Resultados de "Hourly History" en Todas las categorias

Discover the remarkable history of the Arab Spring... The Arab Spring began unexpectedly on December 17, 2010, when Mohamed Bouazizi, a 26-year-old fruit seller in the city of Sidi Bouzid in Tunisia, committed suicide in a horrifying and public way. He doused himself in flammable liquid and then set himself on fire. Bouazizi had been driven to this act of despair, it was said, by constant harassment from local representatives of the regime of President Ben Ali, who had been the autocratic ruler of Tunisia for more than twenty years.

After World War II, the British Empire was weaker than it had ever been. Facing financial problems and shortages of manpower, Britain found it increasingly difficult to maintain control of the vast territories under its rule. Nowhere was this more evident than in the single most important area in the empire: India.

It has been several decades now since Francisco Franco’s passing in 1975, and yet his legacy still seems very much in the air. Depending on who you talk to, Franco was a fascist and a peacemaker, a destroyer and a savior, an idiot and a genius. Even after all this time, opinions of just who Franco was and how he contributed to modern civilization are up for open debate.

They say that laughter is the best medicine, and no one could quite make us laugh like Robin Williams. His meteoric rise to fame was fueled by an irrepressible sense of humor and dazzling improvisational skills. From the extraterrestrial Mork to the inspiring John Keating in Dead Poets Society and the endearing Genie in Aladdin, Williams’ performances captured the hearts of millions.

What would become the nation of Yugoslavia was created in the turbulent period following the end of World War I in 1918, but ended 74 years later in the chaos of another war. In its relatively brief history, Yugoslavia endured invasion during World War II and a range of styles of leadership that included an autocratic king, an even more autocratic socialist dictator, as well as brief periods of parliamentary democracy.

The Taj Mahal in Agra is arguably the most iconic image of India. For centuries, the world believed that it was built by Shah Jahan in 1631 to immortalize his love for his wife Mumtaz Mahal. This audio presents the five main historical figures of the Mughal Empire in India and the many details of how the Taj Mahal was built. Listen to stories about: the life of Mumtaz Mahal, considered the jewel of the place; the building of the Taj Mahal, a UNESCO World Heritage Site; the myths, conjecture, and controversy; the 22 locked rooms in the basement; and much more.

H. H. Holmes’ story has become one of legend. Holmes committed his crimes during a time in history where the idea of murdering on a mass scale was being introduced to the world through the actions of Jack the Ripper. Unlike Jack the Ripper, Holmes’ motives were clear; he killed out of greed, convenience, and curiosity.

The Crusades were a pivotal period in world history, but while much has been said of the swashbuckling Crusaders who stormed into the Middle East, much less has been said about those who were on the other end of this conflict. Yet it was out of this historic drama that dynamic figures like the Sultan Saladin came to prominence. Saladin was, by most measures, an unlikely candidate for greatness. Born to a Kurdish mercenary family with no particular claim to fame, he came of age more drawn to religious study than to soldiering.

William Pitt the Younger sometimes gets lost in the historical shuffle, overshadowed by his famous father and the drama of Napoleon Bonaparte in France. But few prime ministers in any country have left a deeper mark. Taking office at just 24 years old, making him the youngest prime minister in world history, he spent nearly two decades reshaping Britain's finances and steering it through a war that would define a generation. He might not have been a smooth operator, but he was certainly a shrewd one.

The Livonian War broke out in 1558 after Livonia, which was ruled by the Livonian Order of the Teutonic Knights, refused to negotiate with Russian Tsar Ivan IV over control of its lands. The Livonian Confederation had never been particularly stable, and tensions between the knights and the many factions vying for power had left Livonia dangerously weakened. Its position on the Baltic Sea made it a coveted prize, and Ivan knew Russia would not be the only country looking to exploit the crisis. It was no longer a question of whether the country would be invaded, but who would invade first.

In September 1944, the Allies seized Antwerp in Belgium, the largest deep-water port in northwestern Europe at the time. It should have been a great boon. The Scheldt River was wide enough and deep enough to bring ocean-going supply ships from the North Sea directly into the heart of the Allied advance, finally easing the logistics crisis that had slowed the march toward Germany. However, the port was useless without control of the Scheldt Estuary, a 60-mile (100-kilometer) waterway connecting Antwerp to the sea.

Operation Mincemeat is the story of a handful of men who believed in using their imaginations to help the Allies defeat the Axis Powers during the Second World War. Their plan was to dupe the Germans into relocating troops away from Sicily, the Allies' true target, as part of the larger deception known as Operation Barclay. Members of Britain's intelligence services hit upon the audacious idea of planting a dead body to deliver false information to the Germans, convincing Hitler that Greece and Sardinia, not Sicily, were next.

William Blake was an English poet, painter, and engraver who lived during the Romantic era. This was a time of revolution, radical ideas, and sweeping change, and Blake’s output was vast and varied, weaving together words and images in ways that had never been done before. During his lifetime, Blake was recognized as a talented painter and engraver, but he invariably missed out on the fame and fortune he so desperately wanted. No matter how hard he chased it, mainstream success remained just out of reach.

Twenty years ago, paleoanthropologists confidently asserted that there were just two species at the origin of modern humans: Homo sapiens, our direct ancestors, and the Neanderthals. Both had evolved from the earlier Homo erectus. When Homo sapiens began to migrate out of Africa on a large scale around 70,000 years ago, they met Neanderthals in Europe and western Asia, and the two species lived peacefully together and even interbred. Over time, the Neanderthals died out, though we still don't know precisely why, and that left Homo sapiens as the single surviving human species on the planet.

Discover the remarkable history of the Lewis and Clark Expedition... In 1800, less than 25 years after it became an independent nation, the United States faced a new threat on its western border. To the west lay a vast area known as the Louisiana Territory, which was under Spanish control. The United States had negotiated treaties with Spain that allowed small numbers of US settlers and traders to enter the territory, to use the Mississippi River for navigation, and to trade through the Spanish port of New Orleans.

Salvador Dalí, born in Figueres, Spain, was one of the twentieth century’s most important painters. He showed artistic talent from an early age, and his parents were determined to nurture that gift. Enrolled in three different art schools, Dalí proved himself a brilliant and technically precise painter as well as an impossible student. He was expelled twice and made a point of telling his examiners they were incompetent to judge him. He was, in other words, exactly the kind of brash artist the modern world was waiting for.

In 1963, Stephen Hawking was diagnosed with motor neuron disease and given two years to live. More than half a century later, Hawking had made some of the most significant contributions to our understanding of the universe since Albert Einstein. The world’s most famous physics professor, a best-selling author, and a father of three, Stephen lived his life to its fullest. Bridging the world of theoretical physics with the reach of pop culture, Stephen Hawking became an emblem of human determination and intellectual curiosity.

Rosa Parks was a quiet, dignified African-American woman who, in a world of injustice, decided to politely defy a racist policy. In doing so, she ignited a fire in the soul of a community whose "cup of endurance" would permit not even one more comparatively small injustice. Her case resulted in the Montgomery Bus Boycott, wherein some 40,000 African-Americans crippled the Montgomery transportation industry with their non-violent protest of the racist policy that mandated Parks to give up her seat for white riders. 

He’s the president with the asterisk by his name: Richard Milhous Nixon, the only US president to resign from office. But Richard Nixon’s legacy to the history of the US is much more complicated than the scandal of Watergate. His is the classic story of American legend - a young man who rose from his humble roots to achieve power and influence. Was Nixon a villain or a hero? Meet the president whose personality consisted of conflicting layers of pragmatism, patriotism, and self-doubt, which caused a fall from grace that roiled American democracy.

In 1812, Americans held two distinctly different visions of their country. These incompatible visions of America were held by two opposing political parties. The two halves of America also had incompatible views on the necessity of war that year.