Portal:History

The History Portal

Library of Alexandria

History is the systematic study of the past. As an academic discipline, it analyzes and interprets evidence to construct narratives about what happened and explain why it happened, focusing primarily on the human past. Some theorists categorize history as a social science, while others see it as part of the humanities or consider it a hybrid discipline. Similar debates surround the purpose of history, for example, whether its main aim is theoretical, to uncover the truth, or practical, to learn lessons from the past. In a slightly different sense, the term history refers not to an academic field but to the past itself or to individual texts about the past.

History is a broad discipline encompassing many branches. Some focus on specific time periods, such as ancient history, while others concentrate on particular geographic regions, such as the history of Africa. Thematic categorizations include political history, social history, and economic history. Branches associated with specific research methods are quantitative history, comparative history, and oral history.

Historical research relies on primary and secondary sources to reconstruct past events and validate interpretations. Source criticism is used to evaluate these sources, assessing their authenticity, content, and reliability. Historians integrate the perspectives of several individual sources to develop a coherent narrative. Different schools of thought, such as positivism, the Annales school, Marxism, and postmodernism, have distinct methodological implications.

History emerged as a field of inquiry in the ancient period to replace myth-infused narratives, with influential early traditions originating in Greece, China, and later also in the Islamic world. Historical writing evolved throughout the ages and became increasingly professional, particularly during the 19th century, when a rigorous methodology and various academic institutions were established. History is related to many fields, including historiography, philosophy, education, and politics. (Full article...)

Featured articles –

Featured articles are displayed here, which represent some of the best content on English Wikipedia.

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  Members of the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade carry a wounded man on a stretcher during the Battle of Pusan Perimeter in 1950.

  
  The 1st Provisional Marine Brigade was a marine brigade of the United States Marine Corps (USMC) that existed periodically from 1912 to 1950. It was an ad hoc unit formed for specific operations and not considered a "permanent" USMC unit.
  
  The brigade saw five brief activations for service over a 40-year span. First created in 1912 for duty in Cuba following the Negro Rebellion, the brigade was not activated again until 1941 when it was hastily constructed from the 6th Marine Regiment to garrison Iceland after British forces occupied the country during World War II. The brigade saw service once more in the war during the Battle of Guam in the Pacific War, conducting an amphibious landing on that island's southern sector and subduing resistance from Japanese forces. It was activated once more in a brief organizational shift after the war. (Full article...)
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  Smoke rising from Saigon after facilities and ships in the city were attacked by United States Navy aircraft on 12 January 1945

  Smoke rising from Saigon after facilities and ships in the city were attacked by United States Navy aircraft on 12 January 1945

  
  The South China Sea raid (designated Operation Gratitude) was an operation conducted by the United States Third Fleet between 10 and 20 January 1945 during the Pacific War of World War II. The raid was undertaken to support the liberation of Luzon in the Philippines, and targeted Japanese warships, supply convoys and aircraft in the region.
  
  After attacking airfields and shipping at Formosa and Luzon, the Third Fleet entered the South China Sea during the night of 9–10 January. Aircraft flying from its aircraft carriers attacked Japanese shipping off French Indochina on 12 January, sinking 44 vessels. The fleet then sailed north and attacked Formosa again on 15 January. Further raids were conducted against Hong Kong, Canton and Hainan the next day. The Third Fleet departed the South China Sea on 20 January and, after making further attacks on Formosa and the Ryukyu Islands, returned to its base on 25 January. (Full article...)
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  View of Badajoz, across the Guadiana river from the foothills of the San Cristóbal heights, by Eugène-Ferdinand Buttura

  
  The Battle of the Gebora took place during the Peninsular War between Spanish and French armies on 19 February 1811, northwest of Badajoz, Spain. An outnumbered French force routed and nearly destroyed the Spanish Army of Extremadura.
  
  In a bid to help extricate Marshal André Masséna's army from its position in Portugal—mired in front of Lisbon's defensive Lines of Torres Vedras—Marshal Jean de Dieu Soult led part of the French Armée du Midi (Army of the South) from Andalusia into the neighbouring Spanish region of Extremadura and laid siege to the important fortress town of Badajoz. Viscount Wellington and the Spanish captain-general Pedro Caro y Sureda, 3rd marqués de La Romana, sent a large Spanish army to raise the siege. La Romana, however, died before the army could depart, and command fell to General Gabriel de Mendizábal Iraeta. Supported by a small force of Portuguese cavalry, the Spaniards reached the town and camped on the nearby heights of San Cristóbal in early February 1811. (Full article...)
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  Miniature from the Madrid Skylitzes version of the chronicle of John Skylitzes depicting Thomas, on horseback and dressed as a Byzantine emperor, negotiating with the Arabs. The rebellion of Thomas is one of the most richly illustrated episodes in the chronicle.

  
  Thomas the Slav (Greek: Θωμᾶς, romanized: Thōmas, c. 760 – October 823) was a 9th-century Byzantine military commander, most notable for leading a wide-scale revolt in 821–23 against Emperor Michael II the Amorian (r. 820–829).
  
  An army officer of Slavic origin from the Pontus region (now north-eastern Turkey), Thomas rose to prominence, along with the future emperors Michael II and Leo V the Armenian (r. 813–820), under the protection of general Bardanes Tourkos. After Bardanes' failed rebellion in 803, Thomas fell into obscurity until Leo V's rise to the throne, when Thomas was raised to a senior military command in central Asia Minor. After the murder of Leo and usurpation of the throne by Michael the Amorian, Thomas revolted, claiming the throne for himself. Thomas quickly secured support from most of the themes (provinces) and troops in Asia Minor, defeated Michael's initial counter-attack and concluded an alliance with the Abbasid Caliphate. After winning over the maritime themes and their ships as well, he crossed with his army to Europe and laid siege to Constantinople. The imperial capital withstood Thomas's attacks by land and sea, while Michael II called for help from the Bulgarian Khan Omurtag. Omurtag attacked Thomas's army, but although repelled, the Bulgarians inflicted heavy casualties on Thomas's men, who broke and fled when Michael took to the field a few months later. Thomas and his supporters sought refuge in Arcadiopolis, where he was soon blockaded by Michael's troops. In the end, Thomas's supporters surrendered him in exchange for a pardon, and he was executed. (Full article...)
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  U.S. Marines cross the Matanikau River on a raft ferry in November 1942

  
  The Matanikau Offensive, from 1–4 November 1942, sometimes referred to as the Fourth Battle of the Matanikau, was an engagement between United States (U.S.) Marine and Army and Imperial Japanese Army forces around the Matanikau River and Point Cruz area on Guadalcanal during the Guadalcanal campaign of World War II. The action was one of the last of a series of engagements between U.S. and Japanese forces near the Matanikau River during the campaign.
  
  In the engagement, seven battalions of U.S. Marine and Army troops under the overall command of Alexander Vandegrift and tactical command of Merritt A. Edson, following up on the U.S. victory in the Battle for Henderson Field, crossed the Matanikau River and attacked Japanese Army units between the river and Point Cruz, on the northern Guadalcanal coast. The area was defended by the Japanese Army's 4th Infantry Regiment under Nomasu Nakaguma along with various other support troops, under the overall command of Harukichi Hyakutake. After inflicting heavy casualties on the Japanese defenders, U.S. forces halted the offensive and temporarily withdrew because of a perceived threat from Japanese forces elsewhere in the Guadalcanal area. (Full article...)
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  Retvizan (Russian: Ретвизан) was a pre-dreadnought battleship built before the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905 for the Imperial Russian Navy. She was built by the American William Cramp & Sons because Russian shipyards were already at full capacity. Named after a Swedish ship of the line that was captured during the battle of Vyborg Bay in 1790 (Swedish: Rättvisan, meaning both fairness and justice), Retvizan was briefly assigned to the Baltic Fleet, but was transferred to the Far East in 1902.
  
  The ship was torpedoed during the Japanese surprise attack on Port Arthur during the night of 8/9 February 1904 and grounded in the harbour entrance when she attempted to take refuge inside, as her draft had significantly deepened from the amount of water she had taken aboard after the torpedo hit. She was refloated and repaired in time to join the rest of the 1st Pacific Squadron when they attempted to reach Vladivostok through the Japanese blockade on 10 August. The Japanese battle fleet engaged them again in the Battle of the Yellow Sea, forcing most of the Russian ships to return to Port Arthur after their squadron commander was killed and his flagship damaged. Retvizan was sunk by Japanese howitzers in December after the Japanese gained control of the heights around the harbour. (Full article...)
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  Group Captain Bill Hely on Bougainville, January 1945

  
  Air Vice Marshal William Lloyd Hely, CB, CBE, AFC (24 August 1909 – 20 May 1970) was a senior commander in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). He graduated from the Royal Military College, Duntroon, in 1930 before transferring to the RAAF as a cadet pilot. Hely came to public attention in 1936–37, first when he crashed on a survey flight in the Northern Territory, and later when he undertook two successful missions to locate missing aircraft in the same vicinity. His rescue efforts earned him the Air Force Cross. After occupying staff positions during the early years of World War II, Hely was appointed Officer Commanding No. 72 Wing in Dutch New Guinea in May 1944. Later that year he formed No. 84 (Army Cooperation) Wing, commanding it during the Bougainville campaign until the end of the Pacific War.
  
  Hely spent the immediate post-war period on the staff of RAAF Headquarters, Melbourne. From 1951 to 1953 he served as Air Officer Commanding (AOC) Western Area Command in Perth, after which he was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire. He was Deputy Chief of the Air Staff from 1953 to 1956, AOC Training Command from 1956 to 1957, and Head of the Australian Joint Services Staff in Washington, D.C. from 1957 to 1960. He then served as Air Member for Personnel (AMP) for six years, his tenure coinciding with a significant increase in manpower to meet commitments in South East Asia and the demands of a major re-equipment program. Having been promoted acting air vice marshal in 1953 (substantive in 1956), he was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath in 1964 for his service as AMP. He retired from the Air Force in 1966 and made his home in Canberra, where he died in 1970 at the age of sixty. (Full article...)
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  A £5 note (White fiver) forged by Sachsenhausen concentration camp prisoners

  
  Operation Bernhard was an exercise by Nazi Germany to forge British bank notes. The initial plan was to drop the notes over Britain to bring about a collapse of the British economy during the Second World War. The first phase was run from early 1940 by the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) under the title Unternehmen Andreas (Operation Andreas). The unit successfully duplicated the rag paper used by the British, produced near-identical engraving blocks and deduced the algorithm used to create the alpha-numeric serial code on each note. The unit closed in early 1942 after its head, Alfred Naujocks, fell out of favour with his superior officer, Reinhard Heydrich.
  
  The operation was revived later in the year; the aim was changed to forging money to finance German intelligence operations. Instead of a specialist unit within the SD, prisoners from Nazi concentration camps were selected and sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp to work under SS Major Bernhard Krüger. The unit produced British notes until mid-1945; estimates vary of the number and value of notes printed, from £132.6 million up to £300 million. By the time the unit ceased production, they had perfected the artwork for US dollars, although the paper and serial numbers were still being analysed. The counterfeit money was laundered in exchange for money and other assets. Counterfeit notes from the operation were used to pay the Turkish agent Elyesa Bazna—code named Cicero—for his work in obtaining British secrets from the British ambassador in Ankara, and £100,000 from Operation Bernhard was used to obtain information that helped to free the Italian leader Benito Mussolini in the Gran Sasso raid in September 1943. (Full article...)
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  Literary Hall, viewed from the south, facing West Main Street in Romney

  
  Literary Hall is a mid-19th-century brick library, building and museum located in Romney, a city in the U.S. state of West Virginia. It is located at the intersection of North High Street (West Virginia Route 28) and West Main Street (U.S. Route 50). Literary Hall was constructed between 1869 and 1870 by the Romney Literary Society.
  
  Founded in 1819, the Romney Literary Society was the first literary organization of its kind in the present-day state of West Virginia, and one of the first in the United States. In 1846, the society constructed a building which housed the Romney Classical Institute and its library. The Romney Literary Society and the Romney Classical Institute both flourished and continued to grow in importance and influence until the onset of the American Civil War in 1861. (Full article...)
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  Spalding War Memorial is a First World War memorial in the gardens of Ayscoughfee Hall (pronounced /ˈæskəˌfiː/) in Spalding, Lincolnshire, in eastern England. It was designed by the architect Sir Edwin Lutyens. The proposal for a memorial to Spalding's war dead originated in January 1918 with Barbara McLaren, whose husband and the town's Member of Parliament, Francis McLaren, was killed in a flying accident during the war. She engaged Lutyens via a family connection and the architect produced a plan for a grand memorial cloister surrounding a circular pond, in the middle of which would be a cross. The memorial was to be built in the formal gardens of Ayscoughfee Hall, which was owned by the local district council. When McLaren approached the council with her proposal, it generated considerable debate within the community and several alternative schemes were suggested. After a public meeting and a vote in 1919, a reduced-scale version of McLaren's proposal emerged as the preferred option, in conjunction with a clock on the town's corn exchange building.
  
  The total cost of the memorial was £3,500, of which McLaren and her father-in-law contributed £1,000 each; her brother-in-law donated a pair of painted stone flags and the remainder was raised from voluntary subscription, which took until 1922. The memorial consists of a brick pavilion at the south end of the garden and a Stone of Remembrance, both at the head of a long reflecting pool, which incorporates the remains of an 18th-century canal. It was unveiled at a ceremony on 9 June 1922. Lutyens went on to use the style of the pavilion for shelter buildings in several war cemeteries on the Western Front, though none of his other war memorials follow the design and the memorial became relatively obscure. Spalding War Memorial is today a Grade I listed building, having been upgraded when Lutyens's war memorials were declared a "national collection" and all were granted listed building status or had their listing renewed. (Full article...)
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  Commander Alan McNicoll c. mid-1940s

  
  Vice Admiral Sir Alan Wedel Ramsay McNicoll, KBE, CB, GM (3 April 1908 – 11 October 1987) was a senior officer in the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) and a diplomat. Born in Melbourne, he entered the Royal Australian Naval College at the age of thirteen and graduated in 1926. Following training and staff appointments in Australia and the United Kingdom, he was attached to the Royal Navy at the outbreak of the Second World War. As torpedo officer of the 1st Submarine Flotilla in the Mediterranean theatre, McNicoll was decorated with the George Medal in 1941 for disarming enemy ordnance. He served aboard HMS King George V from 1942, sailing in support of several Arctic convoys and taking part in the Allied invasion of Sicily. McNicoll was posted for staff duties with the Admiralty from September 1943 and was involved in the planning of the Normandy landings. He returned to Australia in October 1944.
  
  McNicoll was made executive officer of HMAS Hobart in September 1945. Advanced to captain in 1949, he successively commanded HMAS Shoalhaven and HMAS Warramunga before being transferred to the Navy Office in July 1950. In 1952, McNicoll chaired the planning committee for the British nuclear tests on the Montebello Islands, and was appointed commanding officer of HMAS Australia. He commanded the ship for two years before it was sold off for scrap, at which point he returned to London to attend the Imperial Defence College in 1955. He occupied staff positions in London and Canberra before being posted to the Naval Board as Chief of Personnel in 1960. This was followed by a term as Flag Officer Commanding HM Australian Fleet. (Full article...)
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  A postcard of Poltava

  
  The Petropavlovsk class, sometimes referred to as the Poltava class, was a group of three pre-dreadnought battleships built for the Imperial Russian Navy during the 1890s. They were transferred to the Pacific Squadron shortly after their completion in 1899–1900 and were based at Port Arthur before the start of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905. All three ships participated in the Battle of Port Arthur on the second day of the war. Petropavlovsk sank two months after the war began after striking one or more mines laid by the Japanese. Her two sister ships, Sevastopol and Poltava, took part in the Battle of the Yellow Sea in August 1904 and were sunk or scuttled during the final stages of the siege of Port Arthur in early 1905.
  
  Poltava was salvaged after the Japanese captured Port Arthur and incorporated into the Imperial Japanese Navy. The ship, renamed Tango in Japanese service, participated in the Battle of Tsingtao in late 1914, during World War I. She was sold back to the Russians in 1916 and renamed Chesma as her original name was in use by another battleship. The ship became the flagship of the Russian Arctic Flotilla in 1917, and her crew supported the Bolsheviks later that year. Chesma was seized by the British in early 1918 when they intervened in the Russian Civil War, abandoned by them when they withdrew and scrapped by the Soviets in 1924. (Full article...)
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  SMS Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse, c. 1903

  
  SMS Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse ("HMS Emperor William the Great") was a German pre-dreadnought battleship of the Kaiser Friedrich III class, built around the turn of the 20th century. The ship was one of the first battleships built by the German Imperial Navy (Kaiserliche Marine) as part of a program of naval expansion under Kaiser Wilhelm II. Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse was built in Kiel at the Germaniawerft shipyard. She was laid down in January 1898, launched in June 1899, and completed in May 1901. The ship was armed with a main battery of four 24-centimeter (9.4 in) guns in two twin turrets.
  Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse served in the main fleet—the Heimatflotte (Home Fleet) and later the Hochseeflotte (High Seas Fleet)—for the first seven years of her career. She participated in several of the fleet's training cruises and maneuvers, primarily in the North and Baltic Seas. Her peacetime career was relatively uneventful and she suffered no accidents. She was decommissioned for a major reconstruction in 1908–10, after which she was assigned to the Reserve Division with her four sister ships, all of which were essentially obsolete by that time. (Full article...)
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  Exterior of Coalhouse Fort

  
  Coalhouse Fort is an artillery fort in the eastern English county of Essex. It was built in the 1860s to guard the lower Thames from seaborne attack. It stands at Coalhouse Point on the north bank of the river, at a location near East Tilbury which was vulnerable to raiders and invaders. It was the last in a series of fortifications dating back to the 15th century and was the direct successor to a smaller mid-19th century fort built on the same site. Constructed during a period of tension with France, its location on marshy ground caused problems from the start and led to a lengthy construction process. The fort was equipped with a variety of large-calibre artillery guns and the most modern defensive facilities of the time, including shell-proof casemates protected by granite facing and cast-iron shields. Its lengthy construction and the rapid pace of artillery development at the time meant that it was practically obsolete for its original purpose within a few years of its completion.
  
  The fort's armament was revised several times during its 70 years of military use, as its role evolved in the river's defensive system. It was initially a front-line fortification, supported by Shornemead Fort and Cliffe Fort located to the south and east respectively on the Kent shore. Over time, as batteries and forts further downriver became the front line of the Thames defences, Coalhouse Fort was stripped of its main weapons and it was altered to support smaller quick-firing guns intended to be used against fast-moving surface and aerial targets. Its last military use was as a training facility for a few years after the Second World War. (Full article...)
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  The original King's Royal Rifle Corps Rhodesian Platoon, Sheerness, England, November 1914. Capt. J. B. Brady (third from right, second row) and the Marquess of Winchester (fourth) sponsored the unit. Most pictured were later killed or seriously wounded.

  
  In August 1914, the United Kingdom declared war on the German Empire at the start of World War I. The settler society in Southern Rhodesia, which were administered by the British South Africa Company, received the news with great patriotic enthusiasm. The Company administrator, Sir William Milton, wired the British government, saying, "All Rhodesia... ready to do its duty". Although it supported the British Empire, the company was concerned about the possible financial implications for its chartered territory to make direct commitments to the war effort, particularly at first. As a result, most of the colony's contribution to the war was made by Southern Rhodesians individually—not only those who volunteered to fight abroad, but also those who remained at home and raised funds to donate food, equipment and other supplies.
  
  Starting immediately after the outbreak of war, parties of white Southern Rhodesians paid their own way to England to join the British Army. Most Southern Rhodesians who served in the war enlisted in this way and fought on the Western Front, taking part in many of the major battles. They fought alongside an assortment of British, South African and other colonial units, most commonly the King's Royal Rifle Corps, which recruited hundreds of men from the colony, and created homogeneous Rhodesian platoons. Troopers from Southern Rhodesia became renowned on the Western Front for their marksmanship, a result of their frontier lifestyle. Some of the colony's men served in the Royal Flying Corps, one of the two predecessors of the Royal Air Force. The Rhodesia Regiment, the Rhodesia Native Regiment and the British South Africa Police served in the African theatre of the conflict, contributing to the South-West African and East African campaigns. (Full article...)

Featured picture

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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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  Masada

  Photograph: Andrew Shiva

  An aerial view of Masada, an ancient fortification in the Southern District of Israel. Found atop an isolated rock plateau, it overlooks the Dead Sea. The first fortifications on the mountain were built by Alexander Jannaeus, and significantly strengthened by the Roman client king Herod between 37 and 31 BCE. During the First Jewish–Roman War of 66–73 CE, the fortress was besieged, falling only after the 960 Sicarii defending it committed mass suicide.
  
  Masada is among the more popular tourist attractions in Israel, and in 2001 it was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
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  Charge of the Light Brigade

  Artist: William Simpson; Restoration: Adam Cuerden

  On October 25, 1854, during the Battle of Balaclava in the Crimean War, British cavalry units charged heavily fortified Russian opposition, an action known as the Charge of the Light Brigade. By mischance, they attacked the wrong target, as the orders were unclear, and as a result suffered great casualties. Alfred, Lord Tennyson's famous poem made the charge a symbol of warfare at both its most courageous and its most tragic.
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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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  Machu Picchu

  Photo: Martin St-Amant

  Machu Picchu, a 15th-century Peruvian Inca site located 2,430 metres (7,970 ft) above sea level, as viewed from Huayna Picchu. Established c. 1450, the settlement was abandoned at the time of the Spanish Conquest the following century. Although it remained known locally, it was not brought to international attention until after Hiram Bingham visited the site in 1911. Machu Picchu is now a popular tourist destination and UNESCO World Heritage Site, and restoration efforts are ongoing.
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  Arecibo message

  Graphic: Arne Nordmann

  A color visual interpretation of the digital signal in the Arecibo message, sent in 1974 from the Arecibo Observatory. Broadcast into space via frequency modulated radio waves at a ceremony to mark the remodeling of the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico, the message consisted of 1,679 binary digits, approximately 210 bytes, transmitted at a frequency of 2,380 MHz. It was aimed at the Great Globular Cluster in Hercules, some 25,000 light-years away, and contains information related to mathematics, chemistry, and astronomy.
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  Check used for the Alaska Purchase

  Check: William H. Seward; scan: Our Documents initiative

  The check used for the Alaska Purchase, issued on August 1, 1868, and signed by US Secretary of State William H. Seward. For a total of $7.2 million, the United States government purchased Russian America from the Russian Empire (represented here by Russian Minister to the United States Eduard de Stoeckl). The lands involved became the modern state of Alaska in 1959.
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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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  Siege of Sevastopol (1854–1855)

  Artist: William Simpson; Restoration: Lise Broer

  A lithograph of a watercolour painting depicting soldiers transporting winter clothing, lumber for huts, and other supplies through a snow-covered landscape, with partially buried dead horses along the roadside, to the British camps, during the Siege of Sevastopol of the Crimean War. In the winter, a storm ruined the camps and supply lines of the Allied forces (France, Britain and the Ottoman Empire). Men and horses became sick and starved in the poor conditions.
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  Nefertiti Bust

  Photo: Philip Pikart

  The Nefertiti Bust is a 3300-year-old painted limestone bust of Nefertiti, the Great Royal Wife of the Pharaoh Akhenaten and one of the most copied works of Ancient Egypt. It is believed to have been crafted in 1345 BC by the sculptor Thutmose, in whose workshop it was discovered in 1912 by a German archaeological team led by Ludwig Borchardt. It is part of the Egyptian Museum of Berlin collection, currently on display in the Neues Museum and has been the subject of an intense argument between Egypt and Germany over the Egyptian demands for its repatriation.
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  Selimiye Barracks

  Lithography: Day & Son; Restoration: Jake Wartenberg

  An 1856 lithograph of the Selimiye Barracks, located in Istanbul, Turkey, being used as a hospital during the Crimean War. Florence Nightingale's experiences here during this time helped her develop the foundations of modern nursing. As such, the barracks now contain a museum dedicated to her and her staff.
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  1906 San Francisco earthquake

  Photo credit: H. D. Chadwick

  The Mission District of San Francisco, California, burning in the aftermath of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. As damaging as the earthquake and its aftershocks were, the fires that burned out of control afterward were much more destructive.
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  Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler

  Photo credit: Eva Braun

  The two European Axis leaders during World War II, Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, riding in an automobile, circa June 1940. This photo was found in Eva Braun's personal photo albums and is credited to her, though whether she was the true photographer is unknown.
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  Second Battle of Gaza

  Photo: American Colony, Jerusalem
  Restoration: Lise Broer/Fir0002

  Ottoman machine gun corps, before the Second Battle of Gaza, which took place on 19 April 1917. The First Battle of Gaza, just three weeks prior, had ended in defeat for the British Empire, and this second attempt to break through Turkish defenses was also unsuccessful. Six months later, on the third attempt, the Allied forces were finally able to break the Gaza–Beersheba line.
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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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  First permanent photograph

  Photo credit: Nicéphore Niépce

  The first successful permanent photograph, created in 1826, is titled "View from the Window at Le Gras". It required an eight-hour exposure in bright sunshine and was printed on a polished pewter plate covered with a petroleum derivative called bitumen of Judea. Due to the long exposure, the buildings are illuminated by the sun from both right and left.
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  Dust Bowl

  Photo credit: Sloan, USDA

  Buried machinery in a barn lot, Dallas, South Dakota, United States, due to Dust Bowl conditions, May 1936. Dust storms from 1930–1939 caused major ecological and agricultural damage to American and Canadian prairie lands. This ecological disaster was a result of drought conditions coupled with decades of extensive farming using techniques that promoted erosion.
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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.

Did you know (auto generated)

• ... that the first Russian feature film, Stenka Razin, depicts the historical Cossack leader throwing a princess into the Volga?
• ... that Cliff Christl, who became the Green Bay Packers team historian in 2014, estimated that he had recorded more than 250 oral histories with past players and coaches since the 1990s?
• ... that in a copyright infringement case over a coffee-table history of the Grateful Dead, the Second Circuit held that a reuser can still claim fair use despite negotiating with the rights holder?
• ... that the Netflix-released film A House in Jerusalem is inspired by the history of the director's Palestinian family, who were expelled in 1948 from what had become Israel during the Nakba?
• ... that Maggio di Accettura, a festival in Italy dedicated to the Christian martyr Saint Julian, might have pagan origins or be linked to Langobard history?
• ... that the Creamoata Mill, which once produced a now-nonexistent breakfast food, was listed as Gore's only "place of outstanding historical and cultural influence"?

Featured biography –

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

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Official portrait, 1954

Carlos Castillo Armas (locally ['kaɾlos kas'tiʝo 'aɾmas]; 4 November 1914 – 26 July 1957) was a Guatemalan military officer and politician who was the 28th president of Guatemala, serving from 1954 to 1957 after taking power in a coup d'état. A member of the right-wing National Liberation Movement (MLN) party, his authoritarian government was closely allied with the United States.

Born to a planter, out of wedlock, Castillo Armas was educated at Guatemala's military academy. A protégé of Colonel Francisco Javier Arana, he joined Arana's forces during the 1944 uprising against President Federico Ponce Vaides. This began the Guatemalan Revolution and the introduction of representative democracy to the country. Castillo Armas joined the General Staff and became director of the military academy. Arana and Castillo Armas opposed the newly elected government of Juan José Arévalo; after Arana's failed 1949 coup, Castillo Armas went into exile in Honduras. Seeking support for another revolt, he came to the attention of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). In 1950 he launched a failed assault on Guatemala City, before escaping back to Honduras. Influenced by lobbying by the United Fruit Company and Cold War fears of communism, in 1952 the US government of President Harry Truman authorized Operation PBFortune, a plot to overthrow Arévalo's successor, President Jacobo Árbenz. Castillo Armas was to lead the coup, but the plan was abandoned before being revived in a new form by US President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1953. (Full article...)

On this day

January 31: Independence Day in Nauru (1968)

Rōnin portraits by Utagawa Yoshitora

• 1703 – Forty-seven rōnin (depicted) attacked the home of Kira Yoshinaka and killed him in an act of revenge for Asano Naganori, their dead feudal lord.
• 1850 – Ute Wars: On behalf of Utah territorial governor Brigham Young, militia leader Daniel H. Wells drafted an order for the Utah Territorial Militia to exterminate Timpanogos men deemed hostile, leading to the Provo River Massacre.
• 1900 – Datu Muhammad Salleh, leader of a series of major disturbances in North Borneo, was shot dead in Tambunan, but his followers did not give up for five more years.
• 2000 – Alaska Airlines Flight 261, experiencing problems with its horizontal stabilizer system, crashed in the Pacific Ocean off Anacapa Island, California, killing all 88 people on board.
• 2010 – James Cameron's Avatar became the first film to earn over US$2 billion worldwide.

• James G. Blaine (b. 1830)
• Preity Zinta (b. 1975)
• Moira Shearer (d. 2006)
• Lizabeth Scott (d. 2015)

More anniversaries:

• January 30
• January 31
• February 1

Selected quote

Truth alone will endure, all the rest will be swept away before the tide of time. I must continue to bear testimony to truth even if I am forsaken by all. Mine may today be a voice in the wilderness, but it will be heard when all other voices are silenced, if it is the voice of Truth.

— Gandhi, Indian political and spiritual leader

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• ... that finds unearthed at the Israelite Tower in Jerusalem's Jewish Quarter attest to the Babylonian sack of the city in 586 BCE?

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