Portal:History

The History Portal

Chivalry

History (derived from Ancient Greek ἱστορία (historía) 'inquiry; knowledge acquired by investigation') is the systematic study and documentation of the human past. History is an academic discipline which uses a narrative to describe, examine, question, and analyse 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.

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 or traditional oral histories, art and material artifacts, and ecological markers.

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 BCE 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 BCE, though only 2nd-century BCE texts have survived. The title "father of history" has also been attributed, in their respective societies, to Sima Qian, Ibn Khaldun, and Kenneth Dike. (Full article...)

Featured articles –

Featured articles are displayed here, which represent some of the best content on English Wikipedia.

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  USS LST-469 under repair in August 1943

  USS LST-469 under repair in August 1943

  
  Convoy GP55 was a convoy of Allied ships that travelled from Sydney to Brisbane in June 1943 during World War II. It comprised ten cargo ships, three landing ships, tank (LSTs) and an escort of five corvettes. The Japanese submarine I-174 attacked the convoy on 16 June, sinking the United States Army transport ship Portmar and damaging USS LST-469. Two of the corvettes counter-attacked I-174, but only lightly damaged her.
  
  The Australian military conducted an intensive search for I-174 in the days after the attack in the mistaken belief that she had been significantly damaged. This search was not successful and highlighted the unsatisfactory communications between the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) and Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). However, another Japanese submarine passing through the area may have been sunk by RAAF aircraft. Because of Japan's deteriorating strategic situation, I-174 was the last Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) submarine to operate off the Australian east coast. (Full article...)
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  The Avro Ansons after landing safely, having collided in mid-air and locked together, 29 September 1940

  
  On 29 September 1940, a mid-air collision occurred over Brocklesby, New South Wales, Australia. The accident was unusual in that the aircraft involved, two Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) Avro Ansons of No. 2 Service Flying Training School, remained locked together after colliding, and then landed safely. The collision stopped the engines of the upper Anson, but those of the one underneath continued to run, allowing the aircraft to keep flying. Both navigators and the pilot of the lower Anson bailed out. The pilot of the upper Anson found that he was able to control the interlocked aircraft with his ailerons and flaps, and made an emergency landing in a nearby paddock. All four crewmen survived the incident. The upper Anson was repaired and returned to flight service; the lower Anson was used as an instructional airframe. (Full article...)
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  Douglas Albert Munro (October 11, 1919 – September 27, 1942) was a United States coast guardsman who was posthumously decorated with the Medal of Honor for an act of "extraordinary heroism" during World War II. He is the only person to have received the medal for actions performed during service in the Coast Guard.
  
  Munro was born in Canada to an American father and a British mother, and his family moved to the United States when he was a child. He was raised in South Cle Elum, Washington, and attended Central Washington College of Education before volunteering for military service shortly before the United States entered World War II. Munro and his shipmate Raymond Evans were known as the Gold Dust Twins, so-called because they were inseparable. (Full article...)
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  Parsons c. 1946–1953

  
  William Sterling Parsons (26 November 1901 – 5 December 1953) was an American naval officer who worked as an ordnance expert on the Manhattan Project during World War II. He is best known for being the weaponeer on the Enola Gay, the aircraft which dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945. To avoid the possibility of a nuclear explosion if the aircraft crashed and burned on takeoff, he decided to arm the bomb in flight. While the aircraft was en route to Hiroshima, Parsons climbed into the cramped and dark bomb bay, and inserted the powder charge and detonator. He was awarded the Silver Star for his part in the mission.
  
  A 1922 graduate of the United States Naval Academy, Parsons served on a variety of warships beginning with the battleship USS Idaho. He was trained in ordnance and studied ballistics under L. T. E. Thompson at the Naval Proving Ground in Dahlgren, Virginia. In July 1933, Parsons became liaison officer between the Bureau of Ordnance and the Naval Research Laboratory. He became interested in radar and was one of the first to recognize its potential to locate ships and aircraft, and perhaps even track shells in flight. In September 1940, Parsons and Merle Tuve of the National Defense Research Committee began work on the development of the proximity fuze, an invention that was provided to the US by the UK Tizard Mission, a radar-triggered fuze that would explode a shell in the proximity of the target. The fuze, eventually known as the VT (variable time) fuze, Mark 32, went into production in 1942. Parsons was on hand to watch the cruiser USS Helena shoot down the first enemy aircraft with a VT fuze in the Solomon Islands in January 1943. (Full article...)
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  Australian soldiers from the 2/16th Infantry Battalion arriving at Kaiapit after the area was captured by the 2/6th Independent Company

  Australian soldiers from the 2/16th Battalion arriving at Kaiapit on 20 September after the area was captured by the 2/6th Independent Company

  
  The Battle of Kaiapit was an action fought in 1943 between Australian and Japanese forces in New Guinea during the Markham and Ramu Valley – Finisterre Range campaign of World War II. Following the landings at Nadzab and at Lae, the Allies attempted to exploit their success with an advance into the upper Markham Valley, starting with Kaiapit. The Japanese intended to use Kaiapit to threaten the Allied position at Nadzab, and to create a diversion to allow the Japanese garrison at Lae time to escape.
  
  The Australian 2/6th Independent Company flew in to the Markham Valley from Port Moresby in 13 USAAF C-47 Dakotas, making a difficult landing on a rough airstrip. Unaware that a much larger Japanese force was also headed for Kaiapit, the company attacked the village on 19 September to secure the area so that it could be developed into an airfield. The company then held it against a strong counter-attack. During two days of fighting the Australians defeated a larger Japanese force while suffering relatively few losses. (Full article...)
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  Composite image of Isis's most distinctive Egyptian iconography, based partly on images from the tomb of Nefertari

  
  Isis was a major goddess in ancient Egyptian religion whose worship spread throughout the Greco-Roman world. Isis was first mentioned in the Old Kingdom (c. 2686 – c. 2181 BCE) as one of the main characters of the Osiris myth, in which she resurrects her slain brother and husband, the divine king Osiris, and produces and protects his heir, Horus. She was believed to help the dead enter the afterlife as she had helped Osiris, and she was considered the divine mother of the pharaoh, who was likened to Horus. Her maternal aid was invoked in healing spells to benefit ordinary people. Originally, she played a limited role in royal rituals and temple rites, although she was more prominent in funerary practices and magical texts. She was usually portrayed in art as a human woman wearing a throne-like hieroglyph on her head. During the New Kingdom (c. 1550 – c. 1070 BCE), as she took on traits that originally belonged to Hathor, the preeminent goddess of earlier times, Isis was portrayed wearing Hathor's headdress: a sun disk between the horns of a cow.
  
  In the first millennium BCE, Osiris and Isis became the most widely worshipped Egyptian deities, and Isis absorbed traits from many other goddesses. Rulers in Egypt and its southern neighbor Nubia built temples dedicated primarily to Isis, and her temple at Philae was a religious center for Egyptians and Nubians alike. Her reputed magical power was greater than that of all other gods, and she was said to govern the natural world and wield power over fate itself. (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.
  
  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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  1305 letter from the Ilkhan Mongol Öljaitü to King Philip IV of France suggesting military collaboration, on a roll measuring 302 cm × 50 cm (9.91 ft × 1.64 ft)

  
  
  Several attempts at a military alliance between the Frankish Crusaders and the Mongol Empire against the Islamic caliphates, their common enemy, were made by various leaders among them during the 13th century. Such an alliance might have seemed an obvious choice: the Mongols were already sympathetic to Christianity, given the presence of many influential Nestorian Christians in the Mongol court. The Franks—Western Europeans, and those in the Levantine Crusader states—were open to the idea of support from the East, in part owing to the long-running legend of the mythical Prester John, an Eastern king in an Eastern kingdom who many believed would one day come to the assistance of the Crusaders in the Holy Land. The Franks and Mongols also shared a common enemy in the Muslims. However, despite many messages, gifts, and emissaries over the course of several decades, the often-proposed alliance never came to fruition.
  
  Contact between Europeans and Mongols began around 1220, with occasional messages from the papacy and European monarchs to Mongol leaders such as the Great Khan, and subsequently to the Ilkhans in Mongol-conquered Persia. Communications tended to follow a recurring pattern: the Europeans asked the Mongols to convert to Western Christianity, while the Mongols responded with demands for submission and tribute. The Mongols had already conquered many Christian and Muslim states in their advance across Asia, and after destroying the Nizaris of Alamut and the Muslim Abbasid and Ayyubid dynasties, for the next few generations fought the remaining Islamic power in the region, the Egyptian Mamluks. Hethum I, king of the Christian state of Cilician Armenia, had submitted to the Mongols in 1247, and strongly encouraged other monarchs to engage in a Christian–Mongol alliance, but was only able to persuade his son-in-law, Prince Bohemond VI of the Crusader state of Antioch, who submitted in 1260. Other Christian leaders such as the Crusaders of Acre were more mistrustful of the Mongols, perceiving them as the most significant threat in the region. The Barons of Acre therefore engaged in an unusual passive alliance with the Muslim Mamluks, allowing Egyptian forces to advance unopposed through Crusader territory to engage and defeat the Mongols at the pivotal Battle of Ain Jalut in 1260. (Full article...)
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  SMS Rheinland in 1910

  
  The Nassau class was a group of four dreadnought battleships built for the German Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy) in the early 1900s. The class comprised Nassau, the lead ship, Rheinland, Posen, and Westfalen. All four ships were laid down in mid-1907, and completed by late 1910. They were Germany's first dreadnought class, and though commonly perceived as having been built in response to the British Dreadnought, their design traces its origin to 1903; they were in fact a response to Dreadnought's predecessors of the Lord Nelson class. The Nassaus adopted a main battery of twelve 28 cm (11 in) guns in six twin-gun turrets in an unusual hexagonal arrangement. Unlike many other dreadnoughts, the Nassau-class ships retained triple-expansion steam engines instead of more powerful steam turbines.
  
  After entering service, the Nassau-class ships served as II Division, I Battle Squadron of the High Seas Fleet for the duration of their careers. From 1910 to 1914, the ships participated in the normal peacetime routine of the German fleet, including various squadron exercises, training cruises, and fleet maneuvers every August–September. Following the outbreak of World War I in July 1914, the ships took part in numerous fleet operations intended to isolate and destroy individual elements of the numerically superior British Grand Fleet. These frequently consisted of sailing as distant support to the battlecruisers of I Scouting Group as they raided British coastal towns. These operations culminated in the Battle of Jutland on 31 May – 1 June 1916, where the ships helped to sink the armored cruiser HMS Black Prince. (Full article...)
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  Vice Admiral Henry Burrell c. 1959

  
  Vice Admiral Sir Henry Mackay Burrell, KBE, CB (13 August 1904 – 9 February 1988) was a senior commander in the Royal Australian Navy (RAN). He served as Chief of the Naval Staff (CNS) from 1959 to 1962. Born in the Blue Mountains, Burrell entered the Royal Australian Naval College in 1918 as a 13-year-old cadet. His first posting at sea was aboard the cruiser HMAS Sydney. During the 1920s and 1930s, Burrell served for several years on exchange with the Royal Navy, specialising as a navigator. During World War II, he filled a key liaison post with the US Navy, and later saw action as commander of the destroyer HMAS Norman, earning a mention in despatches.
  
  Promoted captain in 1946, Burrell played a major role in the formation of the RAN's Fleet Air Arm, before commanding the flagship HMAS Australia in 1948–49. He captained the light aircraft carrier HMAS Vengeance in 1953–54, and was twice Flag Officer of the Australian Fleet, in 1955–56 and 1958. Burrell was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1955 and a Companion of the Order of the Bath in 1959. As CNS, he began a major program of acquisitions for the Navy, including new helicopters, minesweepers, submarines and guided-missile destroyers. He also acted to reverse a plan by the government of the day to dismantle the Fleet Air Arm. Knighted in 1960, Burrell retired to his farm near Canberra in 1962 and published his memoirs, Mermaids Do Exist, in 1986. He died two years later, aged 83. (Full article...)
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  Australian and British pilots of No. 453 Squadron RAAF in Normandy during July 1944

  
  The Australian contribution to the Battle of Normandy involved more than 3,000 military personnel serving under British command. The majority of these personnel were members of the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), though smaller numbers of Australians serving with the Royal Navy and British Army also participated in the fighting prior to and after the Allied landings on 6 June 1944. While all the RAAF units based in the United Kingdom (UK) took part in the battle, Australians made up only a small portion of the Allied force.
  
  The Australians who supported the D-Day invasion included between 2,000 and 2,500 RAAF airmen in Australian squadrons and British Royal Air Force units, and approximately 500 members of the Royal Australian Navy serving on Royal Navy vessels, as well as a small number of Australian Army officers and merchant seamen. The army personnel and thousands of Australian airmen also took part in the subsequent Battle of Normandy between June and August 1944, and an RAAF fighter squadron operated from airfields in Normandy. Throughout the campaign, Australian airmen provided direct support to the Allied ground forces by attacking German military units and their supply lines, as well as forming part of the force that defended the beachhead from air attack and manning transport aircraft. Australians also indirectly supported the campaign by attacking German submarines and ships that threatened the invasion force. The 13 Australian Army officers who took part in the campaign filled a variety of roles in British units in order to gain experience that they could take back to Australia. (Full article...)
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  Miniature of Theodore II from the manuscript of Georgius Pachymeres' Historia, 14th century

  
  Theodore II Doukas Laskaris or Ducas Lascaris (Greek: Θεόδωρος Δούκας Λάσκαρις, romanized: Theodōros Doukas Laskaris; November 1221/1222 – 16 August 1258) was Emperor of Nicaea from 1254 to 1258. He was the only child of Emperor John III Doukas Vatatzes and Empress Irene Laskarina. His mother was the eldest daughter of Theodore I Laskaris, who had established the Empire of Nicaea as a successor state to the Byzantine Empire in Asia Minor after the crusaders captured the Byzantine capital, Constantinople, during the Fourth Crusade in 1204. Theodore received an excellent education from two renowned scholars, Nikephoros Blemmydes and George Akropolites. He made friends with young intellectuals, especially with a page of low birth, George Mouzalon. Theodore began to write treatises on theological, historical and philosophical themes in his youth.
  
  Emperor John III arranged for Theodore to marry Elena Asenina in 1235, to forge an alliance with her father, Ivan Asen II, Emperor of Bulgaria, against the Latin Empire of Constantinople. According to Theodore himself, their marriage was happy, and they had five or six children. From 1241, Theodore acted as his father's lieutenant in Asia Minor during his frequent military campaigns in the Balkan Peninsula. From around 1242, he was his father's co-ruler, but was not crowned as co-emperor. During this period, his relationship with some prominent aristocrats, particularly Theodore Philes and Michael Palaiologos, grew tense. (Full article...)
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  The 27th Infantry Division Savska was an infantry formation of the Royal Yugoslav Army that formed part of the 4th Army during the German-led invasion of Yugoslavia by the Axis powers in April 1941. It was raised from the Savska divisional district, and like all Yugoslav infantry divisions of the time, was a very large and unwieldy formation almost entirely reliant on animal transport for mobility. Commanded by Divizijski đeneral August Marić, the division was largely made up of ethnic Croat troops, many of whom saw the Germans as potential liberators from Serbian oppression during the interwar period. It also lacked modern arms and sufficient ammunition.
  
  Along with the rest of the Yugoslav Army, the 27th Infantry Division Savska began mobilising on 3 April 1941, and was still engaged in that process three days later when the Germans began an air campaign and a series of preliminary operations along the Yugoslav frontiers. These attacks ignited rebellion within the Croat troops of the division. The chief of staff of the division became involved, countermanding orders for the sabotage of a key bridge over the Drava river at Zákány. The division briefly established a defensive line on the Yugoslav side of the river, but German troops began crossing on 7 April, forcing the division to begin withdrawing. A counterattack delayed the German advance during the night of 8/9 April, but the division began to disintegrate due to fifth column actions, rebellion and desertion. When the German 14th Panzer Division broke out of the bridgehead at Zákány on 10 April, the 27th Infantry Division Savska numbered only 2,000 men, mostly Serbs. In a single day, the German panzers, with overwhelming air support, brushed aside the remnants of the division and captured Zagreb, covering nearly 160 kilometres (100 mi) and meeting little resistance. On that day the divisional headquarters was captured, and the division effectively ceased to exist. (Full article...)
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  The 2nd Indiana Battery in action at Cane Hill, during the beginning of the battle.

  
  The Battle of Cane Hill was fought between Union and Confederate forces during the American Civil War on November 28, 1862, in northwestern Arkansas, near the town of Cane Hill. Confederate Major General Thomas C. Hindman had made an abortive offensive into southwestern Missouri from Arkansas earlier in the year, but had withdrawn to Arkansas. Union troops under Brigadier General James G. Blunt had followed Hindman into northwestern Arkansas, and the Confederate general saw an opportunity to attack Blunt while his division was separated from the rest of the Union Army of the Frontier. Hindman then sent a force under Brigadier General John S. Marmaduke to Cane Hill, which was also known as Boonsboro, to collect supplies. In early November, a detachment of Blunt's command led by Colonel William F. Cloud defeated a small Confederate force commanded by Colonel Emmett MacDonald in the Cane Hill area.
  
  After MacDonald's defeat, Marmaduke remained in the Cane Hill area with his force. Blunt moved to attack Marmaduke on November 27. The Confederates expected the Union attack to come up the Cincinnati Road, but it instead followed the Ridge Road and then the Fayetteville Road. Cloud's men led the Union advance and made contact with Colonel Joseph O. Shelby's Confederate troopers on the morning of November 28. Shelby withdrew from the Cane Hill area after an artillery duel, and Marmaduke reformed his line in the Newburg area. (Full article...)
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  Air Marshal Selwyn David Evans AC, DSO, AFC (3 June 1925 – 2 September 2020) was a senior commander of the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), and a writer and consultant on defence matters. He served as Chief of the Air Staff from 1982 until 1985. After leaving the RAAF he published two military treatises, A Fatal Rivalry: Australia's Defence at Risk and War: A Matter of Principles, as well as an autobiography.
  
  Enlisting in the Air Force in 1943, Evans graduated from flying school as a sergeant pilot, and was converting to Beaufort bombers when World War II ended. He gained his commission as a pilot officer in 1947. From 1948 to 1949, he was a member of the Australian contingent operating C-47 Dakota transports in the Berlin Airlift. He was a flying instructor in the early 1950s, before becoming a VIP captain with the Governor-General's Flight in 1954. His service in the flight earned him the Air Force Cross in 1957. In the 1960s Evans was twice posted to No. 2 Squadron, flying Canberra jet bombers: first as a flight commander when the unit was based in Malaysia from 1960 to 1962 and then as its commanding officer during the Vietnam War from 1967 to 1968. The Canberras achieved a high degree of accuracy on their bombing missions under his leadership, and he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order after completing his tour in Vietnam. (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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  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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  Armorial of the Holy Roman Empire

  Woodcut: Hans Burgkmair; print: David de Negker

  A woodcut print of the Quaternion Eagle, the double-headed eagle armorial of the Holy Roman Empire. It showed the shields of the various parts of the empire in groups of four on the feathers of the eagle supporting, in place of a shield, Christ on the True Cross. The top, larger shields, are those of the seven Prince-electors, as well as one for the titular "Prefect of Rome".
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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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  Schutterij

  De Magere Compagnie (completed 1637), which depicts a company of schutterij, a voluntary city guard or citizen militia in the medieval and early modern Netherlands. Frans Hals was commissioned to create this, but he was unable to complete it after three years, and the company hired Pieter Codde to finish it. Group portraits such as this of schutterij were known as schuttersstuk, and were popular among the guards themselves.
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  Borobudur

  Photo: William Henry Jackson; Restoration: Lise Broer

  A man climbs a statue of a Buddhist idol at Borobudur, a 9th-century Mahayana Buddhist monument near Magelang, Central Java, Indonesia, in this 1895 hand-tinted lantern slide. The monument comprises six square platforms topped by three circular platforms, and is decorated with 2,672 relief panels and 504 Buddha statues. The monument is both a shrine to the Lord Buddha and a place for Buddhist pilgrimage. Evidence suggests Borobudur was abandoned following the 14th-century decline of Buddhist and Hindu kingdoms in Java, and the Javanese conversion to Islam. The monument is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is the most popular tourist attraction in the country.
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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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  Battle of Jerusalem (1917)

  Photo: American Colony; Restoration: Sebastian Kolendo

  The 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.
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  First permanent photograph

  Photo credit: Nicéphore Niépce

  The 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.
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  Operation Ivy

  Photo: United States Department of Energy

  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.
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  Arg-e Bam

  Photograph credit: Diego Delso

  The Arg-e Bam, in Kerman Province in southeastern Iran, is the largest adobe building in the world and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The ancient citadel has a history dating back around two thousand years, to the Parthian Empire (248 BC – 224 AD), but most of its buildings were constructed during the Safavid dynasty. A strong earthquake on 26 December 2003 largely devastated the fortress and the nearby modern city of Bam. The Arg-e Bam, including the governor's residence, the main tower, the Four Seasons Palace and the hammam, were nearly totally destroyed; this photograph from 2016 shows the citadel partially reconstructed.
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  Ivan the Terrible Showing His Treasury to Jerome Horsey

  Artist: Alexander Litovchenko

  Alexander Litovchenko's 1875 painting depicting Ivan IV of Russia seated in the Kremlin Armoury, his half-witted heir Fyodor standing behind, a group of distrustful boyars whispering at a distance, and the Tsar's jester in a skomorokh cap addressing the English diplomat Jerome Horsey. Horsey was a resident of the Russia Company in Moscow from 1572 to 1585.
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  Samurai

  Photograph: Felice Beato

  A samurai with his sword and armor, photographed by Felice Beato c. 1860. The samurai, records of which date back to the early 10th-century Kokin Wakashū, were the military nobility of medieval and early-modern Japan. As Japan modernized during the Meiji period beginning in the late 1860s, the samurai lost much of their power, and the status was ultimately dissolved. However, samurai values remain common in Japanese society.
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  Charge of the Light Brigade

  Artist: William Simpson; Restoration: Adam Cuerden

  On October 25, 1854, during the Battle of Balaclava in the Crimean War, British cavalry units charged heavily fortified Russian opposition, an action known as the Charge of the Light Brigade. By mischance, they attacked the wrong target, as the orders were unclear, and as a result suffered great casualties. Alfred, Lord Tennyson's famous poem made the charge a symbol of warfare at both its most courageous and its most tragic.
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  Events in ballooning

  Chromolithograph: Romanet & cie.

  A 19th-century set of ten cards depicting events in the history of ballooning and parachuting. These cards depict, from left to right:
  
  Top row:
  

  1. Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac and Jean-Baptiste Biot reaching an altitude of 4,000 metres (13,000 ft) (1804)
  2. André-Jacques Garnerin making a parachute descent in his gondola (1797)
  3. Louis-Sébastien Lenormand making the first witnessed parachute descent (1783)
  4. A series of fantastic flying machines dreamed up during the 18th century
  5. Use of balloons for reconnaissance during the Battle of Mainz (1795)

  
  Bottom row:
  

  1. The coronation balloon of Napoleon I (1804)
  2. The death of Sophie Blanchard (1819)
  3. Francesco Zambeccari and two companions adrift in the Adriatic Sea (1804)
  4. The death of Thomas Harris (1824)
  5. Francesco Arban is rescued by Italian fishermen (1846)

  
  
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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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  Dust Bowl

  Photo credit: Sloan, USDA

  Buried machinery in a barn lot, Dallas, South Dakota, United States, due to Dust Bowl conditions, May 1936. Dust storms from 1930–1939 caused major ecological and agricultural damage to American and Canadian prairie lands. This ecological disaster was a result of drought conditions coupled with decades of extensive farming using techniques that promoted erosion.
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  Historical reenactment

  Photo: Myrabella

  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.

Did you know (auto generated)

• ... that despite his distinguished family history, musicologist Yuri Shcherbinin told friends that "what matters most is what you are, not who your ancestors were"?
• ... that Professor of History Lorenzo Kamel deems Umma–Lagash the first recorded war in human history?
• ... 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 activist Gerlin Bean co-founded the Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent in 1978, an event described as "a watershed in the history of Black women's rights activism"?
• ... that at the age of 28, Mason Morelli became the first player in Vegas Golden Knights franchise history to record two points in their National Hockey League debut game?
• ... that the Al Qarara Cultural Museum, housed in a former grain silo, contained 6000 years of history?

Featured biography –

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

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Carsten Egeberg Borchgrevink (1 December 1864 – 21 April 1934) was a Norwegian polar explorer and a pioneer of Antarctic travel. He inspired Sir Robert Falcon Scott, Sir Ernest Shackleton, Roald Amundsen, and others associated with the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.

Borchgrevink was born and raised in Christiania (now Oslo) as the son of a Norwegian lawyer and an English-born immigrant mother. He began his exploring career in 1894 by joining a Norwegian whaling expedition, during which he became one of the first people to set foot on the Antarctic mainland. This achievement helped him to obtain backing for his Southern Cross expedition, which became the first to overwinter on the Antarctic mainland, and the first to visit the Great Ice Barrier since the expedition of Sir James Clark Ross nearly sixty years earlier. (Full article...)

On this day

December 11

Old Well at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

• 1789 – The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (structure pictured), one of the oldest public universities in the United States and the only one to award degrees in the 18th century, was chartered.
• 1886 – The London-based football club Arsenal, then known as Dial Square, played their first match on the Isle of Dogs.
• 1920 – Irish War of Independence: Following an Irish Republican Army ambush of an Auxiliary patrol, British forces burned and looted numerous buildings in Cork.
• 2006 – Criticized worldwide as a "meeting of Holocaust deniers", the International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust opened in Tehran.

• Averroes (d. 1198)
• Kamehameha V (b. 1830; d. 1872)
• Carl von In der Maur (d. 1913)
• Big Mama Thornton (b. 1926)

More anniversaries:

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• December 11
• December 12

Selected quote

It is of the nature of desire not to be satisfied, and most men live only for the gratification of it.

— Aristotle, 4th-century Greek philosopher

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More Did you know...

• ... that the Japanese aircraft carrier Amagi (wreck pictured) capsized on 29 July 1945 as a result of cumulative damage inflicted by American airstrikes on 24 and 28 July?
• ... that Scandinavian influence in Scotland, still evident today, was probably at its height during the time of Thorfinn the Mighty?
• ... that, after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the Bassetki statue, which is more than 4,200 years old, was found in a cesspool?
• ... that in medieval art, angels were often depicted wearing feather tights?
• ... that 49% of German military losses happened in the last 10 months of the Second World War in Europe?
• ... that Joshua L. Goldberg, the first rabbi to serve as a World War II U.S. navy chaplain, was a Russian army deserter?
• ... that Richard Nixon chose the Wilson desk as his Oval Office desk because he believed it was used by Woodrow Wilson, informed that it was used by Henry Wilson, Vice President under Ulysses S. Grant, but actually bought by Garret Augustus Hobart, 24th Vice President of the United States under President William McKinley?
• ... that some of the nominally silver Roman coins from the Bredon Hill Hoard only have a 1% silver content?

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