Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794-1877) was a shipping and railroad tycoon, and a self-made multi-millionaire who became one of the wealthiest Americans of the 19th century.

Marco Polo: The Early Years Marco Polo was born around 1254 into a prosperous merchant family in the Italian city-state of Venice. His father, Niccolò, and his uncle Maffeo had left the year before on a long-term trading expedition. As a result, he was raised by extended relatives following his mother’s death at a young […]

When the first European settlers arrived in the region around Narragansett Bay (present-day Rhode Island) around 1635, they encountered a number of Indigenous peoples, including the Algonquian-speaking Narragansett.

On May 7, 1915, less than a year after World War I (1914-18) began in Europe, a German U-boat torpedoed and sank the RMS Lusitania, a British ocean liner en route from New York to Liverpool, England. More than 1,100 crew and passengers died, including more than 120 Americans.

Enlightenment was a movement of politics, philosophy, science and communications in Europe during the 19th century.

The Gunpowder Plot was a failed attempt by Guy Fawkes, Robert Catesby and others to blow up England’s King James I and the British Parliament on November 5, 1605.

The Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC) was fought for nearly a half-century between Athens and Sparta, ancient Greece’s leading city-states.

Socrates is one of the most exemplary and strangest of Greek philosophers who helped pave the way for other prominent thinkers including Plato and Aristotle.

Dachau, a concentration camp that opened in Nazi Germany in 1933 after Adolf Hitler seized power, held thousands of Jews, political prisoners and others.

She paid for "premium air" in her tires

The name the Hundred Years’ War has been used by historians since the beginning of the nineteenth century to describe the long conflict that pitted the kings and kingdoms of France and England against each other from 1337 to 1453. Two factors lay at the origin of the conflict: first, the status of the duchy […]

The Bronze Age marked the first time humans started to work with metal. Bronze tools and weapons soon replaced earlier stone versions. Ancient Sumerians in the Middle East may have been the first people to enter the Bronze Age.

The Bear Flag Revolt lasted from June to July 1846, after a small group of American settlers in California rebelled against the Mexican government and proclaimed California an independent republic. The republic was short-lived because soon after the Bear Flag was raised, the U.S. military began occupying California, which went on to join the Union in 1850. The Bear Flag became the official California state flag in 1911.

Dorothea Dix’s Early Life Dorothea Dix was born in Hampden, Maine, in 1802. Her father Joseph was an itinerant Methodist preacher who was frequently away from home, and her mother suffered from debilitating bouts of depression. The oldest of three children, Dorothea ran her household and cared for her family members from a very young […]

We used it at our company for 99% of all projects, including very complex ones for Fortune500 companies. There may be a lot of reasons for it — for one Figma’s dominance on the market pushed out…

Freedom Summer, also known as the the Mississippi Summer Project, was a 1964 voter registration drive sponsored by civil rights organizations. The Ku Klux Klan, police and state and local authorities carried out a series of violent attacks against the activists, including arson, beatings, false arrest and the murders of at least three people.

Nikita Khrushchev inaugurated the space age and ramped up Cold War tensions by way of the Cuban Missle Crisis during his tenure as premier of the Soviet Union.

Hernando de Soto was a 16th-century Spanish explorer and conquistador who grew rich through slavery and his conquests of the Inca and other Native Americans.

Mongol leader Genghis Khan (1162-1227) rose from humble beginnings to establish the largest land empire in history. After uniting the nomadic tribes of the Mongolian plateau, he conquered huge chunks of central Asia and China. His descendants expanded the empire even further, advancing to such far-off places as Poland, Vietnam, Syria and Korea.

The Seven Years’ War, or French and Indian War, was a global conflict lasting from 1756 to 1763. Battles occurred on both the European and North American continents.

The samurai, who abided by a code of honor and discipline known as bushido, were provincial warriors in feudal Japan before rising to power in the 12th century.

TIG | This Is Glamorous - A Digital Publication est. 2007 - An intelligent guide to the best of the internets for the aesthetically inclined

The French Revolution began in 1789. Soon, the Bastille was stormed and the monarchy eliminated. After the Reign of Terror, France established a new government.

Operation Ranch Hand During the Vietnam War, the U.S military engaged in an aggressive program of chemical warfare codenamed Operation Ranch Hand. From 1961 to 1971, the U.S. military sprayed a range of herbicides across more than 4.5 million acres of Vietnam to destroy the forest cover and food crops used by enemy North Vietnamese […]

Whitney Learns About Cotton Eli Whitney was born on December 8, 1765, in Westborough, Massachusetts. Growing up, Whitney, whose father was a farmer, proved to be a talented mechanic and inventor. Among the objects he designed and built as a youth were a nail forge and a violin. In 1792, after graduating from Yale College […]

Francisco Vázquez de Coronado (c. 1510-1554) was a 16th-century Spanish explorer. In 1540, Coronado led a major Spanish expedition up Mexico’s western coast and into the region that is now the southwestern United States.

Abraham Lincoln, a self-taught lawyer, legislator and vocal opponent of slavery, was elected 16th president of the United States in November 1860, shortly before the outbreak of the Civil War. He led the nation through the bloody conflict and declared all enslaved people free under the Emancipation Proclamation. He was assassinated at Ford's Theatre on April 14, 1865.

Study finds that 'transcranial random noise stimulation' helps

Paul Revere was a Boston silversmith and propagandist famous for his midnight ride to warn other patriots about a British attack during the American Revolution.

John Wilkes Booth was an actor and Confederate sympathizer who assassinated U.S. President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., in April 1865.

Oliver Cromwell was an English soldier and statesman. The Puritan organized armed forces in the English Civil Wars and twice served as Lord Protector.

Welcome to the Shirk Report where you will find 25 funny images, 10 interesting articles and 5 entertaining videos from the last 7 days of sifting.

Alice Paul was a Quaker suffragist who fought to secure women the right to vote and other feminist causes. The author of the Equal Rights Amendment, written in 1923 but still not ratified, died at the age of 92 in 1977, and remains one of the nation’s most outspoken voices in the battle for equality.

There's nothing like reading a book you had to fight a bunch of monsters to get. Read on to find out more about the books in video games.

In the wake of Hannibal's season finale, we take a look at the challenges of portraying intimate relationships between straight male characters.

The Tower of London has a sinister reputation, so it is not surprising there are so many tales of ghosts and hauntings. Learn more about these historic phantoms—if you dare!

The Continental Congress was the first governing body of America. It led the Revolutionary War effort and ratified the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution.