In 1989 the leader of Romania, Nicolae Ceausescu, gave his annual speech in Bucharest just days after an anti-government protest in the city of Timisoara that left a number of people dead. The speech was broadcast live to the entire country. Thousands of people were transported into the square to give the impression the people […]
Scores of people tried to flee to the neutral country of Portugal when Nazi Germany began their takeover of Europe. In an effort to stem the flow of migrants, the Portugese government closed the border between France and Spain. The only way across the border was to have a government issued visa. The consul stationed […]
A welfare state is defined as a social system based on the assumption by a political state of primary responsibility for the individual and social welfare of its citizens. Otto Van Bismarck, the chancellor under three successive German Emperors, created the first modern version in the 1880’s. He created the concept of state pensions and […]
The infected slave, Francisco de Eguía, was brought over from Cuba to the mainland by a Spanish ship in March of 1520. The indigenous population had no immunity to smallpox and it spread like wildfire. By October of the same year smallpox had entered into the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan and killed a third of the […]
The famine was brought about from a change in Europe’s climate. The springs and summers were colder than average and not enough crops could be grown to feed the population after two consecutive years of a shortened growing season. Yuval Noah Harari quotes a French official in the town of Beauvais describes the scene in […]
The political activist and member of the Socialist Party of America was involved in some of the largest labor disputes in the early 1900’s. The first time his efforts landed him in prison was when he called for the American Railway Union (ARU) to boycott trains carrying Pullman cars during the Pullman Strike. The federal […]
Robert Prager came to the United States from Germany in 1905 at the age of 17. He never settled in one place for long and 1930 found him living in Illinois, working as a coal miner. Patriotic hysteria had descended on the country now that the United States had enetered the war against the Central […]
Edith Wilson was President Woodrow Wilson’s second wife. His first wife, Ellen Wilson, had died early in his first term. Just over one year and four months after her death and still in his first term as president he was remarried. Since the courtship happened so quickly there were rumors of an affair and theories […]
The Birth of a Nation was the first feature length film and also was the first film screened in the White House. The movie is important for it’s advancement of the genre of film and is preserved in the National Film Registry. Three hours long, it’s first part depicts the Civil War, complete with a re-enacted […]
It happened after World War 1 was incited in June 1914 by the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. This event triggered a cascade of alliances to be called into effect which brought most European coutnries to war. One month after the assassination, amidst escalating conflict, the New York Stock Exchange shut it’s doors out of fear […]
