Best History Articles

The Aquarius Sports Resort Hotel in Marawila, a sleepy western coastal town of Sri Lanka is always a fascinating place to me. The beach-end restaurant of the resort facing the scenic Indian Ocean will become at times a forum for various international issues. I had a good discussion with Marita Kantar at the beach-end restaurant of the Aquarius Hotel today. The sun had started to go further and further towards the deep-end of the Indian Oceans horizon. While I was talking to her on various issues, I asked her how she felt about the massacre of Jews by Adolf Hitler. She said, "They are only the victims for a person who was mad and power-hungry."

The firebombing campaign was supposed to begin with an USAAF Eighth Air Force raid on Dresden on February 13 but bad weather over Europe prevented any American operations. So it fell to RAF Bomber Command to carry out the first raid. During the evening of February 13, the RAF bombers 796 Avro Lancasters and 9 De Havilland Mosquitoes were dispatched in two separate waves and dropped 1,478 tons of high explosive and 1,182 tons of incendiary bombs in the early hours of February 14. The ideal weather conditions at the target site, the wooden-framed buildings, "breakthroughs" linking the cellars of contiguous buildings and the lack of preparation for the effects of air-raids made the attack in Dresden a devastating. For these reasons the loss of life in Dresden was higher than many other bombing raids during World War II.

The League of Nations and the Treaty of Versailles and were just two of the important forms of cooperation in history which were established after World War I in the hope of establishing peace among nations.

A century after the first Germans had settled in the Volga region, Russia passed legislation that revoked many of the privileges promised to them by Catherine the Great. The sentiment in Russia became decidedly anti-German. Soon after the military service bill became law, both Protestant and Catholic Volga Germans gathered and chose delegations to journey across the Atlantic to examine settlement conditions in the United States. Volga Germans started arriving in the USA in the mid 1870s. Early destinations were in the heartland of the country around Kansas and later spread west to Washington, Oregon and California and East to Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan and Ohio.

During the late 2nd century BC, the Teutons were marching south along with their neighbors, the Cimbri and the Ambrones, and attacking Roman Italy. The Cimbri were ferocious warriors who did not fear death. The host was followed by women and children on carts. Aged women dressed in white sacrificed the prisoners of war and sprinkled their blood, the nature of which allowed them to see what was to come. After several battles with the Boii and other Celtic tribes, the Cimbri and other tribes appeared 113 BC in Noricum ( the today's Austria), where they invaded the lands of one of Rome's allies, the Taurisci.

What was it like to live in a farming village in North Cyprus during the Neolithic Age? A woman of Vrysi will describe that peaceful, simple life-way as you look upon the excavated ruins of a settlement that was abandoned five thousand years ago.

The new German Empire was a federal one- each of its twenty-five constituent states (kingdoms, grand duchies, duchies, principalities, and free cities) retained its autonomy. The King of Prussia, as German Emperor didn?t have sovereignity over the entirety of Germany but as the first amongst equals. Bismarck was also appointed as the Imperial Chancellor of the German Empire, but retained his Prussian offices including those of Minister-President and Foreign Minister- thus, he held almost complete control of both domestic and foreign policy. Though he was forced to resign from his office over disputes on domestic policies with Emperor William II, Bismarck left a lasting legacy in Europe and around the world. The German Nation and the Germans around the world remembered him by the creation of numerous statues and memorials around the German cities, towns, and countryside including the famous Bismarck Memorial in Berlin, Bismarck Sea and Bismarck Archipelago in the vicinity of then German colony in New Guinea as well as the City of Bismarck in the US State of North Dakota.

Overall, Anglo-American bombing of German cities claimed between 305,000 and 600,000 civilian lives. But the devastation in Dresden made a great impact on neutral countries at that time. Howard Cowan, an Associated Press war correspondent, subsequently filed a story saying that the Allies had resorted to terror bombing. Before the bombing, Dresden was regarded as a beautiful city and a cultural center, and was sometimes known as Elbflorenz, or Florence on the Elbe. Its notable architecture included the Zwinger Palace, the Dresden State Opera House, and the Dresden Frauenkirche, its historic cathedral.

History of Bihar, the land of Buddha

The United States is a democracy. But what do Americans mean when they use that word?