Charles River Editors
1) Spanish Empire in the Americas: The History of Spain's Colonization across Central America and South
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By the time Christopher Columbus started setting east from the New World, he had explored San Salvador in the Bahamas (which he thought was Japan), Cuba (which he thought was China), and Hispaniola, the source of gold. As the common story goes, Columbus, en route back to Spain from his first journey, called in at Lisbon as a courtesy to brief the Portuguese King John II of his discovery of the New World. King John subsequently protested that according...
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For millennia, people considered dragons to be real, and the vivid lore of dragons has touched societies from Central America to Europe, and from Egypt to China. The popularity of dragons can easily be assessed by the number of motion pictures that include them as an integral part of their narrative, from the friendly dragons of children's cartoons to the monsters being bred underground to unleash their horrors on humanity. Indeed, some of humanity's...
3) Sealand Dynasties: The History and Mystery of the Southern Mesopotamian Kings Who Conquered Babylon
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Thanks to countless written sources and corroborating archaeological evidence, the chronology of the ancient Near East is fairly well-known by modern scholars, but as with most periods in history, there are exceptions. In ancient Mesopotamia's otherwise well-documented history, there were two dynasties that historians and archaeologists are only now beginning to understand: the Sealand I, or First Sealand Dynasty (c. 1742-1460 BCE), and the Sealand...
4) Allied Invasions of France in 1944: The History and Legacy of the Campaigns that Began the Libera
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By the end of D-Day, the Allies had managed to successfully land 170,000 men, including over 75,000 on the British and Canadian beaches, 57,000 on the American beaches, and over 24,000 airborne troops. Thanks to Allied deception, the German army had failed to react to prevent the Allies from making the most of their landings. Just one division, the Hitlerjugend, would arrive the following day. Despite a fearsome and bloody day, the majority of the...
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From approximately 3100 BCE until around 1075 BCE, ancient Egypt was ruled by 20 different dynasties. The length of the dynasties varied: some, such as those during the First and Second Intermediate periods could be quite short, while the Thirteenth and 18th Dynasties each contained more a one dozen kings and ruled over the Nile Valley for around 200 years each. Although the first 20 Egyptian dynasties varied in number of rulers and length, most shared...
6) America's Most Notorious Con Artists: The History and Schemes of Successful Cons in the United State
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The art of the confidence trick is a controversial craft that is as old as time itself. In the early years of civilization, unscrupulous folks bottled and peddled assortments of fake cures and potions. Snake oil salesmen aside, charlatans posed as mystical beings with supernatural powers, promising to end droughts and other misfortunes of the gullible with what were in reality parlor tricks and illusions.
Indeed, throughout history, unabashedly brazen...
7) Search for Christian Relics: The History and Legends Surrounding Artifacts Related to Jesus and the
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That Jesus of Nazareth (ca. 4 BC-30 CE) was crucified is the closest to a historical fact anyone can say about him. Biblical scholars have spent centuries debating the details of what Jesus did and said, but this crude fact - that Jesus suffered capital punishment at the hands of the Roman authority by crucifixion - is accepted by the overwhelming majority of scholars. That there once was a cross where Jesus suffered and died is, therefore, the sequential...
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Much has been written about Western intervention during the breakup of Yugoslavia, and whether it made matters worse, prevented worse atrocities, or was simply ineffective. In early 1992, however, what was clear was that Europe was hopelessly divided over the best course of action to take towards Yugoslavia, and after several years of fighting, the Bosnian War was one of the most violent conflagrations in Europe since the end of World War II.
That...
9) 20th Century's Most Influential Artists: The Lives and Art of Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, Andy War
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In their biography of Pablo Picasso, Hans Ludwig and Chris Jaffe note that "for him, art was always adventure: 'To find is the thing.'" Indeed, there is perhaps no artist who produced more art than Picasso, whose enormous oeuvre (which spanned most of his 91-year life) contained a countless number of paintings and drawings. Picasso also worked in other mediums as well, notably sculpture and lithography, and his constant experimentation with form makes...
10) Ottoman Empire's Greatest Sultans: The Lives and Legacies of Osman I, Mehmed II, and Suleiman the Ma
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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 4th 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...
11) Ancient and Medieval Conspiracy Theories: The History of the World's Most Persistent Conspiracy Theo
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Perhaps it should also not be surprising that the themes found in contemporary conspiracy theories are often echoed in ancient conspiracy theories. While some people still insist that Lyndon B. Johnson was in on John F. Kennedy's assassination, it was speculated across the ancient world that the young Macedonian king, Alexander the Great, conspired to have his own father, Philip II of Macedon, assassinated. Likewise, the New Age beliefs that Mesoamerican...
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People have always been fascinated with the hidden, the mysterious, and the unexplained. Every society has its tall tales and ghost stories, its odd legends, and heroes. Also, every society has its stories of strange beasts, dangerous or benign, that live in the twilight world between the everyday and the legendary. Through most of history, people have been closely tied to nature, hunting in forests and having an intimate knowledge of the animals...
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In addition to being ubiquitous parts of daily life, Egyptian religion and mythology were also complex, and while Egyptian society was polytheistic like other ancient civilizations, that's where the comparisons end. Religion was so pervasive that it heavily influenced funerary practices and the belief in an afterlife, and deities like Osiris and Isis (who are still well known today) had become so firmly ingrained that even the Ptolemaic pharaohs,...
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By the time the Pleistocene Epoch ended around 12,000 years ago, Homo sapiens had become one of the most significant species on the planet. It was also near the end of that period of time that modern humans began to gradually populate what would become Europe, Asia, and the Americas, eventually becoming the inheritors of the Paleolithic era and the only human species to make it into the Neolithic era. The cold Pleistocene temperatures lowered water...
15) Operation Mockingbird: The Controversial History of the CIA's Efforts to Manipulate American Medi
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Freedom of the press isn't just a fundamental right in America but a key part of the democratic process. When the United States secured its independence against Britain in the War of Independence in 1783, there was no certainty about what the new country would look like in terms of national governance. In 1787, delegates from the various states convened in Philadelphia to draft a constitution that would define this.
Freedom of the press became one...
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Though history is usually written by the victors, the lack of a particularly strong writing tradition from the Mongols ensured that history was largely written by those who they vanquished. Because of this, their portrayal in the West and the Middle East has been extraordinarily (and in many ways unfairly) negative for centuries, at least until recent revisions to the historical record. The Mongols have long been depicted as wild horse-archers galloping...
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During the reign of the Artaxiad dynasty, Armenia became a hub of trade and commerce, connecting the Silk Road and the Mediterranean world. The Armenian kings encouraged the development of agriculture, commerce, and arts, and the kingdom became renowned for its skilled artisans, writers, and philosophers. Of course, given its central location, the dynasty also faced numerous challenges, including repeated invasions by the Roman and Parthian empires,...
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At first, airplane improvements occurred in an ad hoc, almost accidental manner during World War I. However, when pilots' mounting of armaments on airplanes proved a successful means of defeating other aircraft and even attacking men on the ground, a much more active and systematic development of warplanes began across the continent. Each advance prompted a countermeasure, as the two sides strove for primacy in a deadly, unforgiving environment which...
19) Ottoman Empire's Greatest Victories: The History and Legacy of the Most Important Battles Won by the
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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 4th 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...
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The pages of world history textbooks contain a litany of "lost" empires and civilizations, but usually, upon further review, it is revealed that these so called lost empires are often just lesser known cultures that had a less apparent impact on history than other more well-known civilizations. When one scours the pages of history for civilizations that seem inexplicably lost but had a great impact during its time, a number of places in Asia Minor...