term weakened the Umayyad regime and helped bring about its collapse twenty years later in the Abbasid Revolution that began in Khurasan. (Full article...) -
Konon Molody, who used the cover name Gordon Lonsdale, in 1961
The Portland spy ring was an espionage group active in the UK between 1953 and 1961. It comprised five people who obtained classified research documents from the Admiralty Underwater Weapons Establishment (AUWE) on the Isle of Portland, Dorset, and passed them to the Soviet Union.
Two of the group's members, Harry Houghton and Ethel Gee, were British. They worked at the AUWE and had access to the areas where the research was stored. After they obtained the information it was passed to their handler, Konon Molody—who was acting under the name Gordon Lonsdale. He was a KGB agent acting in the UK under a Canadian passport. Lonsdale would pass the documents in microdot format to Lona and Morris Cohen, two American communists who had moved to the UK using New Zealand passports in the names Helen and Peter Kroger. The Krogers would get the information to Moscow, often by using the cover of an antiquarian book dealer. (Full article...) -
Melville Island (centre) in 1878
Melville Island is a small peninsula in Nova Scotia, Canada, located in the Northwest Arm of Halifax Harbour, west of Deadman's Island. It is part of the Halifax Regional Municipality.
The site was discovered by Europeans in the 17th century, though it was likely earlier explored by Indigenous peoples. The land is rocky, with thin, acidic soil, but supports a limited woodland habitat. It was initially used for storehouses before being purchased by the British, who built a prisoner-of-war camp to hold captives from the Napoleonic Wars and later the War of 1812. The burial ground for prisoners was on the adjacent Deadman's Island. (Full article...) -
Air Marshal Sir John Patrick Joseph McCauley, KBE, CB (18 March 1899 – 3 February 1989) was a senior commander in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). He served as Chief of the Air Staff from 1954 to 1957. A Duntroon graduate, McCauley spent four years in the Australian Military Forces before transferring to the RAAF in 1924. He was Director of Training from 1936 to 1938, and commanded engineering and flying training schools for the first eighteen months of World War II. Having been promoted to group captain in 1940, he was posted to Singapore in June 1941 to take charge of all RAAF units defending the area. He earned praise for his efforts in attacking invading Japanese forces before the fall of Singapore, and for his dedication in evacuating his men. After serving as Deputy Chief of the Air Staff in 1942–1944, he was appointed to a senior operational role with the Royal Air Force's 2nd Tactical Air Force in Europe, where he saw out the rest of the war.
Following the end of hostilities, McCauley again became Deputy Chief of the Air Staff. In 1947 he was promoted to air vice marshal and appointed Chief of Staff at British Commonwealth Occupation Force Headquarters in Japan. Returning to Australia in June 1949, he served as the last Air Officer Commanding (AOC) Eastern Area and the inaugural AOC Home Command (now Air Command). Raised to air marshal, he took up the position of Chief of the Air Staff in January 1954, and was knighted a year later. During his tenure in the RAAF's senior role, McCauley focused on potential deployments to Southeast Asia—particularly Vietnam—and threats from the north, commencing redevelopment of RAAF Base Darwin and recommending purchase of a light supersonic bomber to replace the Air Force's English Electric Canberra. After retiring from military life in March 1957, he chaired community and welfare organisations, serving as Federal President of the Air Force Association for ten years. He died in Sydney in 1989, aged 89. (Full article...) -
Æthelred (/ˈæθəlrɛd/; died after 704) was king of Mercia from 675 until 704. He was the son of Penda of Mercia and came to the throne in 675, when his brother, Wulfhere of Mercia, died from an illness. Within a year of his accession he invaded Kent, where his armies destroyed the city of Rochester. In 679 he defeated his brother-in-law, Ecgfrith of Northumbria, at the Battle of the Trent: the battle was a major setback for the Northumbrians, and effectively ended their military involvement in English affairs south of the Humber. It also permanently returned the Kingdom of Lindsey to Mercia's possession. However, Æthelred was unable to re-establish his predecessors' domination of southern Britain.
He was known as a pious and devout Christian king, and he made many grants of land to the church. It was during his reign that Theodore, the Archbishop of Canterbury, reorganized the church's diocesan structure, creating several new sees in Mercia and Northumbria. Æthelred befriended Bishop Wilfrid of York when Wilfrid was expelled from his see in Northumbria; Æthelred made Wilfrid Bishop of the Middle Angles during his exile and supported him at the synod of Austerfield in about 702, when Wilfrid argued his case for the return of the ecclesiastical lands he had been deprived of in Northumbria. (Full article...) -
B Reactor and water treatment area in 1944
The Hanford Engineer Works (HEW) was a nuclear production complex in Benton County, Washington, established by the United States federal government in 1943 as part of the Manhattan Project during World War II. It built and operated the B Reactor, the first full-scale plutonium production reactor. Plutonium manufactured at the HEW was used in the atomic bomb detonated in the Trinity test in July 1945, and in the Fat Man bomb used in the atomic bombing of Nagasaki in August 1945. The plant continued producing plutonium for nuclear weapons until 1971. The HEW was commanded by Colonel Franklin T. Matthias until January 1946, and then by Colonel Frederick J. Clarke.
The director of the Manhattan Project, Brigadier General Leslie R. Groves Jr., engaged DuPont as the prime contractor for the design, construction and operation of the HEW. DuPont recommended that it be located far from densely populated areas, and a site on the Columbia River, codenamed Site W, was chosen. The federal government acquired the land under its war powers authority and relocated some 1,500 nearby residents. The acquisition was one of the largest in US history. Disputes arose with farmers over the value of the land and compensation for crops that had already been planted. The acquisition was not completed before the Manhattan Project ended in December 1946. (Full article...) -
The Maryland and Virginia Rifle Regiment, most commonly known as Rawlings' Regiment in period documents, was organized in June 1776 as a specialized light infantry unit of riflemen in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. The American rifle units complemented the predominant, musket-equipped, line infantry forces of the war with their long-range marksmanship capability and were typically deployed with the line infantry as forward skirmishers and flanking elements. Scouting, escort, and outpost duties were also routine. The rifle units' battle formation was not nearly as structured as that of the line infantry units, which employed short-range massed firing in ordered linear formations. The riflemen could therefore respond with more adaptability to changing battle conditions.
The Maryland and Virginia Rifle Regiment consisted of nine companies—four from Maryland and five from Virginia. The two-state composition of the new unit precluded it from being managed through a single state government, and it was therefore directly responsible to national authority as an Extra Continental regiment. (Full article...)
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Featured picture
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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. -
Photograph credit: Ronald TorfsYellow badges are badges that Jews were ordered to wear in public during periods of the Middle Ages by the ruling Christians and Muslims, and in Nazi Germany in the 1940s. The badges served to mark the wearer as a religious or ethnic outsider, and often served as a badge of shame. The badge pictured is in the collection of the Kazerne Dossin Memorial, Museum and Documentation Centre in Mechelen, Belgium. -
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. -
Photo credit: H. D. ChadwickThe Mission District of San Francisco, California, burning in the aftermath of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. As damaging as the earthquake and its aftershocks were, the fires that burned out of control afterward were much more destructive. -
Document: John, King of England, his barons and Stephen LangtonCotton MS Augustus II.106, one of four surviving exemplifications of Magna Carta. This document, sealed by King John of England on 15 June 1215 (O.S.), was drafted by the Archbishop of Canterbury to make peace between the unpopular king and a group of rebel barons. The charter promised the protection of church rights, protection for the barons from illegal imprisonment, access to swift justice, and limitations on feudal payments to the Crown.
The document was reissued and renewed several times over the centuries, though its political impact decreased as later laws were passed. The charter was significant because the king had agreed to limit his power, so that although it dealt predominantly with the king and the barons, since the late 16th century it has been considered a symbol of liberty and the freedom of the individual. -
De Magere Compagnie (completed 1637), which depicts a company of schutterij, a voluntary city guard or citizen militia in the medieval and early modern Netherlands. Frans Hals was commissioned to create this, but he was unable to complete it after three years, and the company hired Pieter Codde to finish it. Group portraits such as this of schutterij were known as schuttersstuk, and were popular among the guards themselves. -
Photo: Martin St-AmantMachu Picchu, with the peak Huayna Picchu behind it. Perhaps the most famous Inca site, Machu Picchu is situated on a mountain ridge above the Urubamba Valley in Peru. It was probably built as an estate for the Inca emperor Pachacuti in the 15th century, but abandoned soon after during the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire. Although known locally, it was unknown to the outside world before being brought to international attention in 1911 by the American historian Hiram Bingham, and it is now an important tourist attraction. -
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. -
The Battle of the Somme was a battle of the First World War fought between 1 July and 18 November 1916 by the armies of the British and French empires against the German Empire. The largest battle of World War I on the Western Front, it was fought on both sides of upper reaches of the River Somme in France. More than one million men were wounded or killed, making it one of the bloodiest battles in human history.
This map shows the situation on the first day on the Somme, as well as Allied gains up to 19 November 1916. -
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. -
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: 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. -
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. -
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. -
Photo credit: Gustaf NordenskiöldAn 1891 photograph of Cliff Palace, the largest cliff dwelling—a structure built within caves and under outcroppings in cliffs—in North America, located in what is now Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado, USA. There are about 150 rooms in the 288 ft (88 m) long structure, although only 25 to 30 of those were used as living space by Ancient Pueblo Peoples. it is estimated that the population of Cliff Palace was roughly 100–150 people. -
Photograph: Lewis Hine; restoration: Lise BroerA baseball team composed mostly of child laborers from an Indiana glassmaking factory, as photographed by Lewis Hine in August 1908. Hine (1874–1940) was an American sociologist who promoted the use of photography as an educational medium and means for social change. Beginning in 1908, he spent ten years photographing child labor for the National Child Labor Committee. The project was a dangerous one, and Hine had to disguise himself – at times as a fire inspector, post card vendor, Bible salesman or industrial photographer – to avoid the factory police and foremen. -
1895 train wreck, Gare MontparnassePhoto credit: Studio Lévy and SonsOn October 22, 1895, the Granville–Paris Express train overran the buffer stop at Gare Montparnasse station. The engine careened across almost 30 metres (100 feet) of the station concourse, crashed through a 60 centimetre thick wall, shot across a terrace and sailed out of the station, plummeting onto the Place de Rennes 10 metres (30 feet) below where it stood on its nose. While all of the passengers on board the train survived, one woman on the street below was killed by falling masonry.
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Did you know (auto generated)
- ... that archaeological excavations in the historic town of Kharayeb revealed a rural settlement with a complex system of cisterns and a Phoenician temple?
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- ... that the first draft pick in New England Patriots' history, Gerhard Schwedes, was born in Nazi Germany?
- ... that Cyclone Freddy was the longest-lasting tropical cyclone recorded?
- ... that the developers of The Pale Beyond were inspired by stories from historical Antarctic and Arctic expeditions?
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Featured biography –
This is a Featured article, which represents some of the best content on English Wikipedia.
Alfred Russel Wallace (8 January 1823 – 7 November 1913) was an English naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist, biologist and illustrator. He independently conceived the theory of evolution through natural selection; his 1858 paper on the subject was published that year alongside extracts from Charles Darwin's earlier writings on the topic. It spurred Darwin to set aside the "big species book" he was drafting and to quickly write an abstract of it, which was published in 1859 as On the Origin of Species.
Wallace did extensive fieldwork, starting in the Amazon River basin. He then did fieldwork in the Malay Archipelago, where he identified the faunal divide now termed the Wallace Line, which separates the Indonesian archipelago into two distinct parts: a western portion in which the animals are largely of Asian origin, and an eastern portion where the fauna reflect Australasia. He was considered the 19th century's leading expert on the geographical distribution of animal species, and is sometimes called the "father of biogeography", or more specifically of zoogeography. (Full article...)
On this day
March 17: Saint Patrick's Day (Christianity); Anniversary of the Unification of Italy (1861)
Dorchester Heights Monument
- 1864 – Second Schleswig War: In an attempt to end a Danish blockade, Eduard von Jachmann led a Prussian squadron in an attack against a Danish fleet led by Edvard van Dockum.
- 1902 – The Dorchester Heights Monument (pictured), memorializing the siege of Boston during the American Revolutionary War, was dedicated.
- 1957 – A plane crash on the slopes of Mount Manunggal killed Philippine president Ramon Magsaysay and 24 others.
- 1979 – The Penmanshiel Tunnel in the Scottish Borders collapsed during refurbishing construction, killing two workers, and leading to the abandonment of the tunnel.
- 2004 – Unrest in Kosovo broke out, resulting in the deaths of 28, the wounding of more than 600 others, and the destruction of several Serb Orthodox churches and shrines.
- Jocelin of Glasgow (d. 1199)
- Menno van Coehoorn (d. 1704)
- Pattie Boyd (b. 1944)
- Shu Xiuwen (d. 1969)
Selected quote
Time's glory is to command contending kings,
To unmask falsehood, and bring truth to light.— William Shakespeare, playwright
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- ... that 49% of German military losses happened in the last 10 months of the Second World War in Europe?
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- ... that Egyptian political cartoonist Ahmad Nady took part in the 2011 Egyptian revolution, drawing cartoons while he demonstrated?
- ... that finds unearthed at the Israelite Tower in Jerusalem's Jewish Quarter attest to the Babylonian sack of the city in 586 BCE?
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