Mostrando resultados por autor "Charles Rivers" en Todas las categorías

Nineteenth century Americans were all too happy and eager for the transcontinental railroad to help speed their passage west and render overland paths obsolete. One early trail got its start in Independence, Missouri, one of many cities marked as starting points for pioneers, settlers, or traders. From there, the trail went all the way to Santa Fe, which at that time was part of the newly independent country of Mexico.

Of all the great cities in the world, few personify their country like New York City. As America's largest city and best known immigration gateway into the country, NYC represents the beauty, diversity, and sheer strength of the United States, a global financial center that has enticed people chasing the "American Dream" for centuries.

Most scientists believe that mankind was originally spawned in the salty waters of the seas, and that over millennia creatures managed to evolve into today's primates. If this is so, the oceans have made it abundantly clear that have no desire to take their offspring safely back; from the time of the earliest sailing ships, there have been countless accidents and tragedies where numerous lives were quickly lost.

Although the Romans gained the upper hand over Carthage in the wake of the First Punic War, the legendary Carthaginian general Hannibal brought the Romans to their knees for over a decade during the Second Punic War. While military historians are still amazed that he was able to maintain his army in Italy near Rome for nearly 15 years, scholars are still puzzled over some of his decisions, including why he never attempted to march on Rome in the first place.

"The deck, that is the floor of their rooms, was so covered with the blood and mucus which had proceeded from them in consequence of the flux, that it resembled a slaughter-house. It is not in the power of the human imagination to picture a situation more dreadful or disgusting. Numbers of the slaves having fainted, they were carried upon deck where several of them died and the rest with great difficulty were restored. It had nearly proved fatal to me also." - Dr. Alexander Falconbridge, an 18th century British surgeon

After the successful amphibious invasion on D-Day in June 1944, the Allies began racing east toward Germany and liberating France along the way. The Allies had landed along a 50 mile stretch of French coast, and despite suffering 8,000 casualties on D-Day, over 100,000 still began the march across the western portion of the continent. By the end of August 1944, the German army in France was shattered, with 200,000 killed or wounded and a further 200,000 captured.

It all began on Memorial Day, May 31, 1921. Around or after 4:00 p.m. that day, a clerk at Renberg’s clothing store on the first floor of the Drexel Building in Tulsa heard a woman scream. Turning in the direction of the scream, he saw a young black man running from the building. Going to the elevator, the clerk found the white elevator operator, 17-year-old Sarah Page, crying and distraught. The clerk concluded that she had been assaulted by the black man he saw running a few moments earlier and called the police.

During the last 100 years, Susan B. Anthony has been one of the most venerated women in American history. In the process of becoming one of the most famous Americans of her era, Anthony’s legacy has overshadowed many of her contemporaries who were also active in the fight for civil rights. Among them, few led as interesting or progressive a life as Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, who grew up in a family that encouraged every kind of pursuit for girls and provided an educational foundation that would propel Walker in many fields.

One of his biographers called him "a complex man: a born leader, a brilliant soldier, a devoted husband, a proud father; intelligent, instinctive, brave, compassionate, vain, egotistical, and arrogant." As that description suggests, every account of Erwin Rommel's life must address what appears to be its inherent contradictions.

The time of the American mountain man was not to reach its peak until the mid-19th century, but the man who served as the prototype for the cultural genre hailed from an earlier age in which the new United States had scarcely established its most basic structural tenets. A member of the original Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery commissioned by Thomas Jefferson, John Colter’s multiple journeys to the northwest country of present-day Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho were first-time events in the development of the continent.

In terms of geopolitics, perhaps the most seminal event of the Middle Ages was the successful Ottoman siege of Constantinople in 1453. The city had been an imperial capital as far back as the fourth century, when Constantine the Great shifted the power center of the Roman Empire there, effectively establishing two almost equally powerful halves of antiquity’s greatest empire. Constantinople would continue to serve as the capital of the Byzantine Empire even after the Western half of the Roman Empire collapsed in the late fifth century.

Many ancient civilizations have influenced and inspired people in the 21st century. The Greeks and Romans continue to fascinate the West today. But of all the world's civilizations, none have intrigued people more than the Mayans, whose culture, astronomy, language, and mysterious disappearance all continue to captivate people.

From about 3400-2600 BCE, the Yamnaya culture stretched from southeastern Europe into central Asia, greatly affecting other contemporary cultures in Europe and the Near East. The hallmarks of Yamnaya culture adopted by other cultures in the Near East and Europe include the use of metal tools and weapons.

The Weimar Republic has become a byword for a failed, tragic, political experiment. The official period of its existence, 1919-1933, marked the interwar years in Germany and their related uncertainty, chaos, and the state’s ultimate collapse. Historians have found the roots of Nazism embedded in the Weimar years and that in the final analysis, Weimar politicians voluntarily handed over power to the man who wrought destruction on an epic scale, Adolf Hitler.

Mind-reading. Foretelling the future. The ability to move objects without touching them. Being able to see distant and hidden objects with the mind. To most people, this sounds like the high points of the act of an illusionist, a person who uses trickery to baffle and confuse an audience while performing stage magic to achieve uncanny feats. But we all know these things really are impossible. Aren’t they?

Organized in Richmond, Virginia on October 22, 1861, John Bell Hood's Texas Brigade was one of the most formidable fighting forces of the Confederate States of America (C.S.A.) during the American Civil War. At times undisciplined, the men who comprised this brigade were a group of fearless and determined volunteers-turned-soldiers. Over the course of the Civil War, the Texas Brigade engaged over 4,000 men and was comprised of the only Texans to fight with General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia in the Eastern Theater.

Two days after Ramzi Yousef's attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, federal agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), the FBI and the Texas National Guard surrounded the Mount Carmel Center compound outside of Waco, Texas. They were there to search the property of the Branch Davidians, a religious cult, due to allegations that cult members were sexually abusing children and had assault weapons.

America is famous around the world for being the land of opportunity, and in many respects it has been for the nearly 400 years since its colonization. However, that opportunity has always come at some sort of price. In the times of wooden sailing vessels, men and women risked life and limb to sail across the Atlantic on small, creaking ships, but later, transportation became safer and easier with the invention of the coal powered steam engine.

During the afternoon of March 25, 1911, shortly before workers at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in the Asch Building left for the day, a fire broke out in a scrap bin on the eighth floor of the building. The spread of the fire to the main staircase made it impossible for workers still stuck on the ninth and 10th floors to escape. Without today's labor regulations in place, an advanced warning of the fire never even made it to the ninth floor, despite the fire starting just one floor below, and the door to the only other stairway had been locked.

The Apocrypha of the Bible examines the history of the books excluded from the Bible, the characters and events told by the books, and the discoveries that have influenced Biblical studies in the last few centuries.