Portal:History

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The History Portal

History by Frederick Dielman

History is the systematic study of the past, focusing primarily on the human past. As an academic discipline, it analyzes and interprets evidence to construct narratives about what happened and explain why it happened. 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 more general sense, the term history refers not to an academic field but to the past itself, times in the past, 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, military history, social history, and economic history. Branches associated with specific research methods and sources include quantitative history, comparative history, and oral history.

History emerged as a field of inquiry in antiquity to replace myth-infused narratives, with influential early traditions originating in Greece, China, and later 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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  The tomb of Philippe Pot is a funerary monument in the Louvre in Paris. It was commissioned by the military leader and diplomat Philippe Pot around the year 1480 to be used for his burial at the chapel of Saint-Jean-Baptiste in Cîteaux Abbey, Dijon, France. His effigy shows him recumbent on a slab, his hands raised in prayer, and wearing armour and a heraldic tunic. The eight mourners (pleurants) are dressed in black hoods and act as pallbearers carrying him towards his grave. Pot commissioned the tomb when he was around 52 years old, 13 years before he died in 1493. The detailed inscriptions on the slab's sides emphasise his achievements and social standing.
  
  Pot was a godson of Philip the Good and became a knight of the Golden Fleece. He served under two of the last Valois Dukes of Burgundy, Philip the Good and Charles the Bold. After the latter's defeat by René II, Duke of Lorraine at the Battle of Nancy in 1477, Pot switched allegiance to the French king, Louis XI, who appointed him grand seneschal of Burgundy. After the king died in 1483, Pot served under Louis's son, Charles VIII. (Full article...)
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  David Christopher Kelly CMG (14 May 1944 – 17 July 2003) was a Welsh scientist and authority on biological warfare (BW). A former head of the Defence Microbiology Division working at Porton Down, Kelly was part of a joint US-UK team that inspected civilian biotechnology facilities in Russia in the early 1990s and concluded they were running a covert and illegal BW programme. He was appointed to the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) in 1991 as one of its chief weapons inspectors in Iraq and led ten of the organisation's missions between May 1991 and December 1998. He also worked with UNSCOM's successor, the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and led several of their missions into Iraq. During his time with UNMOVIC he was key in uncovering the anthrax production programme at the Salman Pak facility, and a BW programme run at Al Hakum.
  
  A year after the publication of the 2002 dossier on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction—which stated that some of Iraq's chemical and biological weapons were deployable within 45 minutes—Kelly had an off-the-record conversation with Andrew Gilligan, a BBC journalist, about the claim. When Gilligan reported this on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, he stated that the "45 minutes" claim was included at the insistence of Alastair Campbell, the Downing Street Director of Communications; Kelly denied that he said Campbell had forced in the reference. The government complained to the BBC about the claim, but they refused to recant on it; political tumult between Downing Street and the BBC developed. Kelly informed his line managers in the Ministry of Defence that he might have been the source, but did not think he was the only one, as Gilligan had reported points he had not mentioned. Kelly's name became known to the media, and he was called to appear on 15 July before the parliamentary Intelligence and Security and Foreign Affairs select committees. Two days later Kelly was found dead near his home, having killed himself. (Full article...)
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  SMS Pommern in 1907

  
  SMS Pommern was one of five Deutschland-class pre-dreadnought battleships built for the Kaiserliche Marine between 1904 and 1906. Named after the Prussian province of Pomerania, she was built at the AG Vulcan yard at Stettin, Germany (now Szczecin, Poland), where she was laid down on 22 March 1904 and launched on 2 December 1905. She was commissioned into the navy on 6 August 1907. The ship was armed with a battery of four 28 cm (11 in) guns and had a top speed of 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph). The ships of her class were already outdated by the time they entered the service, being inferior in size, armor, firepower, and speed to the revolutionary new battleship HMS Dreadnought.
  
  After commissioning, Pommern was assigned to II Battle Squadron of the High Seas Fleet, where she served throughout her peacetime career and the first two years of World War I. Before the war, the fleet was primarily occupied with cruises and extensive training exercises, developing strategic concepts for use in a future conflict. At the start of the war, Pommern and the rest of II Battle Squadron were tasked with supporting the defenses of the German Bight, and were stationed at the mouth of the Elbe. They also participated in several fruitless sorties into the North Sea in attempts to lure out and destroy a portion of the British Grand Fleet. (Full article...)
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  Portrait of George II by Thomas Hudson, 1744

  
  George II (George Augustus; German: Georg August; 30 October / 9 November 1683 – 25 October 1760) was King of Great Britain and Ireland, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg (Hanover) and a prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire from 11 June 1727 (O.S.) until his death in 1760.
  
  Born and brought up in northern Germany, George is the most recent British monarch born outside Great Britain. The Act of Settlement 1701 and the Acts of Union 1707 positioned his grandmother Sophia of Hanover and her Protestant descendants to inherit the British throne. George married Princess Caroline of Ansbach, with whom he had eight children. After the deaths of George's grandmother and Anne, Queen of Great Britain, George's father, the Elector of Hanover, ascended the British throne as George I in 1714. In the first years of his father's reign as king, Prince George was associated with opposition politicians until they rejoined the governing party. (Full article...)
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  Judges' bench during the tribunal at the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg, Allied-occupied Germany

  
  The Nuremberg trials were held by the Allies against representatives of the defeated Nazi Germany for plotting and carrying out invasions of other countries across Europe and committing atrocities against their citizens in World War II.
  
  Between 1939 and 1945, Nazi Germany invaded many countries across Europe, inflicting 27 million deaths in the Soviet Union alone. Proposals for how to punish the defeated Nazi leaders ranged from a show trial (the Soviet Union) to summary executions (the United Kingdom). In mid-1945, France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States agreed to convene a joint tribunal in Nuremberg, occupied Germany, with the Nuremberg Charter as its legal instrument. Between 20 November 1945 and 1 October 1946, the International Military Tribunal (IMT) tried 22 of the most important surviving leaders of Nazi Germany in the political, military, and economic spheres, as well as six German organizations. The purpose of the trial was not just to convict the defendants but also to assemble irrefutable evidence of Nazi crimes, offer a history lesson to the defeated Germans, and delegitimize the traditional German elite. (Full article...)
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  Duke in September 1971

  
  Charles Moss Duke Jr. (born October 3, 1935) is an American former astronaut, United States Air Force (USAF) officer and test pilot. As Lunar Module pilot of Apollo 16 in 1972, he became the tenth and youngest person to walk on the Moon, at age 36 years and 201 days. He is one of four surviving Moon walkers, along with David Scott, Buzz Aldrin and Harrison Schmitt.
  
  A 1957 graduate of the United States Naval Academy, Duke joined the USAF and completed advanced flight training on the F-86 Sabre at Moody Air Force Base in Georgia, where he was a distinguished graduate. After completion of this training, Duke served three years as a fighter pilot with the 526th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron at Ramstein Air Base in West Germany. After graduating from the Aerospace Research Pilot School in September 1965, he stayed on as an instructor teaching control systems and flying in the F-101 Voodoo, F-104 Starfighter, and T-33 Shooting Star. (Full article...)
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  Medjerda river drainage basin

  
  The Battle of the Bagradas River was fought between a Carthaginian army led by Hamilcar Barca, who was victorious, and a rebel force led by Spendius. The battle in 240 BC was fought in what is now northeast Tunisia. Carthage was fighting a coalition of mutinous soldiers and rebellious African cities in the Mercenary War, which had started late the previous year in the wake of the First Punic War. The rebels were blockading Carthage and besieging the northern ports of Utica and Hippo (modern Bizerte). A Carthaginian army commanded by Hanno had attempted and failed to relieve Utica earlier that year. A second army was assembled in Carthage and entrusted to Hamilcar, who had commanded Carthaginian forces on Sicily for the last six years of the First Punic War.
  
  The new Carthaginian army left Carthage and evaded the rebel blockade by crossing the Bagradas River (present-day Medjerda River) at its mouth. Rebel armies commanded by Spendius, from both the Utica siege and a camp guarding the only bridge over the lower Bagradas River, marched towards the Carthaginians. When they came into their sight, Hamilcar ordered his men to feign a retreat. The rebels broke ranks to chase after the Carthaginians and this impetuous pursuit caused them to fall into confusion. Once the rebels had drawn close, the Carthaginians turned and couynter-charged them. The rebels broke and were routed. The Carthaginians pursued, killing or capturing many of the rebels and taking the fortifications guarding the bridge. (Full article...)
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  Henry in full regalia (depicted in the 11th-century Evangelion of Saint Emmeram's Abbey)

  
  Henry IV (German: Heinrich IV; 11 November 1050 – 7 August 1106) was Holy Roman Emperor from 1084 to 1105, King of Germany from 1054 to 1105, King of Italy and Burgundy from 1056 to 1105, and Duke of Bavaria from 1052 to 1054. He was the son of Henry III, Holy Roman Emperor—the second monarch of the Salian dynasty—and Agnes of Poitou. After his father's death on 5 October 1056, Henry was placed under his mother's guardianship. She made grants to German aristocrats to secure their support. Unlike her late husband, she could not control the election of the popes, thus the idea of the "liberty of the Church" strengthened during her rule. Taking advantage of her weakness, Archbishop Anno II of Cologne kidnapped Henry in April 1062. He administered Germany until Henry came of age in 1065.
  
  Henry endeavoured to recover the royal estates that had been lost during his minority. He employed low-ranking officials to carry out his new policies, causing discontent in Saxony and Thuringia. Henry crushed a riot in Saxony in 1069 and overcame the rebellion of the Saxon aristocrat Otto of Nordheim in 1071. The appointment of commoners to high office offended German aristocrats, and many of them withdrew from Henry's court. He insisted on his royal prerogative to appoint bishops and abbots, although the reformist clerics condemned this practice as simony (a forbidden sale of church offices). Pope Alexander II blamed Henry's advisors for his acts and excommunicated them in early 1073. Henry's conflicts with the Holy See and the German dukes weakened his position and the Saxons rose up in open rebellion in the summer of 1074. Taking advantage of a quarrel between the Saxon aristocrats and peasantry, he forced the rebels into submission in October 1075. (Full article...)
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  Sir Neil Hamilton Fairley (15 July 1891 – 19 April 1966) was an Australian physician, medical scientist, and army officer who was instrumental in saving thousands of Allied lives from malaria and other diseases.
  
  A graduate of the University of Melbourne, where he was resident of Ormond College, Fairley joined the Australian Army Medical Corps in 1915. He investigated an epidemic of meningitis that was occurring in Army camps in Australia. While with the 14th General Hospital in Cairo, he investigated schistosomiasis (then known as bilharzia) and developed tests and treatments for the disease. In the inter-war period he became renowned as an expert on tropical medicine. (Full article...)
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  Jackson c. 1903

  
  Benjamin Jackson (January 2, 1835 – August 20, 1915) was a Canadian sailor and farmer who was a decorated veteran of the American Civil War. Raised in a small community of Black Nova Scotians, Jackson began his career as a commercial seaman at 16 years old and started a farm in his twenties.
  
  During the American Civil War, Jackson served for one year in the Union Navy in the place of a drafted US citizen. For most of that year, he was deployed in the Union blockade of the Confederate coastline. As a gun captain aboard the USS Richmond, Jackson served in the Battle of Mobile Bay. He disarmed multiple naval mines and once picked up a live shell and threw it from the deck of the Richmond. Jackson likely earned an enlistment bounty, as well as prize money, by capturing multiple blockade runners. He developed bronchitis, suffered a serious hand injury, and eventually received a Civil War Campaign Medal for serving during that conflict. (Full article...)
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  Derfflinger interned at Scapa Flow

  
  SMS Derfflinger was a battlecruiser of the German Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy) built in the early 1910s during the Anglo-German naval arms race. She was the lead ship of her class of three ships; her sister ships were Lützow and Hindenburg. The Derfflinger-class battlecruisers were larger and featured significant improvements over the previous German battlecruisers, carrying larger guns in a more efficient superfiring arrangement. Derfflinger was armed with a main battery of eight 30.5 cm (12 in) guns, compared to the 28 cm (11 in) guns of earlier battlecruisers. She had a top speed of 26.5 knots (49.1 km/h; 30.5 mph) and carried heavy protection, including a 30-centimeter (11.8 in) thick armored belt.
  Derfflinger was completed shortly after the outbreak of World War I in 1914; after entering service, she joined the other German battlecruisers in I Scouting Group of the High Seas Fleet, where she served for the duration of the conflict. As part of this force, she took part in numerous operations in the North Sea, including the Raid on Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby in December 1914, the Battle of Dogger Bank in January 1915, and the Bombardment of Yarmouth and Lowestoft in April 1916. These operations culminated in the Battle of Jutland on 31 May – 1 June 1916, where Derfflinger helped to sink the British battlecruisers HMS Queen Mary and Invincible. Derfflinger was seriously damaged in the action and was out of service for repairs for several months afterward. (Full article...)
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  Lieutenant Adrian Cole in Palestine, 1917

  
  Air Vice Marshal Adrian Lindley Trevor Cole, CBE, DSO, MC, DFC (19 June 1895 – 14 February 1966) was a senior commander in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). Joining the army at the outbreak of World War I, he transferred to the Australian Flying Corps in 1916 and flew with No. 1 Squadron in the Middle East and No. 2 Squadron on the Western Front. He became an ace, credited with victories over ten enemy aircraft, and earned the Military Cross and the Distinguished Flying Cross. In 1921, he was a founding member of the RAAF.
  
  "King" Cole rose to the position of Air Member for Supply in 1933 and gained promotion to group captain in 1935. The following year he was appointed the first commanding officer of Headquarters RAAF Station Richmond. During World War II, he led North-Western Area Command in Darwin, Northern Territory, and held a series of overseas posts in North Africa, England, Northern Ireland, and Ceylon. As Forward Air Controller during the Dieppe Raid in 1942, he was wounded in action and awarded the Distinguished Service Order. Cole served on corporate boards of directors following his retirement from the RAAF in 1946. He died in 1966 at the age of seventy. (Full article...)
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  The Secretum (Latin for 'hidden away') was a British Museum collection of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that held artefacts and images deemed sexually graphic. Many of the items were amulets, charms and votive offerings, often from pre-Christian traditions, including the worship of Priapus, a Greco-Roman god of fertility and male genitalia. Items from other cultures covered wide ranges of human history, including ancient Egypt, the classical era Greco-Roman world, the ancient Near East, medieval England, Japan and India.
  
  Many of the early donations or sales to the museum, including those from the collectors Sir Hans Sloane, Sir William Hamilton, Richard Payne Knight and Charles Townley, contained items with erotic or sexually graphic images; these were separated out by museum staff and not put on public display. Modern scholars believe the segregation was probably motivated by a paternalistic stance from the museum to keep what they considered morally dangerous material away from all except scholars and members of the clergy. By the 1860s there were around 700 such items held by the museum. In 1865 the antiquarian George Witt donated his phallocentric collection of 434 artefacts to the museum, which led to the formal setting up of the Secretum to hold his collection and similar items. (Full article...)
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  Vasa

  Vasa's port bow

  
  Vasa (previously Wasa) (Swedish pronunciation: [²vɑːsa] ^ⓘ) is a Swedish warship built between 1626 and 1628. The ship sank after sailing roughly 1,300 m (1,400 yd) into her maiden voyage on 10 August 1628. She fell into obscurity after most of her valuable bronze cannons were salvaged in the 17th century, until she was located again in the late 1950s in a busy shipping area in Stockholm harbor. The ship was salvaged with a largely intact hull in 1961. She was housed in a temporary museum called Wasavarvet ("The Vasa Shipyard") until 1988 and then moved permanently to the Vasa Museum in the Royal National City Park in Stockholm. As the most visited museum in Scandinavia, the ship is one of Sweden's most popular tourist attractions and has been seen by over 45 million visitors since 1961. Since her recovery, Vasa has become a widely recognized symbol of the Swedish Empire.
  
  The ship was built on the orders of the King of Sweden Gustavus Adolphus as part of the military expansion he initiated in a war with Poland-Lithuania (1621–1629). She was constructed at the navy yard in Stockholm under a contract with private entrepreneurs in 1626–1627 and armed primarily with bronze cannons cast in Stockholm specifically for the ship. Richly decorated as a symbol of the king's ambitions for Sweden and himself, upon completion she was one of the most powerfully armed vessels in the world. However, Vasa was dangerously unstable, with too much weight in the upper structure of the hull. Despite this lack of stability, she was ordered to sea and sank only a few minutes after encountering a wind stronger than a breeze. (Full article...)
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  In 1896, William Jennings Bryan ran unsuccessfully for president of the United States. Bryan, a former Democratic congressman from Nebraska, gained his party's presidential nomination in July of that year after electrifying the Democratic National Convention with his Cross of Gold speech. He was defeated in the general election by the Republican candidate, former Ohio governor William McKinley.
  
  Born in 1860, Bryan grew up in rural Illinois and in 1887 moved to Nebraska, where he practiced law and entered politics. He won election to the House of Representatives in 1890, and was re-elected in 1892, before mounting an unsuccessful US Senate run. He set his sights on higher office, believing he could be elected president in 1896 even though he remained a relatively minor figure in the Democratic Party. In anticipation of a presidential campaign, he spent much of 1895 and early 1896 making speeches across the United States; his compelling oratory increased his popularity in his party. (Full article...)

Featured picture

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  Check used for the Alaska Purchase

  Check: William H. Seward; scan: Our Documents initiative

  The 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.
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  Edward Gibbon

  Painting: Henry Walton

  Edward Gibbon (1737–1794) was an English historian who published The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in six volumes between 1776 and 1788. Born in Putney, Surrey, he became a voracious reader while being raised by his aunt, and was sent to study at Magdalen College, Oxford, and in Switzerland. Returning to England, in 1761 Gibbon published his first book, Essai sur l'Étude de la Littérature. This was well received, but Gibbon's next book was a failure. In the early 1770s Gibbon began writing his history of the Roman Empire, which was received with great praise.
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  The "Theatre" at Petra

  Photo: Douglas Perkins

  Petra 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.
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  Selimiye Barracks

  Lithography: Day & Son; Restoration: Jake Wartenberg

  An 1856 lithograph of the Selimiye Barracks, located in Istanbul, Turkey, being used as a hospital during the Crimean War. Florence Nightingale's experiences here during this time helped her develop the foundations of modern nursing. As such, the barracks now contain a museum dedicated to her and her staff.
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  Army of the Republic of Vietnam

  Photo credit: J.F. Fitzpatrick, Jr., SPC5, U.S. Army Signal Corps

  This twelve-year old ARVN Airborne trooper poses with an M79 grenade launcher during a sweep through the devastated Plantation Road area after a day-long battle near Tan Son Nhut during the Vietnam War. The young soldier had been "adopted" by the US Army Airborne Division.
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  Map of the Battle of the Somme

  Map: Grandiose

  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.
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  Vegetable Lamb of Tartary

  Artist: Unknown, after Johann Zahn

  A drawing of the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary (Agnus scythicus), a zoophyte of Central Asia. Botanist Henry Lee described it as both a true animal and a living plant, although he did allow for the possibility that the lamb was the fruit of the plant. The lamb was believed to have blood, bones, and flesh like that of a normal lamb. It was connected to the earth by a stem similar to an umbilical cord that propped the lamb up above ground. The cord could flex downward allowing the lamb to feed on the grass and plants surrounding it. Once the plants within reach were eaten, the lamb died, at which point its cotton-like wool would be harvested and used to make textiles.
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  Apollo 11

  Photograph credit: Neil Armstrong

  Apollo 11 was the fifth crewed mission of NASA's Apollo program. After launching from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on July 16, 1969, commander Neil Armstrong and Apollo Lunar Module pilot Buzz Aldrin landed Eagle in Mare Tranquillitatis on July 20, at 20:17:40 UTC, while command module pilot Michael Collins remained on Columbia in lunar orbit. Armstrong was the first to exit the spacecraft, stepping onto the surface 6 hours and 39 minutes later, on July 21, at 02:56:15 UTC; nineteen minutes later, Aldrin joined him on extravehicular activity, which lasted 2 hours, 31 minutes and 40 seconds. Armstrong and Aldrin lifted off from Tranquility Base after almost 22 hours on the lunar surface and rejoined Collins in the command module, before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean on July 24.
  
  The mission was planned to the minute, with the majority of the photographic tasks performed by Armstrong with a single Hasselblad camera. Most of the photographs taken on the Moon that include an astronaut are of Aldrin; there are only five images of Armstrong partly shown or reflected, as in this photograph, with Armstrong and the lunar module reflected in Aldrin's helmet visor. "As the sequence of lunar operations evolved," Aldrin explained, "Neil had the camera most of the time [...] It wasn't until we were back on Earth and in the Lunar Receiving Laboratory looking over the pictures that we realized there were few pictures of Neil."
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  Shiva

  Photo: Los Angeles County Museum of Art

  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.
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  Sheep husbandry

  Poster credit: Breuker & Kessler, Co.

  A World War I-era poster sponsored by the United States Department of Agriculture encouraging children to raise sheep to provide wool for the war effort. The poster reads, "Twenty sheep to clothe and equip each soldier / Boys and girls can help / Join a sheep club".
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  Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

  Photo credit: USHMM

  Jews 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.
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  Siege of Sevastopol (1854–1855)

  Artist: William Simpson; Restoration: Lise Broer

  A lithograph of a watercolour painting depicting soldiers transporting winter clothing, lumber for huts, and other supplies through a snow-covered landscape, with partially buried dead horses along the roadside, to the British camps, during the Siege of Sevastopol of the Crimean War. In the winter, a storm ruined the camps and supply lines of the Allied forces (France, Britain and the Ottoman Empire). Men and horses became sick and starved in the poor conditions.
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  Great Sphinx of Giza

  Photo: Maison Bonfils; Restoration: Lise Broer

  A 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.
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  1906 San Francisco earthquake

  Photo credit: H. D. Chadwick

  The 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.
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  Knight

  Illustration: Anton Sorg; Restoration: Lise Broer

  A knight, a member of the warrior class of the Middle Ages in Europe, in Gothic plate armour, from a German book illustration published 1483. The modern concept of the knight is as an elite warrior sworn to uphold the values of chivalry, faith, loyalty, courage and honour. Knighthood as known in Medieval Europe was characterized by the combination of two elements: feudalism and service as a mounted combatant. Both arose under the reign of the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne, from which the knighthood of the Middle Ages can be seen to have had its genesis.
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  Cliff Palace

  Photo credit: Gustaf Nordenskiöld

  An 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.
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  First flying machine

  Artist: Unknown

  A 1786 depiction of the first hot air balloon to carry humans, built by the Montgolfier brothers of Annonay, France. The flight occurred on 21 November 1783 from the grounds of the Château de la Muette in the western outskirts of Paris. Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier, a physician, and François Laurent d'Arlandes, an army officer, flew aloft about 3,000 feet (1,000 m) above the city for a distance of 9 kilometres (6 mi), with a total flying time of 25 minutes.
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  Masada

  Photograph: Andrew Shiva

  An 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.

Did you know (auto generated)

• ... that the Otoskwin–Attawapiskat River Provincial Park, protecting the Otoskwin and Attawapiskat Rivers in Ontario, Canada, has archaeological and historical sites dating from 3000 BC to the 1800s?
• ... that Group A of the 2006 FIFA World Cup featured the highest-scoring opening game in World Cup history since the competition began using a single match opening format?
• ... that interviews collected for a Boston College oral history project were used in two murder trials?
• ... that "End Zone" Jones ran for a career high in his final regular season game with Nebraska to finish third in the school's history in career rushing yards?
• ... that the Picts disappeared from the historical record after the devastation suffered following the Battle of Dollar?
• ... that an Armenian Apostolic Church lawsuit over the Zeytun Gospels led Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh to write a history of its separated canon tables?

Featured biography –

This is a Featured article, which represents some of the best content on English Wikipedia.

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Nansen in 1890

Fridtjof Wedel-Jarlsberg Nansen (Norwegian: [ˈfrɪ̂tːjɔf ˈnɑ̀nsn̩]; 10 October 1861 – 13 May 1930) was a Norwegian polymath and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. He gained prominence at various points in his life as an explorer, scientist, diplomat, humanitarian and co-founded the Fatherland League.

He led the team that made the first crossing of the Greenland interior in 1888, traversing the island on cross-country skis. He won international fame after reaching a record northern latitude of 86°14′ during his Fram expedition of 1893–1896. Although he retired from exploration after his return to Norway, his techniques of polar travel and his innovations in equipment and clothing influenced a generation of subsequent Arctic and Antarctic expeditions. He was elected an International Member of the American Philosophical Society in 1897. (Full article...)

On this day

April 18

Roland Garros

• 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.
• 1881 – The painted ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London, were unveiled when the building opened its doors to the public.
• 1915 – World War I: Hit by ground fire, French aviation pioneer Roland Garros (pictured) landed his aircraft behind enemy lines and was taken prisoner by German forces.
• 1949 – The Republic of Ireland Act 1948 came into force, describing Ireland as a republic and ending its membership in the Commonwealth of Nations.
• 1975 – Aryabhata, India's first satellite, was launched from Kapustin Yar in the Soviet Union.

• Ippolita Maria Sforza (b. 1445)
• Polydore Vergil (d. 1555)
• Jean Guillou (b. 1930)
• Albert Einstein (d. 1955)

More anniversaries:

• April 17
• April 18
• April 19

Selected quote

What we find in books is like the fire in our hearths. We fetch it from our neighbors, we kindle it at home, we communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.

— Voltaire, 18th century French philosopher

Related portals

More Did you know...

• ... that the Soviet Tupolev Tu-142 (pictured) maritime patrol aircraft was developed in response to the American UGM-27 Polaris submarine-launched ballistic missile?
• ... that Harry Powers said that watching his victims die was more fun than a brothel?
• ... that the effort put forth by the subject of Miró's 1937 Naked woman climbing a staircase and her heavy limbs are thought to reflect the tragedy of the Spanish Civil War?
• ... that 49% of German military losses happened in the last 10 months of the Second World War in Europe?
• ... that Thomas Edison lost a fortune in his ore-milling company, but "had a hell of a good time spending it"?
• ... that American McCaull Comic Opera Company actress May Yohé, once the owner of the Hope Diamond, died poor?
• ... 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?

Topics

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History

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History • By period • By region • By topic • By ethnic group • Historiography • Archaeology • Books • Maps • Images • Magazines • Organizations • Fictional • Museums • Pseudohistory • Stubs • Timelines • Chronology • People • Wikipedia historians

WikiProjects

WikiProject History • Ancient Near East • Australian History • Classical Greece and Rome • Dacia • Former countries • History of Canada • Chinese history • European history • Heraldry and vexillology • Indian history • Jewish history • Medieval Scotland • Mesoamerica • Military history • Middle Ages • History of Science

WikiProject Time • Days of the Year • Years

WikiProject Biography • Composers • Political figures • Saints • United States Presidents

Things you can do

Here are some tasks awaiting attention: Article requests : Requested articles/Social sciences/History Copyedit : History articles needing copy editing Photo : Wikipedia requested photographs of history Stubs : Expand history stub articles Are you a historian : i.e. one who studies and writes history, and who has a keen interest in writing outstanding articles? Join our group by adding Category:Wikipedian historians to the bottom of your user page.

Associated Wikimedia

The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:

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  Commons
  Free media repository

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  Wikibooks
  Free textbooks and manuals

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  Wikidata
  Free knowledge base

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  Wikinews
  Free-content news

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  Wikiquote
  Collection of quotations

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  Wikisource
  Free-content library

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  Wikiversity
  Free learning tools

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  Wiktionary
  Dictionary and thesaurus

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