Hourly History

In 1937, passengers could cross the Atlantic in unprecedented luxury aboard the world’s most advanced aircraft. The Hindenburg was a marvel that defied belief.

Annie Oakley was a remarkable sharpshooter whose legendary accuracy with firearms captivated audiences across the world.

The Bosnian War was not a single, isolated conflict, but rather formed part of this wider series of wars. To unravel the complexities of the Bosnian War, one must delve into the intricate web of connections with these other conflicts....

The Akkadian Empire was one of the first empires in human history and certainly the first to involve the central government of a large, multi-ethnic populace. It also introduced things like the very first postal system and facilitated advances in science, art, and medicine....

The creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in 1922 was one of the defining events of the 20th century. This new federation, created to embody the ideals of communism and the notion of rule by the people, was intended to be different from any other nation in the world....

The Haitian Revolution began in 1791 in the French colony of Saint Domingue, when a group of slaves rebelled in order to secure their freedom and the end of slavery....

Over a period of more than 10 years, following the overthrow of the government in 1910, Mexico experienced a period of intense and bloody warfare as a bewildering array of factions in ever-changing alliances took power and then lost it....

Discover the remarkable history of the Inca Empire...In the space of less than one hundred years, the Inca people expanded from being a small kingdom in the highlands of Peru to becoming one of the largest and most powerful empires in the Americas....

The Crusades are the prototype and epitome of the Holy War. The fight to take control of Jerusalem, believed to be the Holy City to two distinct religions of Christianity and Islam, has lasted far longer than the two centuries of the Crusades....

A pioneer girl traveling west with her Mormon family at the mid-point of the 19th century, Olive Oatman’s life story began like many others. But when Olive’s family were massacred and she was taken captive by Native Americans, her story took a unique turn....

Founded at the dawn of the 17th century as European nations were establishing global empires, the English East India Company would become a vital part of burgeoning British supremacy....

Violent confrontation between armed groups over the supply of illegal narcotics is something we commonly associate with criminal gangs in modern cities, but in the mid-nineteenth century Great Britain went to war with Imperial China....

This is the story of the gradual rise, sudden destruction, and slow recovery of the native people of North America....

Isaac Newton seemed to be a most unwanted child of the world. Ignored by his mother, scorned by contemporaries, seemingly at war with the world in which he lived, Newton turned his energies to things unseen. His laws of motion and law of universal gravitation would set the stage for a most extraordinary life....

Discover the remarkable history of the Navajo...

During the bitter winter of 1692/93, a group of young Puritan women in the colonial town of Salem, Massachusetts, accused more than 200 of their neighbors and fellow townspeople of using witchcraft to injure and torment them....

Wernher von Braun was a rare and complex figure. He went on to become one of the most prominent figures not just in one country but in two.

The Sumerians settled in the area known as Mesopotamia, between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, around 5,000 years ago. They produced many fundamental changes to the way in which human societies developed - these were the first city-builders and the first people to use wheeled vehicles....

Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad became famous for his popularization of an Afrocentric branch of Islam. In later years, however, the movement came under fire after critics pointed out that its ideology had very little to do with the mainstream faith....

Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard, was the most feared pirate of the Golden Age—a figure who struck terror into the hearts of sailors from the Caribbean to the Carolinas. Most biographies seem to start and stop with that statement, but there was much more to the life of Blackbeard than that.