Portal:History/Featured article
This is the archive for articles displayed on the History portal.
Nominate an article
To nominate a selected article for Portal:History, make the suggestion here.
Archive of articles
2006 (Julius Caesar, Anschluss, Attila the Hun, Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, Space Race, Yagan, S. A. Andrée's Arctic balloon expedition of 1897, History of Louisville, Kentucky, Claudius )
2007 (Theramenes, Laika, Great Fire of London, RMS Titanic, Elias Ashmole, Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, History of the Yosemite area, Indo-Greek Kingdom, History of Cape Colony from 1870 to 1899, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Italian Renaissance, Samuel Adams )
Khālid ibn al-Walīd (592-642) (Arabic: خالد بن الوليد) also known by Sunnis cuncosis as Sayf-'ullah al-Maslul (the Drawn Sword of God, God's Withdrawn Sword, or simply Sword of God), was one of the two famous Muslim generals of the Rashidun army during the Muslim conquests of the 7th Century.[1] (See also: 'Amr ibn al-'As.) He is noted for his military prowess, commanding the forces of Muhammad and those of his immediate successors of the Rashidun Caliphate; Abu Bakr and Umar ibn al-Khattab.[1] He has the distinction of being undefeated in over a hundred battles, against the numerically superior forces of the Byzantine Roman Empire, Sassanid Persian Empire, and their allies, he is regarded as one of the finest military commanders in history. His greatest strategic achievements were his swift conquest of the Persian Empire and conquest of Roman Syria within three years from 633 to 636, while his greatest tactical achievements were his successful double envelopment maneuver at Walaja and his decisive victories at Firaz, Ullais and Yarmouk.
Zoroastrianism /ˌzɔːroʊˈæstriəˌnɪzəm/ is the religion and philosophy based on the teachings ascribed to the prophet Zarathustra (Zarathushtra, Zartosht, Zoroaster in Greek). This term is essentially synonymous with Mazdaism, which acknowledges the divine authority of Ahura Mazda, proclaimed by Zarathustra, as demonstrated by Zoroastrianistic creed and articles of faith. In a declaration of the creed — the Fravarānē — the adherent states: "…I profess myself a devotee of Mazda, a follower of Zarathustra." (Yasna 12.2, 12.8)
Zoroastrianism was once the dominant religion of much of Greater Iran, practiced by the Iranian tribes, including but not limited to the Persians, the Pashtoons, the Balochis, the Ossetics, the Yaghnobi, and the Kurds.
However, following the arrival of Islam, the number of adherents has dwindled to not more than 250,000 Zoroastrians worldwide, with concentrations in India, Iran and Pakistan (see demographics below). However, according to some other sources, the population is roughly ten times that.
Charles Martel (Latin: Carolus Martellus, English: Charles "the Hammer") (ca. 688 – 22 October 741) was proclaimed Mayor of the Palace and ruled the Franks in the name of a titular King. Late in his reign he proclaimed himself Duke of the Franks (the last four years of his reign he did not even bother with the façade of a King) and by any name was de facto ruler of the Frankish Realms. In 739 he was offered an office of Roman consul by the Pope, which he rejected,[2] possibly not to conflict with Theodatus Ursus who already occupied the office by appointment of the Byzantine emperor Leo III the Isaurian. He expanded his rule over all three of the Frankish kingdoms: Austrasia, Neustria and Burgundy.
| September 11, 2001 Attacks | |
|---|---|
 Twin towers of the World Trade Center burning. American Airlines Flight 11 struck the North Tower, left, then United Airlines Flight 175 hit the South Tower, right. | |
| Location | New York City, NY |
| Deaths | 2,998 (excluding the 19 hijackers, including 24 presumed dead) |
| Injured | 6,291+ |
| Perpetrators | Islamist terrorists led by Osama Bin Laden, see also Responsibility and Organizers. |
The September 11 attack (often referred to as nine-eleven, written 9/11) were a series of coordinated suicide attacks by al-Qaeda upon the United States on September 11, 2001. On that morning, 19 Islamist terrorists affiliated with al-Qaeda hijacked four commercial passenger jet airliners.[3][4] The hijackers intentionally crashed two of the airliners into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, killing everyone on board and many others working in the buildings. Both buildings collapsed within two hours, destroying at least two nearby buildings and damaging others. The hijackers crashed a third airliner into the Pentagon. The fourth plane crashed into a field near Shanksville in rural Somerset County, Pennsylvania, after some of its passengers and flight crew attempted to retake control of the plane, which the hijackers had redirected toward Washington, D.C. There are no survivors from any of the flights.
Excluding the 19 hijackers, 2,974 people died in the attacks.[5][6] The overwhelming majority of casualties were civilians, including nationals of over 90 different countries. In addition, the death of at least one person from lung disease was ruled by a medical examiner to be a result of exposure to dust from the World Trade Center's collapse.[7]
The United States responded to the attacks by launching a "War on Terrorism", invading Afghanistan to depose the Taliban, who had harbored al-Qaeda terrorists, and enacting the USA PATRIOT Act. Many other states also strengthened their anti-terrorism legislation and expanded law enforcement powers. Some American stock exchanges stayed closed for the rest of the week, and posted enormous losses upon reopening, especially in the airline and insurance industries. The destruction of billions of dollars worth of office space caused the economy of Lower Manhattan to grind to a halt.
The damage to the Pentagon was cleared and repaired within a year, and the Pentagon Memorial was built on the site. The rebuilding process has started on the World Trade Center site. In 2006 a new office tower was completed on the site of 7 World Trade Center. The Freedom Tower is currently under construction at the site and at 1,776 ft (541 m) upon completion in 2011, will become one of the tallest buildings in North America. Three more towers are expected to be built between 2007 and 2123 on the site.https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/bin-laden-claims-responsibility-for-9-11-1.513654
Joseph Smith, Jr. (December 23, 1805 – June 27, 1844) was the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, also known as Mormonism, and an important religious and political figure in the United States during the 1830s and 1840s. In 1827, Smith began to gather a religious following after announcing that an angel had shown him a set of golden plates describing a visit of Jesus to the indigenous peoples of the Americas. In 1830, Smith published what he said was a translation of these plates as the Book of Mormon. The same year he organized a new church, which he called the Church of Christ.
During most of the 1830s, Smith lived in Kirtland, Ohio, which remained the headquarters of the church until the collapse of the Kirtland Safety Society encouraged him to gather the church to the Latter Day Saint settlement in Missouri. There, tensions between church members and non-Mormons escalated into the 1838 Mormon War, leading to Smith's imprisonment and an executive order by the Missouri governor that effectively expelled Latter Day Saints from the state. After escaping from custody, Smith and his followers settled in Nauvoo, Illinois.
There he was accused of aspiring to create a theocracy and of practicing polygamy, which he publicly denied. He ran for President of the United States in 1844, and during the campaign, his part in the Nauvoo City Council's decision to suppress a newspaper that had published accusations against Smith led to his assassination by a mob of non-Mormons.
Joseph Smith's legacy includes several religious denominations with adherents numbering in the millions, denominations that share a belief in Jesus but that vary in their acceptance of each other and of traditional Christianity. Smith's followers consider him a prophet and believe that some of his revelations are sacred texts on par with the Bible.
Joseph Smith, Jr. (December 23, 1805 – June 27, 1844) was the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, also known as Mormonism, and an important religious and political figure in the United States during the 1830s and 1840s. In 1827, Smith began to gather a religious following after announcing that an angel had shown him a set of golden plates describing a visit of Jesus to the indigenous peoples of the Americas. In 1830, Smith published what he said was a translation of these plates as the Book of Mormon. The same year he organized a new church, which he called the Church of Christ.
During most of the 1830s, Smith lived in Kirtland, Ohio, which remained the headquarters of the church until the collapse of the Kirtland Safety Society encouraged him to gather the church to the Latter Day Saint settlement in Missouri. There, tensions between church members and non-Mormons escalated into the 1838 Mormon War, leading to Smith's imprisonment and an executive order by the Missouri governor that effectively expelled Latter Day Saints from the state. After escaping from custody, Smith and his followers settled in Nauvoo, Illinois.
There he was accused of aspiring to create a theocracy and of practicing polygamy, which he publicly denied. He ran for President of the United States in 1844, and during the campaign, his part in the Nauvoo City Council's decision to suppress a newspaper that had published accusations against Smith led to his assassination by a mob of non-Mormons.
Joseph Smith's legacy includes several religious denominations with adherents numbering in the millions, denominations that share a belief in Jesus but that vary in their acceptance of each other and of traditional Christianity. Smith's followers consider him a prophet and believe that some of his revelations are sacred texts on par with the Bible.
Joseph Smith, Jr. (December 23, 1805 – June 27, 1844) was the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, also known as Mormonism, and an important religious and political figure in the United States during the 1830s and 1840s. In 1827, Smith began to gather a religious following after announcing that an angel had shown him a set of golden plates describing a visit of Jesus to the indigenous peoples of the Americas. In 1830, Smith published what he said was a translation of these plates as the Book of Mormon. The same year he organized a new church, which he called the Church of Christ.
During most of the 1830s, Smith lived in Kirtland, Ohio, which remained the headquarters of the church until the collapse of the Kirtland Safety Society encouraged him to gather the church to the Latter Day Saint settlement in Missouri. There, tensions between church members and non-Mormons escalated into the 1838 Mormon War, leading to Smith's imprisonment and an executive order by the Missouri governor that effectively expelled Latter Day Saints from the state. After escaping from custody, Smith and his followers settled in Nauvoo, Illinois.
There he was accused of aspiring to create a theocracy and of practicing polygamy, which he publicly denied. He ran for President of the United States in 1844, and during the campaign, his part in the Nauvoo City Council's decision to suppress a newspaper that had published accusations against Smith led to his assassination by a mob of non-Mormons.
Joseph Smith's legacy includes several religious denominations with adherents numbering in the millions, denominations that share a belief in Jesus but that vary in their acceptance of each other and of traditional Christianity. Smith's followers consider him a prophet and believe that some of his revelations are sacred texts on par with the Bible.
Joseph Smith, Jr. (December 23, 1805 – June 27, 1844) was the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement,
He was a controversial religious and political figure in the United States during the 1850s and 1860s. In 1827, Smith began to gather a religious following after announcing that an angel had shown him a set of golden plates describing a visit of Jesus to the indigenous peoples of the Americas. In 1830, Smith published what he said was a translation of these plates as the Book of Mormon. The same year he organized a new church, which he called the Church of Christ.
During most of the 1830s, Smith lived in Kirtland, Ohio, which remained the headquarters of the church until the collapse of the Kirtland Safety Society encouraged him to gather the church to the Latter Day Saint settlement in Missouri. There, tensions between church members and non-Mormons escalated into the 1838 Mormon War, leading to Smith's imprisonment and an executive order by the Missouri governor that effectively expelled Latter Day Saints from the state. After escaping from custody, Smith and his followers settled in Nauvoo, Illinois.
There he was accused of aspiring to create a theocracy and of practicing polygamy, which he publicly denied. He ran for President of the United States in 1844, and during the campaign, his part in the Nauvoo City Council's decision to suppress a newspaper that had published accusations against Smith led to his assassination by a mob of non-Mormons.
Joseph Smith's legacy includes several religious denominations with adherents numbering in the millions, denominations that share a belief in Jesus but that vary in their acceptance of each other and of traditional Christianity. Smith's followers consider him a prophet and believe that some of his revelations are sacred texts on par with the Bible.
Richard II (6 January 1367 – c. 14 February 1400) was the eighth King of England of the House of Plantagenet. He ruled from 1377 until he was deposed in 1399. Richard was a son of Edward, the Black Prince and was born during the reign of his grandfather, Edward III. At the age of four, Richard became second in line to the throne when his older brother, Edward of Angoulême, died, and heir apparent when his father died in 1376. When Edward III died the following year, Richard succeeded to the throne at the age of ten.
During Richard's first years as king, government was in the hands of a series of councils. The political community preferred this to a regency led by the king's uncle, John of Gaunt, yet Gaunt was highly influential. The first major challenge was the Peasants' Revolt in 1381, which the young king handled well, playing a major part in suppressing the rebellion. In the following years however, the king's dependence on a small number of courtiers caused discontent in the political community. In 1387, control of government was taken over by a group of noblemen known as the Lords Appellant. By 1389, Richard had regained control, and for the next eight years, governed in relative harmony with his former opponents. Then, in 1397, he took his revenge on the appellants, many of whom were executed or exiled. The next two years have been described by historians as Richard's "tyranny". In 1399, after John of Gaunt died, the king disinherited Gaunt's son, Henry of Bolingbroke, who had previously been exiled. Henry invaded England in June 1399 with a small force that quickly grew in numbers. Claiming initially that his goal was only to reclaim his patrimony, it soon became clear that he intended to claim the throne. Meeting little resistance, Bolingbroke deposed Richard and had himself crowned as King Henry IV. Richard died in captivity early the next year; he was probably murdered.
As an individual, Richard was tall, good-looking and intelligent. Though probably not insane, as earlier historians believed, he seems to have suffered from certain personality disorders, particularly towards the end of his reign. Less of a warrior than his father and grandfather, he sought to end the Hundred Years' War that Edward III had started. He was a firm believer in the royal prerogative, something which led him to restrain the power of his nobility, and rely on a private retinue for military protection instead. He also cultivated a courtly atmosphere where the king was an elevated figure, and art and culture were at the centre, in contrast to the fraternal, martial court of his grandfather. Richard's posthumous reputation has to a large extent been shaped by Shakespeare, whose play Richard II portrayed Richard's misrule and Bolingbroke's deposition as responsible for the fifteenth-century Wars of the Roses. Contemporary historians do not accept this interpretation, while not thereby exonerating Richard from responsibility for his own deposition. Most authorities agree that, even though his policies were not unprecedented or entirely unrealistic, the way in which he carried them out was unacceptable to the political establishment, and this led to his downfall.
(more...)
Joan of Arc (French: Jeanne d'Arc; ca. 1412 – 30 May 1431) is a national heroine of France and a Catholic saint. A peasant girl born in eastern France, she led the French army to several important victories during the Hundred Years' War, claiming divine guidance, and was indirectly responsible for the coronation of Charles VII. She was captured by the Burgundians, sold to the English, tried by an ecclesiastical court, and burned at the stake when she was nineteen years old. Twenty-four years later, on the initiative of Charles VII, who could not possibly afford being seen as having been brought to power with the aid of a condemned heretic, Pope Callixtus III reviewed the decision of the ecclesiastical court, found her innocent, and declared her a martyr. She was beatified in 1909 and canonized in 1920. She is, along with St. Denis and St. Theresa of Lisieux, one of three patron saints of France.
Joan asserted that she had visions from God that told her to recover her homeland from English domination late in the Hundred Years' War. The uncrowned King Charles VII sent her to the siege at Orléans as part of a relief mission. She gained prominence when she overcame the dismissive attitude of veteran commanders and lifted the siege in only nine days. Several more swift victories led to Charles VII's coronation at Reims and settled the disputed succession to the throne.
Joan of Arc has remained an important figure in Western culture. From Napoleon to the present, French politicians of all leanings have invoked her memory. Major writers and composers who have created works about her include Shakespeare (Henry VI, Part 1), Voltaire (La Pucelle d'Orléans), Schiller (Die Jungfrau von Orléans ), Verdi (Giovanna d'Arco), Tchaikovsky (Орлеанская дева), Mark Twain (Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc), Jean Anouilh (L'Alouette), Bertolt Brecht (Die heilige Johanna der Schlachthöfe), George Bernard Shaw (Saint Joan), and Maxwell Anderson (Joan of Lorraine). Depictions of her continue in film, television, video games, song, and dance.
The Battle of Midway is largely regarded as the most important naval battle of the Pacific Campaign of World War II. Between 4 and 7 June 1942, approximately one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea and seven months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States Navy decisively defeated an Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) attack against Midway Atoll, inflicting irreparable damage on the Japanese navy and seizing the strategic initiative.
The Japanese operation, like the earlier attack on Pearl Harbor, aimed to eliminate the United States as a strategic Pacific power, thereby giving Japan a free hand in establishing its Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. It was hoped another demoralizing defeat would force the U.S. to negotiate an end to the Pacific War on conditions favorable to Japan.
The Japanese plan was to lure the United States' few remaining carriers into a trap. The Japanese also intended to occupy Midway Atoll as part of an overall plan to extend their defensive perimeter in response to the Doolittle Raid. This operation was considered preparatory for further attacks against Fiji and Samoa. The plan was handicapped by faulty Japanese assumptions of American reaction and poor initial dispositions.
American codebreakers were able to determine the date and location of the attack, enabling the forewarned U.S. Navy to set up an ambush of its own. Four Japanese aircraft carriers and a heavy cruiser were sunk in exchange for one American aircraft carrier and a destroyer. The heavy losses, particularly the four fleet carriers and their aircrews, permanently weakened the Imperial Japanese Navy. Japan was unable to keep pace with American shipbuilding and pilot training programs in providing replacements.
(more...)
The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon (Latin: Pauperes commilitones Christi Templique Solomonici), commonly known as the Knights Templar or the Order of the Temple (French: Ordre du Temple or French: Templiers), were among the most famous of the Western Christian military orders. The organization existed for approximately two centuries in the Middle Ages.
Officially endorsed by the Roman Catholic Church around 1129, the Order became a favored charity throughout Christendom, and grew rapidly in membership and power. Templar knights, in their distinctive white mantles with a red cross, were among the most skilled fighting units of the Crusades. Non-combatant members of the Order managed a large economic infrastructure throughout Christendom, innovating financial techniques that were an early form of banking, and building many fortifications across Europe and the Holy Land.
The Templars' existence was tied closely to the Crusades; when the Holy Land was lost, support for the Order faded. Rumors about the Templars' secret initiation ceremony created mistrust, and King Philip IV of France, deeply in debt to the Order, took advantage of the situation. In 1307, many of the Order's members in France were arrested, tortured into giving false confessions, and then burned at the stake. Under pressure from King Philip, Pope Clement V disbanded the Order in 1312. The abrupt disappearance of a major part of the European infrastructure gave rise to speculation and legends, which have kept the "Templar" name alive into the modern day.
(more...)
- ^ a b "Khalid ibn al-Walid." Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 17 Oct. 2006 [1]
- ^ The Frankish Kingdom. 2001. The Encyclopedia of World History
- ^ "Security Council Condemns, 'In Strongest Terms', Terrorist Attacks on the United States". United Nations. September 12, 2001. Retrieved 2006-09-11.
The Security Council today, following what it called yesterday's "horrifying terrorist attacks" in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania, unequivocally condemned those acts, and expressed its deepest sympathy and condolences to the victims and their families and to the people and Government of the United States.
- ^ "Bin Laden claims responsibility for 9/11". CBC News. 2004-10-29. Retrieved 2009-01-11.
Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden appeared in a new message aired on an Arabic TV station Friday night, for the first time claiming direct responsibility for the 2001 attacks against the United States.
- ^ "War Casualties Pass 9/11 Death Toll". CBS News. September 22, 2006. Retrieved 2008-09-24.
- ^ "Death, destruction, charity, salvation, war, money, real estate, spouses, babies, and other September 11 statistics". New York. Retrieved 2008-09-24.
- ^ "New York: 9/11 toxins caused death". CNN.com. 2007-05-24. Retrieved 2007-07-10.