Portal:History

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The History Portal

Historia by Nikolaos Gyzis

History is the systematic study of the past, focusing primarily on the human past. As an academic discipline, it analyzes and interprets evidence to construct narratives about what happened and explain why it happened. 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 more general sense, the term history refers not to an academic field but to the past itself, times in the past, or to individual texts about the past.

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 approaches.

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, military history, social history, and economic history. Branches associated with specific research methods and sources include quantitative history, comparative history, and oral history.

History emerged as a field of inquiry in antiquity to replace myth-infused narratives, with influential early traditions originating in Greece, China, and later 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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  Tintin in the Congo (French: Tintin au Congo; French pronunciation: [tɛ̃tɛ̃ o kɔ̃go]) is the second volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian comic strip artist Hergé. Commissioned by the conservative Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle for its children's supplement Le Petit Vingtième, it was serialised weekly from May 1930 to June 1931 before being published in a collected volume by Éditions de Petit Vingtième in 1931. The story tells of young Belgian reporter Tintin and his dog Snowy, who are sent to the Belgian Congo to report on events in the country. Amid various encounters with the native Congolese people and wild animals, Tintin unearths a criminal diamond smuggling operation run by the American gangster Al Capone.
  
  Following on from Tintin in the Land of the Soviets and bolstered by publicity stunts, Tintin in the Congo was a commercial success within Belgium and was also serialised in France. Hergé continued The Adventures of Tintin with Tintin in America in 1932, and the series subsequently became a defining part of the Franco-Belgian comics tradition. In 1946, Hergé re-drew and coloured Tintin in the Congo in his distinctive ligne-claire style for republication by Casterman, with further alterations made at the request of his Scandinavian publisher for a 1975 edition. (Full article...)
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  View from south-west

  
  Abberton Reservoir is a pumped storage freshwater reservoir in eastern England near the Essex coast, with an area of 700 hectares (1,700 acres). Most of its water is pumped from the River Stour. It is the largest body of freshwater in Essex.
  
  Constructed between 1935 and 1939, Abberton Reservoir is owned and managed by Essex and Suffolk Water, part of Northumbrian Water Group, and lies 6 km (3.7 mi) south-west of Colchester near the village of Layer de la Haye. In World War II, the reservoir was mined to deter invading seaplanes, and it was used by the RAF's No. 617 Squadron ("The Dam Busters") for practice runs for the bombing of the German dams in the Ruhr. A project to increase the capacity of Abberton Reservoir to 41,000 megalitres (9.0×10⁹ imp gal) by raising its bank height was completed in 2013, along with a new link to transfer water from Norfolk's River Ouse to the Stour. (Full article...)
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  The aftermath of the bombing

  
  The Brinks Hotel in Saigon, also known as the Brink Bachelor Officers Quarters (BOQ), was bombed by the Vietcong on the evening of 24 December 1964, during the Vietnam War. Two Vietcong operatives detonated a car bomb underneath the hotel, which housed United States Army officers. The explosion killed two Americans, an officer and an NCO, and injured approximately 60, including military personnel and Vietnamese civilians.
  
  The Vietcong commanders had planned the venture with two objectives in mind. Firstly, by attacking an American installation in the center of the heavily guarded capital, the Vietcong intended to demonstrate their ability to strike in South Vietnam should the United States decide to launch air raids against North Vietnam. Secondly, the bombing would demonstrate to the South Vietnamese that the Americans were vulnerable and could not be relied upon for protection. (Full article...)
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  Joshua Reynolds' Puck (1789), painted for Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery, is modelled after Parmigianino's Madonna with St. Zachary, the Magdalen, and St. John

  
  
  The Boydell Shakespeare Gallery in London, England, was the first stage of a three-part project initiated in November 1786 by engraver and publisher John Boydell in an effort to foster a school of British history painting. In addition to the establishment of the gallery, Boydell planned to produce an illustrated edition of William Shakespeare's plays and a folio of prints based upon a series of paintings by different contemporary painters. During the 1790s the London gallery that showed the original paintings emerged as the project's most popular element.
  
  The works of William Shakespeare enjoyed a renewed popularity in 18th-century Britain. Several new editions of his works were published, his plays were revived in the theatre and numerous works of art were created illustrating the plays and specific productions of them. Capitalising on this interest, Boydell decided to publish a grand illustrated edition of Shakespeare's plays that would showcase the talents of British painters and engravers. He chose the noted scholar and Shakespeare editor George Steevens to oversee the edition, which was released between 1791 and 1803. (Full article...)
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  Edmund in the late thirteenth-century Genealogical Chronicle of the English Kings

  
  Edmund I or Eadmund I (920/921 – 26 May 946) was King of the English from 27 October 939 until his death in 946. He was the elder son of King Edward the Elder and his third wife, Queen Eadgifu, and a grandson of King Alfred the Great. After Edward died in 924, he was succeeded by his eldest son, Edmund's half-brother Æthelstan. Edmund was crowned after Æthelstan died childless in 939. He had two sons, Eadwig and Edgar, by his first wife Ælfgifu, and none by his second wife Æthelflæd. His sons were young children when he was killed in a brawl with an outlaw at Pucklechurch in Gloucestershire, and he was succeeded by his younger brother Eadred, who died in 955 and was followed by Edmund's sons in succession.
  
  Æthelstan had succeeded as the king of England south of the Humber and he became the first king of all England when he conquered Viking-ruled York in 927, but after his death Anlaf Guthfrithson was accepted as King of York and extended Viking rule to the Five Boroughs of north-east Mercia. Edmund was initially forced to accept the reverse, the first major setback for the West Saxon dynasty since Alfred's reign, but he was able to recover his position following Anlaf's death in 941. In 942, Edmund took back control of the Five Boroughs and in 944 he regained control over the whole of England when he expelled the Viking kings of York. Eadred had to deal with further revolts when he became king, and York was not finally conquered until 954. Æthelstan had achieved a dominant position over other British kings and Edmund maintained this, perhaps apart from Scotland. The north Welsh king Idwal Foel may have allied with the Vikings as he was killed by the English in 942. The British kingdom of Strathclyde may also have sided with the Vikings as Edmund ravaged it in 945 and then ceded it to Malcolm I of Scotland. Edmund also continued his brother's friendly relations with Continental rulers, several of whom were married to his half-sisters. (Full article...)
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  The Mongols chasing the Seljuks of Rum. Hayton of Corycus, Fleur des histoires d'orient.

  
  The Battle of Köse Dağ took place in eastern Anatolia on 26 June 1243 when an army of the Sultanate of Rum, led by Sultan Kaykhusraw II, confronted an invading Mongol army under the general Baiju and was decisively defeated. The battle was the pivotal event of the Mongol conquest of Anatolia: Rum, previously a significant independent power in the eastern Mediterranean, was reduced to the status of a client kingdom, and its territories were later absorbed into the Mongol Ilkhanate.
  
  The Mongol Empire first achieved territorial contact with Rum in the early 1230s by conquering a large swathe of western Iran, but largely left it alone over the next decade. Instead, under their general Chormaqan, Mongol armies subjugated Transcaucasia and reduced the Kingdom of Georgia to a vassal state. Relations deteriorated after the accession of Kaykhusraw II to the Rum throne in 1237, and Mongol raids on Rum territory began in 1240. Two years later, Baiju, who had replaced Chormaqan after the latter became disabled, captured and pillaged the city of Erzurum, escalating hostilities into open war. He again invaded Rum in 1243, with an army of 30,000 Mongol troops accompanied by Georgian and Armenian auxiliaries. (Full article...)
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  Arms of Sir Robert de Umfraville, KG: Gules a cinquefoil within an orle of eight crosses pattée or.

  
  Sir Robert de Umfraville KG, Lord of Redesdale (c. 1363 – 1437) was a knight in late-medieval England who took part in the later stages of the Hundred Years' War, particularly against Scotland. The de Umfraville family had been influential in northeast England for centuries and also held major estates in Yorkshire. His ancestors were mormaers of Angus, and his nephew married into the Percies, a powerful local marcher family with whom de Umfraville was closely associated. Much of Sir Robert's career continued on the same path as his ancestors, being primarily focused on defending the border with Scotland, which had been in a state of near-permanent warfare since the late thirteenth century.
  
  Robert de Umfraville fought under three English kings. Beginning his career under Richard II, he probably fought at the Battle of Otterburn with Henry "Hotspur" Percy in 1388. After Richard was deposed by Henry IV in 1399, de Umfraville loyally served the new Lancastrian regime, waging both offensive and defensive military operations against the Scots. Where necessary, he was also an effective diplomat, taking part in many embassies to Scotland and negotiating treaties. With the exception of Henry V's resumption of the Hundred Years' War in 1415—when de Umfraville travelled with the king to France, where he may have taken part in the Battle of Agincourt—all his military activity was on the Scottish border. He was famed for his martial prowess; one contemporary chronicler, John Hardyng, who was in de Umfraville's service, lauded him as the perfect knight. De Umfraville's successes in the north attracted praise and reward from the king. One campaign deep into Scottish territory resulted in his destroying Peebles and its market; he brought back so much booty that he was popularly nicknamed "Robin Mendmarket". (Full article...)
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  Elsass underway c. 1904–1908

  
  SMS Elsass was the second of five pre-dreadnought battleships of the Braunschweig class in the German Imperial Navy. She was laid down in May 1901, launched in May 1903, and commissioned in November 1904, though an accident during sea trials delayed her completion until May 1905. She was named for the German province of Elsass, now the French region of Alsace. Her sister ships were Braunschweig, Hessen, Preussen and Lothringen. The ship was armed with a battery of four 28 cm (11 in) guns and had a top speed of 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph). Like all other pre-dreadnoughts built at the turn of the century, Elsass was quickly made obsolete by the launching of the revolutionary HMS Dreadnought in 1906; as a result, her career as a frontline battleship was cut short.
  
  The ship served in II Squadron of the German fleet after commissioning, and during this period, she was occupied with extensive annual training, as well as making good-will visits to foreign countries. Surpassed by new dreadnought battleships, Elsass was decommissioned in 1913, though she was reactivated a year later following the outbreak of World War I and assigned to IV Battle Squadron. Elsass saw action in the Baltic Sea against the Russian Navy. In August 1915, she participated in the Battle of the Gulf of Riga, during which she engaged the Russian battleship Slava. In 1916, she was placed in reserve because of crew shortages and the threat of British submarines operating in the Baltic, and she spent the remainder of the war as a training ship. (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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  Powick Bridge pictured in 2006

  
  The battle of Powick Bridge was a skirmish fought on 23 September 1642 south of Worcester, England, during the First English Civil War. It was the first engagement between elements of the principal field armies of the Royalists and Parliamentarians. Sir John Byron was escorting a Royalist convoy of valuables from Oxford to King Charles's army in Shrewsbury and, worried about the proximity of the Parliamentarians, took refuge in Worcester on 16 September to await reinforcements. The Royalists despatched a force commanded by Prince Rupert. Meanwhile, the Parliamentarians sent a detachment, under Colonel John Brown, to try to capture the convoy. Each force consisted of around 1,000 mounted troops, a mix of cavalry and dragoons.
  
  The Parliamentarians approached the city from the south on the afternoon of 23 September. Their route took them up narrow lanes and straight into Rupert's force, which was resting in a field. The noise of the approaching Parliamentarian cavalry alerted the Royalists, who quickly formed up. The Royalist dragoons gave their cavalry time to prepare, firing at point-blank range as the Parliamentarians emerged into the field. Rupert's cavalry then charged and broke most of the Parliamentarian cavalry, although one troop stood its ground and returned fire. Ultimately, all the Parliamentarians were routed. (Full article...)
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  SS Washingtonian was a refrigerated cargo ship launched in 1913 by the Maryland Steel of Sparrows Point, Maryland, near Baltimore, as one of eight sister ships for the American-Hawaiian Steamship Company. When completed, she was the largest cargo ship in the US registry. During the United States occupation of Veracruz in April 1914, Washingtonian was chartered by the United States Department of the Navy for service as a non-commissioned refrigerated supply ship for the US fleet stationed off the Mexican coast.
  
  In January 1915, after a little more than one year of service, Washingtonian collided with the schooner Elizabeth Palmer off the Delaware coast and sank in ten minutes with the loss of her $1,000,000 cargo of 10,000 long tons (10,200 t) of raw Hawaiian sugar. In the days after Washingtonian's sinking, the price of sugar in the United States increased almost nine percent, partly attributed to the loss of Washingtonian's cargo. Lying under about 100 feet (30 m) of water, Washingtonian's wreck is one of the most popular recreational dive sites on the eastern seaboard. (Full article...)
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  The First Treaty of London, also known as the Treaty of Windsor, was formally agreed on 8 May 1358 at Windsor Castle in England. Its terms ended the then 21-year-old Anglo-French conflict now known as the Hundred Years' War. It was sealed by Edward III, king of England, and John II, king of France; the latter was a prisoner in England, having been captured with much of his council at the Battle of Poitiers in 1356.
  
  The treaty set John's ransom at four million écus. This was £667,000 – the equivalent of the peacetime income of the English Crown for about 20 years. In exchange for peace, France was to transfer to England approximately a quarter of its territory; Edward would give up his claim to the French throne. The first instalment of the ransom – 600,000 écus (£100,000) – was due to be paid on 1 November, but with the French government collapsing into insurrection and anarchy it proved impossible to raise. Edward refused to accept less than full performance of the terms of the treaty and it lapsed. Subsequent negotiations led to the Second Treaty of London in March 1359 but its terms were so harsh that the French government repudiated it. Hostilities resumed in October, when Edward again invaded France. (Full article...)
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  Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King with U. S. President Franklin D Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill during the Quebec Conference, 18 August 1943, at which the mechanism for cooperation on Tube Alloys was agreed upon

  
  The Montreal Laboratory was a program established by the National Research Council of Canada during World War II to undertake nuclear research in collaboration with the United Kingdom, and to absorb some of the scientists and work of the Tube Alloys nuclear project in Britain. It became part of the Manhattan Project, and designed and built some of the world's first nuclear reactors.
  
  After the Fall of France, some French scientists escaped to Britain with their stock of heavy water. They were temporarily installed in the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, where they worked on reactor design. The MAUD Committee was uncertain whether this was relevant to the main task of Tube Alloys, that of building an atomic bomb, although there remained a possibility that a reactor could be used to breed plutonium, which might be used in one. It therefore recommended that they be relocated to the United States, and co-located with the Manhattan Project's reactor effort. Due to American concerns about security (many of the scientists were foreign nationals) and patent claims by the French scientists and Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI), it was decided to relocate them to Canada instead. (Full article...)
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  Arthur William Radford (27 February 1896 – 17 August 1973) was an admiral and naval aviator of the United States Navy. In over 40 years of military service, Radford held a variety of positions including the vice chief of Naval Operations, commander of the United States Pacific Fleet and later the second chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
  
  With an interest in ships and aircraft from a young age, Radford saw his first sea duty aboard the battleship USS South Carolina during World War I. In the inter-war period he earned his pilot wings and rose through the ranks in duties aboard ships and in the Bureau of Aeronautics. After the U.S. entered World War II, he was the architect of the development and expansion of the Navy's aviator training programs in the first years of the war. In its final years he commanded carrier task forces through several major campaigns of the Pacific War. (Full article...)
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  German reconnaissance picture of Sovetsky Soyuz taken in June 1942

  
  The Sovetsky Soyuz-class battleships (Project 23, Russian: Советский Союз, 'Soviet Union'), also known as "Stalin's Republics", were a class of battleships begun by the Soviet Union in the late 1930s but never brought into service. They were designed in response to the Bismarck-class battleships being built by Germany. Only four hulls of the fifteen originally planned had been laid down by 1940, when the decision was made to cut the program to only three ships to divert resources to an expanded army rearmament program.
  
  These ships would have rivaled the Imperial Japanese Yamato class and America's planned Montana class in size if any had been completed, although with significantly weaker firepower: nine 406-millimeter (16 in) guns compared to the nine 460-millimeter (18.1 in) guns of the Japanese ships and a dozen 16-inch (406 mm) on the Montanas. The failure of the Soviet armor plate industry to build cemented armor plates thicker than 230 millimeters (9.1 in) would have negated any advantages from the Sovetsky Soyuz class's thicker armor in combat. (Full article...)

Featured picture

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  Battle of Jerusalem (1917)

  Photo: American Colony; Restoration: Sebastian Kolendo

  The Mayor of Jerusalem Hussein al-Husayni (centre) meets with soldiers of the British Egyptian Expeditionary Force on December 9, 1917, under the white flag of surrender. The Battle of Jerusalem had begun the day before, but the Turkish forces in the city were no match against the British forces. A Turkish counterattack on December 25 was also repulsed, confirming the capture of Jerusalem by the Allies.
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  Māori traditional textiles

  Illustration credit: M. Jackson, Illustrated London News

  The traditional clothing of the Māori can be seen in this engraving of a meeting between Māori and settlers in Hawke's Bay Province during the Invasion of Waikato in 1863. Muka, the fibre of New Zealand flax, was the basis of most clothing.
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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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  Apollo 11

  Photograph credit: Neil Armstrong

  Apollo 11 was the fifth crewed mission of NASA's Apollo program. After launching from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on July 16, 1969, commander Neil Armstrong and Apollo Lunar Module pilot Buzz Aldrin landed Eagle in Mare Tranquillitatis on July 20, at 20:17:40 UTC, while command module pilot Michael Collins remained on Columbia in lunar orbit. Armstrong was the first to exit the spacecraft, stepping onto the surface 6 hours and 39 minutes later, on July 21, at 02:56:15 UTC; nineteen minutes later, Aldrin joined him on extravehicular activity, which lasted 2 hours, 31 minutes and 40 seconds. Armstrong and Aldrin lifted off from Tranquility Base after almost 22 hours on the lunar surface and rejoined Collins in the command module, before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean on July 24.
  
  The mission was planned to the minute, with the majority of the photographic tasks performed by Armstrong with a single Hasselblad camera. Most of the photographs taken on the Moon that include an astronaut are of Aldrin; there are only five images of Armstrong partly shown or reflected, as in this photograph, with Armstrong and the lunar module reflected in Aldrin's helmet visor. "As the sequence of lunar operations evolved," Aldrin explained, "Neil had the camera most of the time [...] It wasn't until we were back on Earth and in the Lunar Receiving Laboratory looking over the pictures that we realized there were few pictures of Neil."
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  US Brig Niagara

  Photo credit: Unknown

  The original US Brig Niagara, which played a pivotal role in defeating the British at the Battle of Lake Erie. It was sunk in 1820 for preservation but raised again in 1913 for the centennial anniversary of the battle (seen here). A modern replica based out of Erie, Pennsylvania now travels the Great Lakes as an educational and training vessel.
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  Jean-Paul Marat

  Credit: anonymous

  A 1793 etching with watercolor of Jean-Paul Marat, a radical journalist and politician from the French Revolution, carried on shoulders with a crown of laurel leaves, celebrating his acquittal by the Revolutionary Tribunal. From January to May 1793, Marat fought bitterly with the Girondins, whom he believed to be covert enemies of republicanism. The National Convention ordered the trial, but his acquittal only served to increase his public profile and popular support.
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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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  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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  Timeline of lighting technology

  Illustration: Maurice Dessertenne
  Restoration: Michel Vuijlsteke

  An illustration from Volume IV (E–G) of the encyclopedia Nouveau Larousse illustré showing various methods of lighting through the ages, starting from prehistoric times in the upper left (No. 1) to carbide lamps at the beginning of the 20th century (No. 54, lower right), with a separate section for Japanese lighting (No. 55–58, lower left).
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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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  Astrolabe

  Photograph: Masoud Safarniya

  An Iranian astrolabe, handmade from brass by Jacopo Koushan in 2013. Astrolabes are elaborate inclinometers used by astronomers, navigators, and astrologers from classical antiquity, through the Islamic Golden Age and European Middle Ages, until the Renaissance. These could be used for a variety of purposes, including predicting the positions of the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars; determining local time given local latitude; surveying; triangulation; calculating the qibla; and finding the times for salat.
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  Poison gas in World War I

  Photo credit: Frank Hurley

  A group of Australian infantry wearing Small Box Respirators (SBRs) at the Third Battle of Ypres in September 1917. After the introduction of poison gas in World War I, countermeasures were developed. SBRs represented the pinnacle of gas mask development during the war, a mouthpiece connected via a hose to a box filter (hanging around the wearer's neck in this picture), which in turn contained granules of chemicals that neutralised the gas. The SBR was the prized possession of the ordinary infantryman; when the British were forced to retreat during the German Spring Offensive of 1918, it was found that while some troops had discarded their rifles, hardly any had left behind their respirators.
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  Ivan the Terrible Showing His Treasury to Jerome Horsey

  Artist: Alexander Litovchenko

  Alexander Litovchenko's 1875 painting depicting Ivan IV of Russia seated in the Kremlin Armoury, his half-witted heir Fyodor standing behind, a group of distrustful boyars whispering at a distance, and the Tsar's jester in a skomorokh cap addressing the English diplomat Jerome Horsey. Horsey was a resident of the Russia Company in Moscow from 1572 to 1585.
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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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  Finnish markka

  Banknote credit: Bank of Finland; photographed by Andrew Shiva

  The Finnish markka was the currency of Finland from 1860 to 2002. The currency was divided into 100 pennies and was first introduced by the Bank of Finland to replace the Russian ruble at a rate of four markkaa to one ruble. The markka was replaced by the euro on 1 January 2002 and ceased to be legal tender on 28 February later that year.
  
  This picture shows a 20-markka banknote issued in 1862, as part of the first issue of markka banknotes (1860 to 1862), for the Grand Duchy of Finland, then an autonomous part of the Russian Empire; 1862 was also the first year of issue for this particular denomination. The banknote's obverse depicts the coat of arms of Finland on a Russian double-headed eagle, and was personally signed by the director and the cashier of the Bank of Finland. The text on the obverse is in Swedish, whereas the reverse is primarily in Russian and Finnish.
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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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  Wilhelmina of the Netherlands

  Engraver: George J. Verbeck, after Thérèse van Duyl Schwarze
  Restoration: Lise Broer

  A 1901 etching of Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, based on an 1898 painting of her in her coronation robe. Having assumed the throne at the age of ten after the death of her father, King William III, Wilhemina ruled for fifty-eight years (1890–1948), longer than any other Dutch monarch. In 1948 she abdicated in favor of her daughter Juliana, thereafter making few public appearances until the country was devastated by the North Sea flood of 1953.
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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.

Did you know (auto generated)

• ... that Juan Soto, before his blockbuster trade, rejected a 15-year, $440 million contract extension, which would have been the largest deal in Major League Baseball history at the time?
• ... that Art Rooney Jr. presided over what one Pro Football Hall of Fame selector described as "the best drafting run in NFL history"?
• ... that during the first tour to the Soviet Union by any American ballet company, Lupe Serrano danced the first encore in the American Ballet Theatre's history?
• ... that in 2023, car manufacturer Rivian acquired the historic Lynn Theatre in Laguna Beach, California, and converted it into its first showroom?
• ... that Dean Faithfull was the oldest player in NCAA Division II football history?
• ... that the Oxtongue River, historically a canoe route for indigenous people, is still used for recreational canoeing?

Featured biography –

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

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Jürgen Ehlers (German: [ˈjʏʁɡn̩ ˈʔeːlɐs]; 29 December 1929 – 20 May 2008) was a German physicist who contributed to the understanding of Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity. From graduate and postgraduate work in Pascual Jordan's relativity research group at Hamburg University, he held various posts as a lecturer and, later, as a professor before joining the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Munich as a director. In 1995, he became the founding director of the newly created Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Potsdam, Germany.

Ehlers' research focused on the foundations of general relativity as well as on the theory's applications to astrophysics. He formulated a suitable classification of exact solutions to Einstein's field equations and proved the Ehlers–Geren–Sachs theorem that justifies the application of simple, general-relativistic model universes to modern cosmology. He created a spacetime-oriented description of gravitational lensing and clarified the relationship between models formulated within the framework of general relativity and those of Newtonian gravity. In addition, Ehlers had a keen interest in both the history and philosophy of physics and was an ardent populariser of science. (Full article...)

On this day

April 19: Primrose Day in London

Aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing

• 1713 – With no living male heirs, Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor, issued the Pragmatic Sanction, allowing the Habsburg hereditary possessions to be inherited by a daughter.
• 1809 – War of the Fifth Coalition: French general Louis-Nicolas Davout defeated an Austrian force in Lower Bavaria, allowing him to rejoin the main French army.
• 1987 – The fictional Simpson family made their first appearance in the short "Good Night", aired in a segment of the The Tracey Ullman Show.
• 1995 – A truck bombing destroyed much of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building (aftermath pictured) in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people and injuring more than 680 others.
• 2015 – Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old African American, died of injuries sustained while in the custody of the Baltimore Police Department.

• Uesugi Kenshin (d. 1578)
• Elizabeth Dilling (b. 1894)
• Denis O'Brien (b. 1958)

More anniversaries:

• April 18
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• April 20

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Even death is not to be feared by one who has lived wisely.

— Gautama Buddha, founder of Buddhism

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More Did you know...

• ... that in 1898, the United States government annexed the Kingdom of Hawaii despite protestation from Queen Liliuokalani (pictured)?
• ... that Jean Thurel was a soldier in the French Régiment de Touraine for more than 75 years?
• ... that the severed head of Julia Martha Thomas — murdered, boiled and dismembered by her maid in 1879 — was found next door to Sir David Attenborough's house in 2010?
• ... that the 18th-century Indian automaton Tipu's Tiger shows a near life-size European being mauled by a tiger, and emits wails and grunts as well as containing a pipe organ?
• ... that Svið, a traditional Icelandic dish, consists of a sheep's head that has been cut in half, singed, and boiled with the brain removed?
• ... that, despite overseeing the construction of the crematoria and gas chambers at Auschwitz, what specifically shocked SS-Obersturmführer Robert Mulka at the camp was his colleagues' dress sense?
• ... that Tsar Alexander II of Russia had a special crystal bottle of Roederer champagne made for the Three Emperors Dinner in 1867 so that he could admire the bubbles?
• ... that the Gudea cylinders are the longest literary composition ever found in the Sumerian language?

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