Portal:History

The History Portal

History by Frederick Dielman

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 analyze 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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  Major General Frank Berryman in 1944

  
  Lieutenant General Sir Frank Horton Berryman, KCVO, CB, CBE, DSO (11 April 1894 – 28 May 1981) was an Australian Army officer who served as a general during the Second World War. The son of an engine driver, he entered Duntroon in 1913. His class graduated early after the First World War broke out, and he served on the Western Front with the field artillery. After the war, he spent nearly twenty years as a major.
  
  Berryman joined the Second Australian Imperial Force (AIF) on 4 April 1940 with the rank of full colonel, and became General Staff Officer Grade 1 (GSO1) of the 6th Division. He was responsible for the staff work for the attacks on Bardia and Tobruk. In January 1941, Berryman became Commander, Royal Artillery, 7th Division, and was promoted to brigadier. During the Syria-Lebanon campaign, he commanded "Berryforce". He returned to Australia in 1942, becoming Major General, General Staff, of the First Army. Later that year, he became Deputy Chief of the General Staff under the Commander in Chief, General Sir Thomas Blamey, who brought him up to Port Moresby to simultaneously act as chief of staff of New Guinea Force. Berryman was intimately involved with the planning and execution of the Salamaua–Lae campaign and the Huon Peninsula campaign. In November 1943 he became acting commander of II Corps, which he led in the Battle of Sio. In the final part of the war, he was Blamey's representative at General of the Army Douglas MacArthur's headquarters and the Australian Army representative at the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay. (Full article...)
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  SMS Prinz Adalbert

  
  SMS Prinz Adalbert ('His Majesty's Ship Prince Adalbert') was an armored cruiser built in the early 1900s for the Imperial German Navy. She was named after Prince Adalbert of Prussia, former Commander-in-Chief of the Prussian Navy, and was the lead ship of her class.
  Prinz Adalbert was built at the Imperial Dockyard in Kiel. Her keel was laid in April 1900, and she was launched in June 1901. Her completion in January 1904 had been delayed by an excess of construction projects at the Imperial Dockyard. She was armed with a main battery of four 21 cm (8.3 in) guns, a significant improvement over the previous armored cruiser, Prinz Heinrich, which carried only two 24 cm (9.4 in) guns. The ship was capable of a top speed of 20 knots (37 km/h; 23 mph). (Full article...)
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  Oswald Watt, Australian Flying Corps

  
  Walter Oswald Watt, OBE (11 February 1878 – 21 May 1921) was an Australian aviator and businessman. He served as a pilot during World War I with, firstly, the French Foreign Legion and, secondly, the Australian Flying Corps (AFC).
  
  The son of a Scottish-Australian merchant and politician, Watt was born in England and moved to Sydney when he was one year old, returning to Britain at the age of eleven for education at Bristol and Cambridge. In 1900 he returned to Australia, and enlisted in the Militia, before acquiring cattle stations in New South Wales and Queensland. He was also a partner in the family shipping firm. (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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  Yeomanry Cavalryman in a 1798 painting
  by Thomas Rowlandson

  
  The Yeomanry Cavalry was the mounted component of the British Volunteer Corps, a military auxiliary established in the late 18th century amid fears of invasion and insurrection during the French Revolutionary Wars. A yeoman was a person of respectable standing, one social rank below a gentleman, and the yeomanry was initially a rural, county-based force. Members were required to provide their own horses and were recruited mainly from landholders and tenant farmers, though the middle class also featured prominently in the rank and file. Officers were largely recruited from among the British nobility and landed gentry. A commission generally involved significant personal expense, and although social status was an important qualification, the primary factor was personal wealth. From the beginning, the newly rich, who found in the yeomanry a means of enhancing their social standing, were welcomed into the officer corps for their ability to support the force financially. Urban recruitment increased towards the end of the 19th century, reflected in the early 20th century by increasingly common use of hired mounts.
  
  The yeomanry was first used in support of local authorities to suppress civil unrest, most notably during the food riots of 1795. Its only use in national defence was in 1797, when the Castlemartin Yeomanry helped defeat a small French invasion in the Battle of Fishguard. Although the Volunteer Corps was disbanded following the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, the yeomanry was retained as a politically reliable force which could be deployed in support of the civil authorities. It often served as mounted police until the middle of the 19th century. Most famously, the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry was largely responsible for the Peterloo Massacre, in which some 17 people were killed and up to 650 were injured, while policing a rally for parliamentary reform in Manchester in 1819. The yeomanry was also deployed against striking colliers in the 1820s, during the Swing riots of the early 1830s and the Chartist disturbances of the late 1830s and early 1840s. The exclusive membership set the yeomanry apart from the population it policed, and as better law enforcement options became available the yeomanry was increasingly held back for fear that its presence would provoke confrontation. Its social status made the force a popular target for caricature, particularly after Peterloo, and it was often satirised in the press, in literature and on the stage. (Full article...)
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  Hughes in 1940

  
  Paterson Clarence Hughes, DFC (19 September 1917 – 7 September 1940) was an Australian fighter ace of World War II. Serving with the Royal Air Force (RAF), he was credited with as many as seventeen aerial victories during the Battle of Britain, before being killed in action in September 1940. His tally made him the highest-scoring Australian of the battle, and among the three highest-scoring Australians of the war.
  
  Born in Cooma, New South Wales, Hughes joined the Royal Australian Air Force as a cadet in 1936. After graduating as a pilot, he chose to take a commission with the RAF. In July 1937, he was assigned to No. 64 Squadron, which operated Hawker Demon and, later, Bristol Blenheim fighters. Posted to No. 234 Squadron following the outbreak of World War II, Hughes began flying Supermarine Spitfires as a flight commander. He shared in his unit's first aerial victory on 8 July 1940, and began scoring heavily against the Luftwaffe the following month. Known for his practice of attacking his targets at extremely close range, Hughes is generally thought to have died after his Spitfire was struck by flying debris from a German bomber that he had just shot down. He was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, and was buried in England. (Full article...)
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  This portrait was first published in 1885 and alleged to be a 1625 likeness of Standish, although its authenticity has never been proven.

  
  Myles Standish (c. 1584 – October 3, 1656) was an English military officer and colonist. He was hired as military adviser for Plymouth Colony in present-day Massachusetts, United States by the Pilgrims. Standish accompanied the Pilgrims on the ship Mayflower and played a leading role in the administration and defense of Plymouth Colony from its foundation in 1620. On February 17, 1621, the Plymouth Colony militia elected him as its first commander and continued to re-elect him to that position for the remainder of his life. Standish served at various times as an agent of Plymouth Colony on a return trip to England, as assistant governor of the colony, and as its treasurer.
  
  A defining characteristic of Standish's military leadership was his proclivity for preemptive action. He led at least two attacks or small skirmishes against Native Americans in a raid on the village of Nemasket and a conflict at Wessagusset Colony. During these actions, Standish exhibited skill as a soldier, but disturbed more moderate members of the colony due to his brutality toward Natives. (Full article...)
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  Gold dinar of al-Walid, minted in Damascus, 707/08 CE

  
  Al-Walid ibn Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan (Arabic: الوليد بن عبد الملك بن مروان, romanized: al-Walīd ibn ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān; c. 674 – 23 February 715), commonly known as al-Walid I (Arabic: الوليد الأول), was the sixth Umayyad caliph, ruling from October 705 until his death in 715. He was the eldest son of his predecessor, Caliph Abd al-Malik (r. 685–705). As a prince, he led annual raids against the Byzantines from 695 to 698 and built or restored fortifications along the Syrian Desert route to Mecca. He became heir apparent in c. 705, after the death of the designated successor, Abd al-Malik's brother Abd al-Aziz ibn Marwan.
  
  Under al-Walid, his father's efforts to centralize government, impose a more Arabic and Islamic character on the state, and expand its borders were continued. He heavily depended on al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf, his father's powerful viceroy over the eastern half of the caliphate. During his reign, armies commissioned by al-Hajjaj conquered Sind and Transoxiana in the east, while the troops of Musa ibn Nusayr, the governor of Ifriqiya, conquered the Maghreb and Hispania in the west, bringing the caliphate to its largest territorial extent. War spoils from the conquests enabled al-Walid to finance impressive public works, including his greatest architectural achievement, the Great Mosque of Damascus, as well as the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and the Prophet's Mosque in Medina. He was the first caliph to institute programs for social welfare, aiding the poor and handicapped among the Muslim Arabs of Syria, who held him in high esteem. (Full article...)
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  Up to a million people (about 800 thousand of them are Roman Catholics) left communist North Vietnam during Operation Passage to Freedom after the country was partitioned (USS Calaveras County).

  
  Operation Passage to Freedom was a term used by the United States Navy to describe the propaganda effort and the assistance in transporting in 310,000 Vietnamese civilians, soldiers and non-Vietnamese members of the French Army from communist North Vietnam (the Democratic Republic of Vietnam) to non-communist South Vietnam (the State of Vietnam, later to become the Republic of Vietnam) between the years 1954 and 1955. The French and other countries may have transported a further 500,000. In the wake of the French defeat at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, the Geneva Accords of 1954 decided the fate of French Indochina after eight years of war between the French Union forces and the Viet Minh, which fought for Vietnamese independence under communist rule. The accords resulted in the partition of Vietnam at the 17th parallel north, with Ho Chi Minh's communist Viet Minh in control of the north and the French-backed State of Vietnam in the south. The agreements allowed a 300-day period of grace, ending on May 18, 1955, in which people could move freely between the two Vietnams before the border was sealed. The partition was intended to be temporary, pending elections in 1956 to reunify the country under a national government. Between 600,000 and one million people moved south, including more than 200,000 French citizens and soldiers in the French army while between 14,000 and 45,000 civilians and approximately 100,000 Viet Minh fighters moved in the opposite direction.
  
  The 1954–1955 Great Migration of Northerners was facilitated primarily by the French Air Force and Navy. American naval vessels supplemented the French in evacuating northerners to Saigon, the southern capital. The operation was accompanied by a large humanitarian relief effort, bankrolled mainly by the United States government in an attempt to absorb a large tent city of refugees that had sprung up outside Saigon. For the US, the migration was a public relations coup, generating wide coverage of the flight of Vietnamese from the perceived oppression of communism to the "free world" in the south. The period was marked by a Central Intelligence Agency-backed propaganda campaign on behalf of South Vietnam's Roman Catholic Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Diem. The campaign was usually viewed to exhort Catholics to flee "impending religious persecution" under communism, and around 60% of the north's 1.14 million Catholics immigrated. The Viet Minh also tried to forcefully prevent would-be refugees from leaving, especially in rural areas where there were no French or American military forces. (Full article...)
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  The United Kingdom began a military intervention in Sierra Leone on 7 May 2000 under the codename Operation Palliser. Although small numbers of British personnel had been deployed previously, Palliser was the first large-scale intervention by British forces in the Sierra Leone Civil War. In early May 2000, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF)—one of the main parties to the civil war—advanced on the country's capital, Freetown, prompting the British government to dispatch an "Operational Reconnaissance and Liaison Team" (ORLT) to prepare to evacuate foreign citizens. On 6 May, the RUF blocked the road connecting Freetown to the country's main airport, Lungi. The next day, British soldiers began to secure the airport and other areas essential to an evacuation. The majority of those who wished to leave were evacuated within the first two days of the operation, but many chose to stay following the arrival of British forces.
  
  After the effective completion of the evacuation, the mandate of the British forces began to expand. They assisted with the evacuation of besieged peacekeepers—including several British ceasefire observers—and began to assist the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) and the Sierra Leone Army (SLA). Despite the mission expansion, it was not until 17 May that British soldiers came into direct contact with the RUF. The rebels attacked a British position near Lungi airport, but were forced to retreat after a series of firefights. On the same day, the RUF's leader, Foday Sankoh, was captured by Sierra Leonean forces, leaving the RUF in disarray. After deciding that the RUF would not disarm voluntarily, the British began training the SLA for a confrontation. During the training mission, a patrol returning from a visit to Jordanian peacekeepers was taken captive by a militia group known as the West Side Boys. Negotiations achieved the release of five of the eleven soldiers, and three weeks into the crisis, British special forces launched a mission codenamed Operation Barras, freeing the remaining six. The success of Operation Barras restored confidence in the British mission; one academic suggested that its failure would have forced the British government to withdraw all its forces from Sierra Leone. (Full article...)
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  No. 34 Squadron is a Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) VIP transport squadron. It operates Boeing 737 Business Jets and Dassault Falcon 7Xs from Defence Establishment Fairbairn in Canberra. The squadron was formed in February 1942 for standard transport duties during World War II, initially flying de Havilland DH.84 Dragons in Northern Australia. In 1943 it re-equipped with Douglas C-47 Dakotas, which it operated in New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies prior to disbanding in June 1946.
  
  The unit was re-established in March 1948 as No. 34 (Communications) Squadron at RAAF Station Mallala, South Australia, where it supported activities at the Woomera Rocket Range before disbanding in October 1955. It was re-raised as No. 34 (VIP) Flight in March 1956 at RAAF Base Canberra (later Fairbairn). No. 34 Flight was redesignated No. 34 (Special Transport) Squadron in July 1959, and No. 34 Squadron in June 1963. During the 1960s it operated Dakotas, Convair Metropolitans, Vickers Viscounts, Dassault Falcon-Mysteres, Hawker Siddeley HS 748s, and BAC 1-11s, the last three types continuing in service until the late 1980s. The squadron's fleet consisted solely of Dassault Falcon 900s from 1989 until 2002, when it began operating the 737 and Bombardier Challenger 604s. The Challengers were replaced with the Falcon 7Xs in 2019. (Full article...)
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  Donald Forrester Brown, VC (23 February 1890 – 1 October 1916) was a New Zealand recipient of the Victoria Cross (VC), the highest award for valour "in the face of the enemy" that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces.
  
  Born in Dunedin, Brown was a farmer when the First World War began in 1914. In late 1915, he volunteered for service abroad with the New Zealand Expeditionary Force (NZEF) and was posted to the 2nd Battalion, the Otago Infantry Regiment. He saw action on the Western Front, and was awarded the VC for his actions during the Battle of Flers–Courcelette in September 1916. As he was killed several days later during the Battle of Le Transloy, the award was made posthumously. His VC was the second to be awarded to a soldier serving with the NZEF during the war and was the first earned in an action on the Western Front. (Full article...)
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  Group Captain "Paddy" Green achieved most of his 11 confirmed kills in this Mk. IV-equipped Beaufighter.

  
  Radar, Aircraft Interception, Mark IV (AI Mk. IV), also produced in the USA as SCR-540, was the world's first operational air-to-air radar system. Early Mk. III units appeared in July 1940 on converted Bristol Blenheim light bombers, while the definitive Mk. IV reached widespread availability on the Bristol Beaufighter heavy fighter by early 1941. On the Beaufighter, the Mk. IV arguably played a role in ending the Blitz, the Luftwaffe's night bombing campaign of late 1940 and early 1941.
  
  Early development was prompted by a 1936 memo from Henry Tizard on the topic of night fighting. The memo was sent to Robert Watson-Watt, director of the radar research efforts, who agreed to allow physicist Edward George "Taffy" Bowen to form a team to study the problem of air interception. The team had a test bed system in flights later that year, but progress was delayed for four years by emergency relocations, three abandoned production designs and Bowen's increasingly adversarial relationship with Watt's replacement, Albert Rowe. Ultimately, Bowen was forced from the team just as the system was finally maturing. (Full article...)
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  SMS König Albert; the diagonal lines along the side of the hull are anti-torpedo net booms.

  
  SMS König Albert was the fourth vessel of the Kaiser class of dreadnought battleships of the Imperial German Navy. König Albert's keel was laid on 17 July 1910 at the Schichau-Werke dockyard in Danzig. She was launched on 27 April 1912 and was commissioned into the fleet on 31 July 1913. The ship was equipped with ten 30.5-centimeter (12 in) guns in five twin turrets, and had a top speed of 22.1 knots (40.9 km/h; 25.4 mph). König Albert was assigned to III Battle Squadron and later IV Battle Squadron of the High Seas Fleet for the majority of her career, including World War I.
  
  Along with her four sister ships, Kaiser, Friedrich der Grosse, Kaiserin, and Prinzregent Luitpold, König Albert participated in most of the major fleet operations of World War I, though she was in drydock for maintenance during the Battle of Jutland between 31 May and 1 June 1916. As a result, she was the only battleship actively serving with the fleet that missed the largest naval battle of the war. The ship was also involved in Operation Albion, an amphibious assault on the Russian-held islands in the Gulf of Riga, in late 1917. (Full article...)
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  Painting of Tecumseh based on an 1808 sketch

  
  Tecumseh (/tɪˈkʌmsə, -si/ tih-KUM-sə, -⁠see; c. 1768 – October 5, 1813) was a Shawnee chief and warrior who promoted resistance to the expansion of the United States onto Native American lands. A persuasive orator, Tecumseh traveled widely, forming a Native American confederacy and promoting intertribal unity. Even though his efforts to unite Native Americans ended with his death in the War of 1812, he became an iconic folk hero in American, Indigenous, and Canadian popular history.
  
  Tecumseh was born in what is now Ohio at a time when the far-flung Shawnees were reuniting in their Ohio Country homeland. During his childhood, the Shawnees lost territory to the expanding American colonies in a series of border conflicts. Tecumseh's father was killed in battle against American colonists in 1774. Tecumseh was thereafter mentored by his older brother Cheeseekau, a noted war chief who died fighting Americans in 1792. As a young war leader, Tecumseh joined Shawnee Chief Blue Jacket's armed struggle against further American encroachment, which ended in defeat at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794 and with the loss of most of Ohio in the 1795 Treaty of Greenville. (Full article...)

Featured picture

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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.
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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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  Trumbull's Declaration of Independence

  Painting credit: John Trumbull

  John Trumbull's Declaration of Independence, a 12 by 18 feet (3.7 by 5.5 m) oil painting depicting the presentation of a draft of the United States Declaration of Independence to the Second Continental Congress. While this event did take place, it was not actually in the presence of all the people in the picture. The painting can be found in the rotunda of the United States Capitol.
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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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  Rajputs

  Image: The Illustrated London News
  Restoration: Adam Cuerden

  An 1876 engraving of Khokar Rajputs of Punjab. The Rajputs are one of the major Hindu Kshatriya (warrior) groups of India. Rajputs rose to prominence during the 9th to 11th centuries, and by the time of Indian independence, they ruled more than two-thirds of the estimated six hundred princely states, including three-quarters of the salute states.
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  Finnish markka

  Banknote credit: Bank of Finland; photographed by Andrew Shiva

  The Finnish markka was the currency of Finland from 1860 to 2002. The currency was divided into 100 pennies and was first introduced by the Bank of Finland to replace the Russian ruble at a rate of four markkaa to one ruble. The markka was replaced by the euro on 1 January 2002 and ceased to be legal tender on 28 February later that year.
  
  This picture shows a 20-markka banknote issued in 1862, as part of the first issue of markka banknotes (1860 to 1862), for the Grand Duchy of Finland, then an autonomous part of the Russian Empire; 1862 was also the first year of issue for this particular denomination. The banknote's obverse depicts the coat of arms of Finland on a Russian double-headed eagle, and was personally signed by the director and the cashier of the Bank of Finland. The text on the obverse is in Swedish, whereas the reverse is primarily in Russian and Finnish.
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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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  Anti-Slavery Society

  Painting by Benjamin Haydon

  Benjamin Haydon's painting of Thomas Clarkson addressing the 1840 Anti-Slavery Convention, held by the Anti-Slavery Society at Exeter Hall in London. The organisation was the second to bear that name and was dedicated to the abolishment of slavery worldwide. It continues to function today as Anti-Slavery International.
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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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  Khoikhoi

  Artist: Samuel Daniell

  An 1805 depiction of a Khoikhoi family dismantling their huts, preparing to move to new pastures. The Khoikhoi are a native people of southwestern Africa, closely related to the Bushmen. Most of the Khoikhoi have largely disappeared as a group, except for the largest group, the Namas.
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  First flying machine

  Artist: Unknown

  A 1786 depiction of the first hot air balloon to carry humans, built by the Montgolfier brothers of Annonay, France. The flight occurred on 21 November 1783 from the grounds of the Château de la Muette in the western outskirts of Paris. Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier, a physician, and François Laurent d'Arlandes, an army officer, flew aloft about 3,000 feet (1,000 m) above the city for a distance of 9 kilometres (6 mi), with a total flying time of 25 minutes.
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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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  Wilhelmina of the Netherlands

  Engraver: George J. Verbeck, after Thérèse van Duyl Schwarze
  Restoration: Lise Broer

  A 1901 etching of Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, based on an 1898 painting of her in her coronation robe. Having assumed the throne at the age of ten after the death of her father, King William III, Wilhemina ruled for fifty-eight years (1890–1948), longer than any other Dutch monarch. In 1948 she abdicated in favor of her daughter Juliana, thereafter making few public appearances until the country was devastated by the North Sea flood of 1953.
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  Map of the Battle of the Somme

  Map: Grandiose

  The Battle of the Somme was a battle of the First World War fought between 1 July and 18 November 1916 by the armies of the British and French empires against the German Empire. The largest battle of World War I on the Western Front, it was fought on both sides of upper reaches of the River Somme in France. More than one million men were wounded or killed, making it one of the bloodiest battles in human history.
  
  This map shows the situation on the first day on the Somme, as well as Allied gains up to 19 November 1916.
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  Knight

  Illustration: Anton Sorg; Restoration: Lise Broer

  A knight, a member of the warrior class of the Middle Ages in Europe, in Gothic plate armour, from a German book illustration published 1483. The modern concept of the knight is as an elite warrior sworn to uphold the values of chivalry, faith, loyalty, courage and honour. Knighthood as known in Medieval Europe was characterized by the combination of two elements: feudalism and service as a mounted combatant. Both arose under the reign of the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne, from which the knighthood of the Middle Ages can be seen to have had its genesis.
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  Yellow badge

  Photograph credit: Ronald Torfs

  Yellow badges are badges that Jews were ordered to wear in public during periods of the Middle Ages by the ruling Christians and Muslims, and in Nazi Germany in the 1940s. The badges served to mark the wearer as a religious or ethnic outsider, and often served as a badge of shame. The badge pictured is in the collection of the Kazerne Dossin Memorial, Museum and Documentation Centre in Mechelen, Belgium.
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  The Coronation of Napoleon

  Painting by Jacques-Louis David and Georges Rouget

  The Coronation of Napoleon, a painting by Jacques-Louis David depicting Napoleon Bonaparte's self-coronation as Emperor of France on December 2, 1804. The act took place in Notre-Dame de Paris, during which Napoleon, eschewing tradition, took the crown and placed it on his own head. The nearly 10 by 6 m (32.8 by 19.7 ft) work was commissioned before the coronation and completed in 1807.
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  Vegetable Lamb of Tartary

  Artist: Unknown, after Johann Zahn

  A drawing of the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary (Agnus scythicus), a zoophyte of Central Asia. Botanist Henry Lee described it as both a true animal and a living plant, although he did allow for the possibility that the lamb was the fruit of the plant. The lamb was believed to have blood, bones, and flesh like that of a normal lamb. It was connected to the earth by a stem similar to an umbilical cord that propped the lamb up above ground. The cord could flex downward allowing the lamb to feed on the grass and plants surrounding it. Once the plants within reach were eaten, the lamb died, at which point its cotton-like wool would be harvested and used to make textiles.

Did you know (auto generated)

• ... that The Fader praised "Montgomery Brawl" as "a hilarious recap" of the brawl and a "song a piece of history deserves"?
• ... that the U.S. National Firefighter Registry will match state cancer data with voluntarily collected work history data from firefighters?
• ... that the Labour Party received their highest share of the vote to date in the 1951 UK general election but still lost to the Conservatives, who received fewer votes?
• ... that 25 Water Street was designed to blend in with historic brick buildings that no longer exist?
• ... that Pat Gozemba married her wife while researching a book about the history of the struggle for equal marriage in Massachusetts?
• ... that the entire inventory of historic string instruments in Canada's Musical Instrument Bank are loaned to musicians in a competition held every three years?

Featured biography –

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

---

Portrait by John Hoppner, c. 1805

Harriet Arbuthnot (née Fane; 10 September 1793 – 2 August 1834) was an early 19th-century English diarist, social observer and political hostess on behalf of the Tory party. During the 1820s she was the closest woman friend of the hero of Waterloo and British Prime Minister, the 1st Duke of Wellington. She maintained a long correspondence and association with the Duke, all of which she recorded in her diaries, which are consequently extensively used in all authoritative biographies of the Duke of Wellington.

Born into the periphery of the British aristocracy, her parents were Henry Fane and his wife, Anne, née Batson; she married a politician and member of the establishment, Charles Arbuthnot. Thus well connected, she was perfectly placed to meet many of the key figures of the Regency and late Napoleonic eras. Recording meetings and conversations often verbatim, she has today become the "Mrs. Arbuthnot" quoted in many biographies and histories of the era. Her observations and memories of life within the British establishment are not confined to individuals but document politics, great events and daily life with an equal attention to detail, providing historians with a clear picture of the events described. Her diaries were themselves finally published in 1950 as The Journal of Mrs Arbuthnot. (Full article...)

On this day

November 18

Aftermath of the Aggie Bonfire collapse

• 1809 – Napoleonic Wars: In the Bay of Bengal, a French frigate squadron captured three East Indiamen mainly carrying recruits for the Indian Army.
• 1872 – American suffragette Susan B. Anthony was arrested and later fined $100 for having voted in the presidential election two weeks earlier.
• 1956 – At the Polish embassy in Moscow, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev said "We will bury you" while addressing Western envoys, prompting them to leave the room.
• 1999 – Texas A&M University's Aggie Bonfire collapsed (aftermath pictured), killing 12 people and injuring 27 others, and causing the university to officially declare a hiatus on the 90-year-old annual event.
• 2014 – Two Palestinian men attacked the praying congregants of a synagogue in Jerusalem with axes, knives, and a gun, resulting in eight deaths, including the attackers themselves.

• Rose Philippine Duchesne (d. 1852)
• Lise Østergaard (b. 1924)
• Margaret Atwood (b. 1939)
• Chloë Sevigny (b. 1974)

More anniversaries:

• November 17
• November 18
• November 19

Selected quote

Even death is not to be feared by one who has lived wisely.

— Gautama Buddha, founder of Buddhism

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More Did you know...

• ... that the anti-religious campaign culminating in the Stalinist show trial of the Kraków Curia (pictured) led to the imprisonment of 123 Polish Roman Catholic priests in just one year?
• ... that Confederate brigadier general Alfred E. Jackson was pardoned by President Andrew Johnson because of his kindness toward Johnson's family during the Civil War?
• ... that after HMS Porcupine was nearly split in two by a torpedo, the halves were nicknamed HMS Pork and HMS Pine?
• ... that the Experiment was a boat powered by horses running on a treadmill and propelled by a then-novel type of screw propeller?
• ... that one of the highest-ranking generals in China was injured in battle nine times?
• ... that in Mesopotamian mythology, the Apkallu were sent by the god Enki, from Dilmun to teach human beings various aspects of civilization?
• ... that Karl Marx's theory of historical trajectory attempted to prove the long-term unsustainability of capitalism?
• ... that in November 1921, the schooner Cymric collided with a tram in Dublin?

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