Portal:History
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The History Portal
Herodotus (c. 484 BC – c. 425 BC) is often
considered the "father of history"
History (derived from Ancient Greek ἱστορία (historía) 'inquiry; knowledge acquired by investigation') is the systematic study and documentation of the human past.
The period of events before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well as the memory, discovery, collection, organization, presentation, and interpretation of these events. Historians seek knowledge of the past using historical sources such as written documents, oral accounts, art and material artifacts, and ecological markers. History is incomplete and still has debatable mysteries.
History is an academic discipline which uses a narrative to describe, examine, question, and analyze past events, and investigate their patterns of cause and effect. Historians debate which narrative best explains an event, as well as the significance of different causes and effects. Historians debate the nature of history as an end in itself, and its usefulness in giving perspective on the problems of the present.
Stories common to a particular culture, but not supported by external sources (such as the tales surrounding King Arthur), are usually classified as cultural heritage or legends. History differs from myth in that it is supported by verifiable evidence. However, ancient cultural influences have helped create variant interpretations of the nature of history, which have evolved over the centuries and continue to change today. The modern study of history is wide-ranging, and includes the study of specific regions and certain topical or thematic elements of historical investigation. History is taught as a part of primary and secondary education, and the academic study of history is a major discipline in universities.
Herodotus, a 5th-century BC Greek historian, is often considered the "father of history", as one of the first historians in the Western tradition, though he has been criticized as the "father of lies". Along with his contemporary Thucydides, he helped form the foundations for the modern study of past events and societies. Their works continue to be read today, and the gap between the culture-focused Herodotus and the military-focused Thucydides remains a point of contention or approach in modern historical writing. In East Asia, a state chronicle, the Spring and Autumn Annals, was reputed to date from as early as 722 BC, though only 2nd-century BC texts have survived. (Full article...)
Featured articles –
Featured articles are displayed here, which represent some of the best content on English Wikipedia.
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The Akutan Zero is inspected by US Navy personnel on Akutan Island on July 11, 1942.
The Akutan Zero, also known as Koga's Zero (古賀のゼロ) and the Aleutian Zero, was a type 0 model 21 Mitsubishi A6M Zero Japanese fighter aircraft piloted by Petty Officer Tadayoshi Koga, that crash-landed on Akutan Island, Alaska Territory, during World War II. It was found intact by the Americans in July 1942 and became the first Zero acquired by the United States during the war that could be restored to airworthy condition. It was repaired and flown by American test pilots. As a result of information gained from these tests, American tacticians were able to devise ways to defeat the Zero, which was the Imperial Japanese Navy's primary fighter plane throughout the war.
The Akutan Zero has been described as "a prize almost beyond value to the United States", and "probably one of the greatest prizes of the Pacific War". Japanese historian and lieutenant general Masatake Okumiya stated that the acquisition of the Akutan Zero "was no less serious" than the Japanese defeat at the Battle of Midway, and that it "did much to hasten Japan's final defeat". Conversely, John Lundstrom is among those who challenge "the contention that it took dissection of Koga's Zero to create tactics that beat the fabled airplane". (Full article...) -
The battle of Concepción was fought on October 28, 1835, between Mexican troops under Colonel Domingo Ugartechea and Texian insurgents led by James Bowie and James Fannin. The 30-minute engagement, which historian J. R. Edmondson describes as "the first major engagement of the Texas Revolution", occurred on the grounds of Mission Concepción, 2 miles (3.2 km) south of what is now Downtown San Antonio in the U.S. state of Texas.
On October 13, the newly created Texian Army under Stephen F. Austin had marched towards Bexar, where General Martín Perfecto de Cos commanded the remaining Mexican soldiers in Texas. On October 27, Austin sent Bowie and Fannin, with 90 soldiers, to find a defensible spot near Bexar for the Texian Army to rest. After choosing a site near Mission Concepción, the scouting party camped for the night and sent a courier to notify Austin. After learning that the Texian Army was divided, Cos sent Ugartechea with 275 soldiers to attack the Texians camped at Concepción. The Texians took cover in a horseshoe-shaped gully; their good defensive position helped them to repel several Mexican attacks, and the Mexican soldiers retreated just 30 minutes before the remainder of the Texian Army arrived. Historians estimate that between 14 and 76 Mexican soldiers were killed, while only one Texian soldier died. (Full article...) -
ARA Moreno was a dreadnought battleship designed by the American Fore River Shipbuilding Company for the Argentine Navy. Named after Mariano Moreno, a key member of the first independent government of Argentina, the First Assembly (Primera Junta), Moreno was the second dreadnought of the Rivadavia class, and the fourth built during the South American dreadnought race.
Argentina placed orders for Moreno and its only sister ship, Rivadavia, in reply to a Brazilian naval building program. During their construction, the two dreadnoughts were subject to numerous rumors involving Argentina selling the two battleships to a country engaged in the First World War, but these proved to be false. After Moreno was completed in March 1915, a series of engine problems occurred during the sea trials which delayed its delivery to Argentina to May 1915. The next decade saw the ship based in Puerto Belgrano as part of the Argentine Navy's First Division before sailing to the United States for an extensive refit in 1924 and 1925. During the 1930s the ship was occupied with diplomatic cruises to Brazil, Uruguay, and Europe until the Second World War broke out. During this time, Moreno was employed little as Argentina was neutral. Decommissioned in 1949, Moreno was scrapped in Japan beginning in 1957. (Full article...) -
Fort Southerland, also known as Redoubt E and possibly Fort Diamond, is a redoubt built during the American Civil War to protect Camden, Arkansas. Confederate forces built it along with four other redoubts in early 1864 after a Union victory in the Little Rock campaign the previous year. Fort Southerland is about the size of a city block and is roughly oval. It could hold three cannons. When Union forces captured Camden in April 1864 during the Camden Expedition, they improved the defenses of the five redoubts, which were not sufficient for proper defense of the city. After the Confederates retook Camden later that month, they continued to improve the city's defenses.
The fort lies within Fort Southerland Park, a municipal park dedicated in 1974. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1994, and is part of the Camden Expedition Sites National Historic Landmark. Along with Fort Lookout (Redoubt A), it is one of only two of the redoubts around Camden still in existence. (Full article...) -
Operation PBFortune, also known as Operation Fortune, was a covert United States operation to overthrow the democratically elected Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz in 1952. The operation was authorized by U.S. President Harry Truman and planned by the Central Intelligence Agency. The United Fruit Company had lobbied intensively for the overthrow because land reform initiated by Árbenz threatened its economic interests. The US also feared that the government of Árbenz was being influenced by communists.
The coup attempt was planned with the support of the United Fruit Company and of Anastasio Somoza García, Rafael Trujillo and Marcos Pérez Jiménez, the US-backed right-wing dictators of Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, and Venezuela respectively, who felt threatened by the democratic Guatemalan Revolution, and had sought to undermine it. The plan involved providing weapons to the exiled Guatemalan military officer Carlos Castillo Armas, who was to lead an invasion from Nicaragua. (Full article...) -
J. Howard Miller's "We Can Do It!" poster from 1943
"We Can Do It!" is an American World War II wartime poster produced by J. Howard Miller in 1943 for Westinghouse Electric as an inspirational image to boost female worker morale.
The poster was little seen during World War II. It was rediscovered in the early 1980s and widely reproduced in many forms, often called "We Can Do It!" but also called "Rosie the Riveter" after the iconic figure of a strong female war production worker. The "We Can Do It!" image was used to promote feminism and other political issues beginning in the 1980s. The image made the cover of the Smithsonian magazine in 1994 and was fashioned into a US first-class mail stamp in 1999. It was incorporated in 2008 into campaign materials for several American politicians, and was reworked by an artist in 2010 to celebrate the first woman becoming prime minister of Australia. The poster is one of the ten most-requested images at the National Archives and Records Administration. (Full article...) -
USS Constitution, also known as Old Ironsides, is a three-masted wooden-hulled heavy frigate of the United States Navy. She is the world's oldest commissioned naval warship still afloat. She 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 of 1795 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 her sister ships were larger and more heavily armed and built than standard frigates of the period. She was built at Edmund Hartt's shipyard in the North End of Boston, Massachusetts. Her 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 her actions during the War of 1812 against the United Kingdom, when she captured numerous merchant ships and defeated five British warships: HMS Guerriere, Java, Pictou, Cyane, and Levant. The battle with Guerriere earned her the nickname "Old Ironsides" and public adoration that has repeatedly saved her from scrapping. She continued to serve as flagship in the Mediterranean and African squadrons, and she circled the world in the 1840s. During the American Civil War, she served as a training ship for the United States Naval Academy. She carried American artwork and industrial displays to the Paris Exposition of 1878. (Full article...) -
The Battle of Cape Esperance, also known as the Second Battle of Savo Island and in Japanese sources as the Sea Battle of Savo Island (サボ島沖海戦), took place on 11–12 October 1942, in the Pacific campaign of World War II between the Imperial Japanese Navy and United States Navy. The naval battle was the second of four major surface engagements during the Guadalcanal campaign and took place at the entrance to the strait between Savo Island and Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands. Cape Esperance () is the northernmost point on Guadalcanal, and the battle took its name from this point.
On the night of 11 October, Japanese naval forces in the Solomon Islands area—under the command of Vice Admiral Gunichi Mikawa—sent a major supply and reinforcement convoy to their forces on Guadalcanal. The convoy consisted of two seaplane tenders and six destroyers and was commanded by Rear Admiral Takatsugu Jojima. At the same time but in a separate operation, three heavy cruisers and two destroyers—under the command of Rear Admiral Aritomo Gotō—were to bombard the Allied airfield on Guadalcanal (called Henderson Field by the Allies) with the object of destroying Allied aircraft and the airfield's facilities. (Full article...) -
Simulated German soldiers harassing a newspaper carrier during If Day
If Day (French: "Si un jour", "If one day") was a simulated Nazi German invasion and occupation of the Canadian city of Winnipeg, Manitoba, and surrounding areas on 19 February 1942, during the Second World War. It was organized as a war bond promotion by the Greater Winnipeg Victory Loan organization, which was led by prominent Winnipeg businessman J. D. Perrin. The event was the largest military exercise in Winnipeg to that point.
If Day included a staged firefight between Canadian troops and volunteers dressed as German soldiers, the internment of prominent politicians, the imposition of Nazi rule, and a parade. The event was a fundraiser for the war effort: over $3 million was collected in Winnipeg on that day. Organizers believed that the fear induced by the event would help increase fundraising objectives. It was the subject of a 2006 documentary, and was included in Guy Maddin's film My Winnipeg. (Full article...) -
Morgan Gardner Bulkeley (December 26, 1837 – November 6, 1922) was an American politician of the Republican Party, businessman, and insurance executive. In 1876, he served as the first president of baseball's National League and, because of that, was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1937, a choice that remains controversial, since his time as a baseball executive was short.
Bulkeley was born in East Haddam, Connecticut. His father was Judge Eliphalet Adams Bulkeley, a prominent local lawyer and businessman, who became the first president of the Aetna Life Insurance Company. The family moved to Hartford, where Morgan Bulkeley was educated, before he took a job in the city of Brooklyn, New York. He served briefly in the American Civil War, where he saw no combat. When his father died in 1872, he moved back to Hartford and became a bank president and a board member of Aetna, becoming its president in 1879, a post he held the rest of his life. (Full article...) -
Air Chief Marshal Sir Frederick Rudolph William Scherger, KBE, CB, DSO, AFC (18 May 1904 – 16 January 1984) was a senior commander in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). He served as Chief of the Air Staff, the RAAF's highest-ranking position, from 1957 until 1961, and as Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, forerunner of the role of Australia's Chief of the Defence Force, from 1961 until 1966. He was the first RAAF officer to hold the rank of air chief marshal.
Born in Victoria of German origins, Scherger graduated from the Royal Military College, Duntroon, before transferring to the Air Force in 1925. He was considered one of the top aviators between the wars, serving as a fighter pilot, test pilot, and flying instructor. He held senior training posts in the late 1930s and the early years of World War II, earning the Air Force Cross in June 1940. Promoted to group captain, Scherger was acting commander of North-Western Area when Darwin suffered its first air raid in February 1942. Praised for his actions in the aftermath of the attack, he went on to lead the RAAF's major mobile strike force in the South West Pacific, No. 10 Operational Group (later the Australian First Tactical Air Force), and was awarded the Distinguished Service Order in September 1944 for his actions during the assaults on Aitape and Noemfoor in New Guinea. (Full article...) -
The 806 invasion of Asia Minor was the largest of a long series of military operations launched by the Abbasid Caliphate against the Byzantine Empire. The expedition took place in southeastern and central Asia Minor, where the two states shared a long land border.
Upon coming to the throne, the Byzantine emperor Nikephoros I (r. 802–811) ceased paying the tribute agreed to by his predecessors with the Caliphate, and launched attacks on the Abbasid frontier regions. The Abbasid caliph, Harun al-Rashid (r. 786–809), who sought to promote himself as a champion of jihad, decided to lead in person a retaliatory attack with the objective of punishing the Byzantines and impressing Abbasid influence upon their emperor. (Full article...) -
SMS Kaiser Wilhelm II ("His Majesty's Ship Emperor William II") was the second ship of the Kaiser Friedrich III class of pre-dreadnought battleships. She was built at the Imperial Dockyard in Wilhelmshaven and launched on 14 September 1897. The ship was commissioned into the fleet as its flagship on 13 February 1900. Kaiser Wilhelm II was armed with a main battery of four 24-centimeter (9.45 in) guns in two twin turrets. She was powered by triple expansion engines that delivered a top speed of 17.5 knots (32.4 km/h; 20.1 mph).
Kaiser Wilhelm II served as the flagship of the Active Battle Fleet until 1906, participating in numerous fleet training exercises and visits to foreign ports. She was replaced as flagship by the new battleship SMS Deutschland. After the new dreadnought battleships began entering service in 1908, Kaiser Wilhelm II was decommissioned and put into reserve. She was reactivated in 1910 for training ship duties in the Baltic, but was again taken out of service in 1912. (Full article...) -
Woolwich Arsenal (in dark shirts) playing Newcastle United (in striped shirts) in an FA Cup semi-final at the Victoria Ground, Stoke on 31 March 1906
The history of Arsenal Football Club between 1886 and 1966 covers the time from the club's foundation, through the first two major periods of success (the 1930s, and the late 1940s and early 1950s, respectively) and the club's subsequent decline in the early 1960s.
Arsenal Football Club was founded in 1886 as a munition workers' team from Woolwich, then in Kent. They turned professional in 1891 and joined The Football League two years later. They were promoted to the First Division in 1904 but in 1910 the club went into voluntary liquidation due to financial problems and were bought out by a consortium of businessmen. New majority shareholder Sir Henry Norris improved the club's financial standing and moved the team to Arsenal Stadium, Highbury, north London in 1913. In 1919, after the First World War, the club was voted into the newly expanded First Division, where they have remained ever since. (Full article...) -
Alboin (530s – 28 June 572) was king of the Lombards from about 560 until 572. During his reign the Lombards ended their migrations by settling in Italy, the northern part of which Alboin conquered between 569 and 572. He had a lasting effect on Italy and the Pannonian Basin; in the former, his invasion marked the beginning of centuries of Lombard rule, and in the latter, his defeat of the Gepids and his departure from Pannonia ended the dominance there of the Germanic peoples.
The period of Alboin's reign as king in Pannonia following the death of his father, Audoin, was one of confrontation and conflict between the Lombards and their main neighbours, the Gepids. The Gepids initially gained the upper hand, but in 567, thanks to his alliance with the Avars, Alboin inflicted a decisive defeat on his enemies, whose lands the Avars subsequently occupied. The increasing power of his new neighbours caused Alboin some unease however, and he therefore decided to leave Pannonia for Italy, hoping to take advantage of the Byzantine Empire's vulnerability in defending its territory in the wake of the Gothic War. (Full article...)
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Featured picture
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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. -
Artist: Kasai Torajirō; Restoration: StaxringoldJapanese and British troops attack members of the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists ("Boxers") at Beijing Castle during the Boxer Rebellion of 1899–1901. The Boxers, angered by foreign imperialist expansion into Qing Dynasty China, had engaged in looting, arson, and killings of foreigners. In 1900, the Empress Dowager Cixi employed the Boxers to attack foreign settlements in Beijing. The uprising was eventually put down by 20,000 troops from the Eight-Nation Alliance. -
Map credit: Nicolas de FerA 1691 French map of Kamianets-Podilskyi, Ukraine, depicting the city's old town neighborhood and castle, surrounded by the winding Smotrych River. It was originally part of Kievan Rus' and annexed into the First Polish Republic, but at the time of the map's creation, the city was part of the Ottoman Empire. It shortly returned to Poland and later became part of the Russian Empire with the Second Partition of Poland in 1793. -
Image: The Illustrated London News
Restoration: Adam CuerdenAn 1876 engraving of Khokar Rajputs of Punjab. The Rajputs are one of the major Hindu Kshatriya (warrior) groups of India. Rajputs rose to prominence during the 9th to 11th centuries, and by the time of Indian independence, they ruled more than two-thirds of the estimated six hundred princely states, including three-quarters of the salute states. -
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. -
Engraver: George J. Verbeck, after Thérèse van Duyl Schwarze
Restoration: Lise BroerA 1901 etching of Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, based on an 1898 painting of her in her coronation robe. Having assumed the throne at the age of ten after the death of her father, King William III, Wilhemina ruled for fifty-eight years (1890–1948), longer than any other Dutch monarch. In 1948 she abdicated in favor of her daughter Juliana, thereafter making few public appearances until the country was devastated by the North Sea flood of 1953. -
Painting by Jacques-Louis David and Georges RougetThe Coronation of Napoleon, a painting by Jacques-Louis David depicting Napoleon Bonaparte's self-coronation as Emperor of France on December 2, 1804. The act took place in Notre-Dame de Paris, during which Napoleon, eschewing tradition, took the crown and placed it on his own head. The nearly 10 by 6 m (32.8 by 19.7 ft) work was commissioned before the coronation and completed in 1807. -
Illustration: Maurice Dessertenne
Restoration: Michel VuijlstekeAn illustration from Volume IV (E–G) of the encyclopedia Nouveau Larousse illustré showing various methods of lighting through the ages, starting from prehistoric times in the upper left (No. 1) to carbide lamps at the beginning of the 20th century (No. 54, lower right), with a separate section for Japanese lighting (No. 55–58, lower left). -
Photo credit: Nicéphore NiépceThe first successful permanent photograph, created in 1826, is titled "View from the Window at Le Gras". It required an eight-hour exposure in bright sunshine and was printed on a polished pewter plate covered with a petroleum derivative called bitumen of Judea. Due to the long exposure, the buildings are illuminated by the sun from both right and left. -
The mushroom cloud from the Ivy Mike nuclear test, one of two tests conducted as part of Operation Ivy at the Pacific Proving Grounds on Elugelab in the Marshall Islands. Mike was the first successful full-scale test of a multi-megaton thermonuclear weapon, and it left an underwater crater 6,240 ft (1,900 m) wide and 164 ft (50 m) deep where the island had been. -
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. -
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. -
Artist: Samuel Daniell -
A historical reenactment is an educational or entertainment activity in which participants follow a prearranged plan to recreate aspects of a historical event or period. Here, a group reenacts the Battle of Waterloo, in which an Imperial French army under the command of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte was defeated by the armies of the Seventh Coalition. -
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: William Henry Jackson; restoration: Tom dl and MmxxAn 1899 photochrom showing Temple Square, a 10-acre (4.0 ha) complex located in the center of Salt Lake City, Utah, US. The location is owned by and serves as headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and was selected by Church president Brigham Young in 1846. Temple Square is home to several buildings; depicted here are the Salt Lake Temple, Salt Lake Tabernacle and Salt Lake Assembly Hall. -
Photo credit: Frank HurleyA group of Australian infantry wearing Small Box Respirators (SBRs) at the Third Battle of Ypres in September 1917. After the introduction of poison gas in World War I, countermeasures were developed. SBRs represented the pinnacle of gas mask development during the war, a mouthpiece connected via a hose to a box filter (hanging around the wearer's neck in this picture), which in turn contained granules of chemicals that neutralised the gas. The SBR was the prized possession of the ordinary infantryman; when the British were forced to retreat during the German Spring Offensive of 1918, it was found that while some troops had discarded their rifles, hardly any had left behind their respirators. -
Photo: American Colony; Restoration: Sebastian KolendoThe Mayor of Jerusalem Hussein al-Husayni (centre) meets with soldiers of the British Egyptian Expeditionary Force on December 9, 1917, under the white flag of surrender. The Battle of Jerusalem had begun the day before, but the Turkish forces in the city were no match against the British forces. A Turkish counterattack on December 25 was also repulsed, confirming the capture of Jerusalem by the Allies.
Did you know (auto generated)
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- ... that 25 years after her career ended, Jennifer Martz remains second in NCAA Division III history in hitting percentage?
- ... that in 2007, Arthur Gray's £2 Kangaroo and Map stamp sold for a world record price for a single Australian stamp?
- ... that Clement Crisp, a dance critic for the Financial Times from 1956 to 2020, authored or co-authored 17 books on dance and dance history?
- ... that the 1931 Valentine earthquake was the strongest earthquake in recorded history to hit Texas?
- ... that at the time, the Fountain Fire was the third-most destructive wildfire in California's recorded history?
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Friedrich Wilhelm Freiherr von Seydlitz (3 February 1721 – 8 November 1773) was a Prussian officer, lieutenant general, and among the greatest of the Prussian cavalry generals. He commanded one of the first Hussar squadrons of Frederick the Great's army and is credited with the development of the Prussian cavalry to its efficient level of performance in the Seven Years' War. His cavalryman father retired and then died while Seydlitz was still young. Subsequently, he was mentored by Margrave Frederick William of Brandenburg-Schwedt. Seydlitz's superb horsemanship and his recklessness combined to make him a stand-out subaltern, and he emerged as a redoubtable Rittmeister (cavalry captain) in the War of Austrian Succession (1740–1748) during the First and Second Silesian wars.
Seydlitz became legendary throughout the Prussian Army both for his leadership and for his reckless courage. During the Seven Years' War, he came into his own as a cavalry general, known for his coup d'œil, his ability to assess at a glance the entire battlefield situation and to understand intuitively what needed to be done: he excelled at converting the King's directives into flexible tactics. At the Battle of Rossbach, his cavalry was instrumental in routing the French and Imperial armies. His cavalry subsequently played an important role in crushing the Habsburg and Imperial left flank at the Battle of Leuthen. Seydlitz was wounded in battle several times. After the Battle of Kunersdorf in August 1759, he semi-retired to recover from his wounds, charged with the protection of the city of Berlin. He was not healthy enough to campaign again until 1761. (Full article...)On this day
Robert Mugabe
- 1775 – American Revolutionary War: Colonists Paul Revere and William Dawes, later joined by Samuel Prescott, began a midnight ride to warn residents of Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, about the impending arrival of British troops.
- 1938 – Superman, created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster of DC Comics, made his debut in Action Comics #1, the first true superhero comic book.
- 1946 – The final session of the League of Nations concluded in Geneva, with delegates agreeing to transfer much of its assets to the United Nations.
- 1980 – Robert Mugabe (pictured) became the first prime minister of Zimbabwe, beginning a 37-year period in power.
- 2007 – A ladle spilled 30 tonnes (33 tons) of molten steel in a factory in Liaoning, China, killing 32 workers.
- Theobald of Bec (d. 1161)
- Clara Elsene Peck (b. 1883)
- Universo 2000 (b. 1963)
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There cannot be two suns in the sky, nor two emperors on the earth.
— Confucius, Chinese Sage and Philosopher
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- ... that the underground Fortress of Mimoyecques (pictured) was built by Nazi Germany to bombard London with 10 shells a minute using the V-3 supergun?
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