Friedrich Engels
Engels as a young man / theguardian.com Marx and Engels go together like Marks and Spencer; Karl and Groucho are however better known than Engels, though without him we would probably have had [...]
Charles James Fox
/ telegraph.com was born in 1749, but his upward mobility was such that he was in Parliament at the age of nineteen. This may have been been because in debating societies at school [...]
Erich von Falkenhayn
/ es.wikipedia.org This Junker was born in 1861. As a child at severe schools he was perceived as self-reliant, honest and intelligent. He must have used these talents well because by 1913 he [...]
Who were ‘the Free French?’
/ en-wikipedia.org Germany attacked France in May, 1940. 136 German divisions faced 125 British, French and Belgian ones. The Germans had over two thousand tanks, but even their commander admitted half were obsolete. [...]
Herbert Asquith (Ist Earl of Oxford and Asquith)
/ en.wikipedia.org Only Dickens, or perhaps Anthony Trollope, could have invented the name Asquith for one of their novels. It is a respectable surname, but certainly rather odd. Our subject was born in [...]
What was the ‘Wild West’?
William Bonney / the bluegrassspecial-com It was a term used, mainly by Americans, to describe frontier society in the second half of the nineteenth century. Before the eighteen fifties the huge area between [...]
Nicolas I of Russia
/ en.wikipedia.org This younger brother of Alexander I was born in 1796, and became Tsar in 1825 at nearly thirty years old. Any chance that there might have been to make him a [...]
The English Pope
Pope Adrian at a crowning ceremony / telegraph.co.uk Strictly speaking, our title should be ‘The only English Pope’, since that is the case. There were several other leaders of the Roman Catholic church [...]
War at sea (part III)
The sinking of HMS Sheffield / theatlantic.com The sail and massive oars had been the chief propelling medium for centuries when during the middle part of the nineteenth century, steam power first used [...]
War at sea: (part II)
Cape St. Vincent by Donald Macleod / sellsell.blogspot.com Spain's royal champion don Juan of Austria was commander of the Christian fleet at the Battle of Lepanto (1571). This was a battle of galleys, [...]
War at sea:part I
Carthage v. Rome /newinternationaloutlook.com Historians are convinced that navies, squadrons of fighting ships, were first developed by the ancient Greeks and they are probably right. In the seventh century B.C. The Greeks had [...]
Sir Robert Peel, ‘Peelites’ and ‘Peelers’
/ en.wikipedia.org He was a Lancashireman, son of a rich industrialist. Born in the eighteenth century (1778) he got into Parliament as a Tory at twenty-one years of age. By 1812 he was [...]
The Campaign in Normandy, June & August, 1944
British and Commonwealth soldiers in Caen, 1944 /iwm.org.uk This was the real turning point in the Second World War, although it came much later than it should have done, due mainly to inappropriate [...]
Oregon: boundary dispute & the Trail
Women drivers guarding their wagon on the Oregon Trail, a contemporary photograph / my americanodyssey.com Between 1843 and 1846 the vast Oregon territory in the United States of America became a subject for [...]
Grabbing Africa
Cecil Rhodes / it.wikipedia.org Though some may not believe it, in 1879 little of the vast continent of Africa was in European hands. Colonial administration ruled in the Gold Coast and Senegal in [...]
The Reparations in Germany
J.M. Keynes said the reparations could not be paid / theguardian.com Even if the end of the Great War was, or at least to many people seemed to be, unsatisfactory, the victors still [...]
The Occupation of the Rhur
The 10 million mark note / pjmedia.com The valley of the Rhur, which would become famous enough for a major film to be made of the bombing of its dams during the Second [...]
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