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Troops on the Eastern Front during a gas attack. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk ended the fighting there after years of brutal, mobile combat. (Reddit) On this day in 1918, Russia and the Central Powers signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, a territorial agreement that closed WWI's Eastern Front and brought an end to hostilities there. Signed…
JFK greeting young members of the Peace Corps in 1961. (Peace Corps) On this day in 1961, American president John F. Kennedy ordered the foundation of the Peace Corps, a volunteer organization dedicated to providing various sorts of aid to developing (or Third World) nations. Concerned by stereotypes that Americans were a violent and greedy…
This article is a revised version of an essay submitted for academic credit at the University of Toronto. Belgian displaced-persons (or "DPs") after their escape from urban combat in 1945. (Time) Throughout history, military forces have usually avoided fighting in built-up areas for a variety of reasons. Street battles are difficult to control, harder to…
Continue reading ➞ European Urban Centres from West to East, 1940-44
Muhammad Ali (soon Pasha) watches from the Citadel as the remaining Mamluks are massacred by his Albanian mercenaries. (Wikimedia Commons) On this day in 1811, the Massacre of the Citadel took place in Cairo, Egypt. A brutal civil war was underway in the country following Napoleon's failed 1798 invasion, and the power vacuum created by…
An idealized view of one of Columbus' larger expeditions to the Americas, by Russian painter Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky. (Wikimedia Commons) On this day in 1504, Italian explorer Christopher Columbus and his party were stranded on Jamaica. Having destroyed his remaining ships through bad navigation and even worse seamanship six months prior, Columbus relied on the…
A Han-era bathing scene in mural form. (Wikimedia Commons) On this day in 202 BCE, former police officer Liu Bang was crowned emperor of China. Henceforth he was known as Emperor Gaozu, and his accession kicked off the Han Dynasty, which remained in place for over 400 years. The new emperor had served within the…
Women and children gather to protest the arrest of 1,800 Jewish men in "Rosenstraße", a 2003 German film recounting the 1943 protests. (Margarethe von Trotta) On this day in 1943, officials from the Gestapo secret police arrested over 1,800 Jewish men in Berlin. The men had been allowed to remain in Berlin because of their…
Galileo hard at work, presumably after his house arrest. (Wikimedia Commons) On this day in 1616, Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei was forbidden from defending heliocentrism, or the theory that the earth rotates around the sun. After designing a relatively sophisticated telescope in 1613, Galileo had observed that the earth was not, in fact, the centre…
Soviet Secretary Nikita Khrushchev "thaws out" in a 1962 cartoon by John Frith. (John Frith/The Herald) On this day in 1956, a speech entitled On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences - AKA the Secret Speech - was delivered to Soviet leadership by Secretary Nikita Khrushchev. The speech, which was not made available to…
A German U-Boat (submarine) and an American passenger ship. After February of 1917, U-Boats targeted vessels like this one, leading to America's entry into WWI. (Wikimedia Commons) On this day in 1917, a note was handed to Walter Hines, American Ambassador to the UK. In it was the Zimmerman Telegram, a top-secret communication between German…
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