History

John Charles Fremont was a great explorer but a poor Civil War general. His attempts to evade being replaced required Lincoln to take extraordinary measures to fire him.

Confederate civilians trapped in Vicksburg during General Ulysses Grant’s 1863 Vicksburg campaign dug caves to avoid the shelling, and were reduced to eating dogs, cats, and rats.

St. Philip Neri revived Rome during the Renaissance, earning him the title of “Apostle of Rome,” but his most endearing quality is his joy.

In the 19th century, European powers used opium as a tool for dominating south-east Asia.

Huge numbers of people responsible for the Holocaust escaped punishment; some Jewish survivors decided to correct that.

Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois both fought in different ways for African American equal rights. But Du Bois accused Washington of counseling blacks to accept second class status.

In 1961, the US launched a failed operation to topple the regime of Fidel Castro in Cuba. What became known as the 'Bay of Pigs Invasion' was a flashpoint of Cold War tension between the US and the USSR, and an example of the challenges of using covert action as a diplomatic tool.

Jack Kipling was one of the thousands of young British men callously thrown into the meat-grinding battlefields of World War I.

Martin Luther King Jr.'s impact is apparent over 50 years after his untimely death. Here are some facts about the great man.

In the Civil War Robert E. Lee fought fiercely to protect slavery, while Ulysses S. Grant fought just as hard to destroy it. But their personal attitudes toward it were the opposite of what you might expect.

Sarah Forbes Bonetta was an orphaned African princess given as a gift to Queen Victoria by the King of Dahomey. Victoria became Sarah's godmother, and received her into the royal extended family.

A surprisingly large number of people wanted a brilliant Canadian engineer dead.

Legendary Chinese female warriors such as Hua Mulan continue to be regularly depicted in pop entertainment. But how many existed in Chinese history?

When Detroit prohibited liquor sales a group of vicious criminals stepped in to satisfy demand.

Sweet Fanny Adams is used by the British to describe anything worthless. It is also the name of a pretty young girl murdered in Victorian England. This is how Fanny's name became slang for worthless.

The men who go down to the sea in ships know only too well about the dangers involved when the weather turns angry.