Showing results by author "Kelly Mass" in All Categories

Florence was a major center of middle ages European trade and banking, and also one of the most affluent cities in the world at the time. A lot of academics believe it was the beginning of the Renaissance, and it has been called "The Athens of the Middle Ages". Periods of supremacy by the strong Medici family, and also several spiritual and republican transformations, have marked the nation's unpredictable political history. The city was the capital of the Kingdom of Italy from 1865 to 1871 (developed in 1861).

In this guide to Celtic Mythology, several stories are not only outlined, but narrated elaborately. Others are quickly mentioned, and some historical background about the Celts, Irish, and Scottish is provided to set the stage. Overall, a fantastic guide to both be entertained and informed. Get started now!

The Netherlands had a great century in the 1600s, until it all ended about three-fourths of the way along. Trading was all around; business was good. Their vast empire that reached across the world made money from spices, raw materials, metals, and so much more, with an extensive network of ships and merchants, and an entire army fleet. The Dutch Golden Era was a time in Dutch history varying from about 1588 (the start of the Dutch Republic) to 1672 (the "Catastrophe Year"), throughout which Dutch trade, science, and art, and the Dutch armed force, were amongst the world's best.

The Cambodian genocide was the methodical abuse and death of Cambodians by the Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, the general secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, who pushed Cambodia toward being an entirely self-dependent agrarian socialist state. Between 1975 and 1979, 1.5 to two million people were murdered, representing about a quarter of Cambodia's population in 1975. Through a high number of propaganda resources and sheer force, the coup forced millions of people from the cities to farmlands, leaving them there to die.

The Great Fire of London was a massive fire in the ominous year of 1666 that destroyed the homes of more than 80 percent of the city’s 80,000 or so inhabitants. We will go over how the fire most likely started, why it took such a toll on the London population, and why it kept growing without them being able to extinguish the flames in time. You will also learn about how the city was built, how other competing countries saw the fire as a good thing, and how something else was even more disturbing at this time: the Great Plague of London

William the First, who was also called William the Conqueror, and in some cases, William the Bastard, was the first Norman emperor of England, ruling from 1066 till his death in 1087. Around this time, many wars and battles were waged over the kingdom and distribution of territories in Europe. France, the Anglo-Saxons, and Scandinavian troops were engaged in raids, struggles, and battles to claim their lands and gains. I invite you to learn more about this first king of England, who lived almost 1,000 years ago.

This is a great package of several titles in one book. The topics are all related to the history of the Netherlands.

Picasso’s work is famous. His art is intricate, yet bizarre. His personal life was filled with struggles, and his children weren’t any better off, creating substance abuse and suicidal headlines. Despite the dysfunctionality in his personal and family life, his artwork reflected something new and fresh. And in a variety of paintings, an underlying rebel message against totalitarian regimes. Having lived through many horrors of the Spanish war, as well as other 20th-century conflicts, the painter showed both style and morale in his works, and left a legacy studied by the masses.

Meet Dr. Josef Mengele, a man with a twisted mind who had no compassion for the subjects he experimented on. His methods were cruel. His conclusions were inconclusive, and his sadism hardly knew any boundaries. At the time of WWII, Josef Mengele was a German Schutzstaffel (SS) officer and cosmetic surgeon. He is known for his exploits at the Auschwitz prisoner-of-war camp, where he carried out deadly experiments on slaves, belonged to the team of medical professionals that chose victims for the gas chambers, and was just one of the medical professionals who administered the gas.

Many of us don’t know much about mythological stories from these regions, and it is my pleasure and privilege to educate you on the intricate details that lie within them. That’s why I have also provided some fascinating facts and historical background about each of these peoples. Creation myths, legacies, the sacrificing of children, the empires, and their wars are all mentioned and touched on in this book.

Mother Mary Teresa Bojaxhiu, typically referred to as Saint Teresa of Calcutta in the Catholic Church, was an Albanian-Indian Roman Catholic nun and missionary. She was born in Skopje (today the capital of North Macedonia), which was then part of the Ottoman Empire's Kosovo Vilayet. After 18 years in Skopje, she went to Ireland and ultimately to India, where she spent the remainder of her life. Teresa formed the Missionaries of Charity in the year 1950, a Roman Catholic spiritual order with about 4,500 nuns active in about 133 nations in the year 2012.

One of the big lords of the drug cartels in Colombia is Pablo Escobar, a criminal who became a leader and expanded his influence on organized crime throughout the North and South American continents. With billions in his bank account, in cash, and in other assents, it’s not easy to ignore his name and the power he gained.

We’ve all had our humble beginnings, and we seemed so innocent as children. However, for some people, given their childhood and circumstances, and then the political or war-driven environment they face, it goes completely wrong. Such was the case for Rudolf Hoess, a cruel, murderous Nazi commander who had been brainwashed by the system that justified his aid in exterminating millions of Jews. Hoess was the commandant of the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp for the longest time. Learn more about what Rudolf Hoess did and why he has become so infamous.

Claude Monet has been the icon for the impressionist movement. His family life wasn’t perfect, but despite all obstacles, the French genius painter has left us a legacy and a new perspective on realism and technique in their purest forms. In this guide, we’ll go over his youth, his style, his methods, his most famous paintings, and many of the reasons why he made the decisions he made.

The Roman Empire has been in the spotlight for ages. It has been studied, research, and taught in schools across the world. Inventions, words, vocabulary, and philosophy have been derived from those important transition in human history. The Romans were ruthless in some ways yet civilized in others. They were a peculiar people who did things differently than those they called barbarians. Their warfare, their habits, their vision of the future...these all made their empire what it became. What is that makes us so obsessed with this particular time period?

In this audiobook bundle, you get the best historical facts and knowledge you deserve. All in all, you get over plenty of explanations and clarifications of what the Romans and their empire looked about 2,000 years ago. In the first audiobook, various aspects of the Roman Empire, its government, and its place in human history will be discussed. In the second audiobook, a number of emperors come to light. In the third audiobook, Spartacus is covered in the first few sections.

The Yugoslavian genocide is hard to explain. So many factors have contributed to the war—and eventually, the genocide in Bosnia—that many UN soldiers didn’t even know what to do about it. A lack of response, though, made the problem worse. A combination of historical aspects, such as the division of religion, the world wars, the Iron Curtain, and the fall of the Soviet Union, were part of what led to a conflict that lasted for years in this sensitive region in Europe.

The Dutch East India Company, officially the United East India Company (Dutch: Vereenigde Oost Indische Compagnie; VOC), was a megacorporation created in the early 17th century by a government-directed merger of many competing Dutch trade services. You might think that Amazon or Google is big, but the VOC is still thought to be the world's biggest corporation in documented history.

Here we have it: We may be looking at the years 2020-2021 and think a certain virus has been bad for the world population. However, what happened in these two years is nothing, proportionally, to the hundreds of millions of people who got wiped out by rat infestations spreading insanitary bacteria, resulting in the disease and death of huge parts of the European population in the mid-centuries.

This is a book about a people that has often been overlooked. Wallowing in the shadow of the seemingly almighty Romans, and dispersed throughout the ages into other peoples, the Gauls appear as if they had nothing going for them. Quite the opposite is true. The Gauls had a distinct culture, with habits, warfare, and so much more to offer to the intrigued historian and everyday researcher.