Showing results by author "Charles Rivers" in All Categories

Lying in the middle of a plain in modern day Iran is a forgotten ancient city: Persepolis. Built 2,500 years ago, it was known in its day as the richest city under the sun. Persepolis was the capital of Achaemenid Persian Empire, the largest empire the world had ever seen. But after its destruction, it was largely forgotten for nearly 2,000 years, and the lives and achievements of those who built it were almost entirely erased from history.

Rome and Carthage rarely could maintain peace after the end of the fourth century BCE. As the two most powerful civilizations in the western Mediterranean region, they were destined to clash, curse or not. Roman historians placed the foundation of Carthage at approximately 814 BCE, several decades before Rome.

In a sense, Cnut the Great was practically destined for greatness, if only because he came from a distinguished Danish royal family. Cnut's father was Sweyn Forkbeard, and his grandfather was Harald Bluetooth, both prominent and legendary kings of Denmark. Thanks to his background and his abilities, Cnut became the most prominent of the Danish kings of England, but he was also, at times, king of Denmark, Norway, and parts of Sweden.

It is a misconception that indigenous Australians meekly accepted the invasion of their country by the British, for they did not. They certainly resisted, but as far as colonial wars during that era went, the frontier conflicts of Australia did not warrant a great deal of attention. Indigenous Australians were hardly a warlike people, and without central organization or political cohesion beyond scattered family groups, they succumbed to the orchestrated advance of white settlement with passionate but futile resistance.

A lot of ink has been spilled covering the lives of history's most influential figures, but how much of the forest is lost for the trees? In Charles River Editors' Russian Legends series, listeners can get caught up to speed on the lives of Russia's most important men and women in the time it takes to finish a commute, while learning interesting facts long forgotten or never known.

Although the Sumerians continue to get second or even third billing compared to the Babylonians and Assyrians, perhaps because they never built an empire as great as the Assyrians or established a city as enduring and great as Babylon, they were the people who provided the template of civilization that all later Mesopotamians built upon. The Sumerians are credited with being the first people to invent writing, libraries, cities, and schools in, and many would argue that they were the first people to create and do those things anywhere in world.

People’s timeless captivation with those supposedly endowed with supernatural powers - these gifted individuals oftentimes regarded as gods walking among everyone else - is a fascinating phenomenon in itself. Soothsayers and clairvoyants were particularly revered in past centuries, even by royals, nobles, and other influential figures, who placed oracles, mediums, and mystics in their retinues and sought counsel from them on a regular basis.

Though history is usually written by the victors, the lack of a particularly strong writing tradition from the Mongols ensured that history was largely written by those who they vanquished. Because of this, their portrayal in the West has been extraordinarily negative for centuries, at least until recent revisions to the historical record. The Mongols have long been depicted as wild horse-archers galloping out of the dawn to rape, pillage, murder and enslave, but the Mongol army was a highly sophisticated, minutely organized and incredibly adaptive and innovative institution.

Separated by vast gulfs of political, cultural, and philosophical divergence, the three chief Allied nations of World War II - the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain - attempted to formulate a joint policy through a series of three conferences during and immediately after the conflict. The second meeting, named the Yalta Conference after its Black Sea venue, occurred in February 1945 and was both the most well-known and most influential of them all.

Modern society tends to portray men of history to be great saints or great sinners. In fact, biographers are often inclined, depending on their personal predilections, to portray their subjects as one of these two extremes, especially when someone is seen by a certain group as an example of religious ideals or values. Writers are often afraid that if any of the person's mistakes come to light, it will somehow disqualify them from being admired.

The modern history of Africa was, until very recently, written on behalf of the indigenous races by the white man, who had forcefully entered the continent during a particularly hubristic and dynamic phase of European history. In 1884, Prince Otto von Bismarck, the German chancellor, brought the plenipotentiaries of all major powers of Europe together, to deal with Africa's colonization in such a manner as to avoid provocation of war. This event - known as the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 - galvanized a phenomenon that came to be known as the Scramble for Africa.

For centuries, the Comanche thrived in a territory called Comancheria, which comprised parts of eastern New Mexico, southern Colorado, northeastern Arizona, southern Kansas, Oklahoma, and some of northwest Texas. Before conflicts with white settlers began in earnest, it's been estimated that the tribe consisted of more than 40,000 members. While the Comanche are still a federally recognized nation today and live on a reservation in part of Oklahoma, they have remained a well-known tribe due to their 19th century notoriety.

While Moby Dick remains a staple among students, Melville was actually inspired by a true story: the shipwreck of the whaleship Essex in 1820. While it was always dangerous to work on a whaleship, the Essex was the first known American ship to be badly damaged by a massive sperm whale's attack, and though whales would sink other ships in the ensuing decades, the entire ordeal encountered by the crew made headlines when the survivors were rescued.

Walt Whitman, the great American poet, is also in many ways a great American enigma compared to other famous men from the 19th century in US history. On the one hand, he was the product of something of an all-American family, the sort of salt of the earth people he would later describe so vividly in his work. On the other, he was a complete bohemian and profligate, given to vanity in the way he dressed and lived. He started out his career as a school teacher and was later a newspaper man, but he left both those types of work for a job as a government bureaucrat.

When people think of ancient Greece, images of philosophers such as Plato or Socrates often come to mind, as do great warriors like Pericles and Alexander the Great. But hundreds of years before Athens became a city, a Greek culture flourished and spread its tentacles throughout the Western Mediterranean region via trade and warfare. Scholars have termed this preclassical Greek culture the Mycenaean culture.

The Battle of Vienna (1683): The History and Legacy of the Decisive Conflict Between the Ottoman Turkish Empire and Holy Roman Empire chronicles the dramatic siege, and how the Christian forces turned back the Ottomans. You will learn about the battle like never before.

Few participants in World War I are more famous than Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen, better known as the Red Baron. A German known for victories in a war that his country lost, a cavalry officer made famous as mounted combat disappeared, and an aristocratic hero in a century dominated by democracy; Richthofen's celebrity stands in stark contrast to the era.

To most observers, it seemed clear that Japan and Russia were destined to come into conflict in Korea and Manchuria. However, Russia’s vastly larger population, army, and navy seemed to make it inevitable that Japan would lose if the conflict escalated into war. Few could have foreseen that when war came, it would reveal that Russian power was largely an illusion. That would be underscored by one of the war’s most famous events, a bizarre battle that involved a makeshift Russian fleet under the command of an irascible and unstable admiral sailing around the world to meet its fate.

It's possible that Michelangelo is the most famous artist in history, but it's also possible that he's an underrated artist. The vast influence of his career is reflected by the fact that he is not only known for his own art but has also come to embody an entire epoch of Western art. Along with Leonardo da Vinci, there are no other artists who so fully capture the spirit of scientific and artistic discovery that characterized art during the late 15th and early 16th centuries.

Critics call it one of the greatest pieces of fraud in religious history. Believers call it one of the most important artifacts in Christianity. Everyone agrees that it's mysterious, interesting, and controversial. The Shroud of Turin has been a controversial relic from the time it was first publicly displayed in Northern France in the 14th century until the much-awaited carbon 14 tests were performed on the cloth in 1988.