Showing results by narrator "Colin Fluxman" in All Categories

Gunpowder: The History and Legacy of the Explosive that Modernized Warfare examines the origins of the chemical explosive, and its long, winding history across the world. You will learn about gunpowder like never before.

On April 24, 1990, the Space Shuttle Discovery lifted off from Kennedy Space Center on the Space Shuttle Program’s 35th mission, but this was no ordinary mission. In its payload bay, Discovery was carrying the Hubble Space Telescope, with the objective of putting the telescope into orbit. By the time the Hubble telescope reached orbit, it was already the world’s most famous telescope, but it was also the most scorned. The telescope cost nearly $2 billion more to complete than anticipated, and to make matters worse, the first images it sent back were skewed.

While the Moors have always been associated with Spain due to their lengthy stay on the Iberian Peninsula, the most famous battle they were involved in was actually fought in modern France. While the Franks were consolidating a kingdom there, Muslim forces were pushing out of North Africa and into the Iberian Peninsula in the early eighth century, and by the dawn of the 730s, the Umayyad dynasty had expanded its territory from the Atlantic to the Pyrenees, a series of seasonally snow-capped mountains in Europe that forms a border between the nations of Spain and France.

In the third century BC, Stoicism arose in response to and under the influence of these older schools, combining many of the best theories from each into a more cohesive whole. With a greater flexibility and more practical application to everyday life, Stoicism quickly became a very popular school of thought, a growth made exponential by its introduction to the Romans.

The Early Bronze Age in the Near East (c. 3300 - 2100 BCE) was an era of significant cultural, political, and scientific development. The legendary Hammurabi (r. circa 1792 - 1750 BCE) established the First Dynasty of Babylon. The Kingdom of Qatna, named for the primary city in the kingdom, was located on the other Amorite states’ geographical periphery in the northern Levant but was still a significant participant in the Near East’s geopolitical system during the Middle Bronze Age.

The issue of race in the British Empire is as complex as the history of the British Empire itself. The origins of the British Empire lie in the settlement of North America and the Caribbean, both of which led to complex intersections of imperialism, commerce, and race. The Windrush Scandal: The History of the Modern Controversy and Race Relations in the British Empire examines how racism in the United Kingdom affected the empire at home and abroad.

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 pre-Classical Greek culture the Mycenaean culture, which existed from about 2000-1200 BCE, when Greece, along with much of the eastern Mediterranean, was thrust into a centuries long Dark Ages.

Modern perceptions of ancient Greece are almost always based on Athens and Sparta, which is why other city-states and other military units besides the hoplites have been overlooked for thousands of years. For this reason, Greek cavalry forces - including their composition, purpose, techniques, equipment, and developments - are still not very well understood when compared with their naval or infantry counterparts.

Much of the systematic mechanics and the continual advancement of modern civilization have been shaped by history's most brilliant economists and greatest thinkers. In economics, the most famous figure is undoubtedly Adam Smith, an 18th century philosopher and one of the original champions of the free market, whose ideas were encapsulated in his most famous works, The Wealth of Nations and The Theory of Moral Sentiments, published in the midst of the Scottish Enlightenment.

The largest island of the Mediterranean has always been a complicated place with a fraught relationship to the Italian mainland. Separated by only the narrow Strait of Messina, Sicily feels like a different country in many ways, and the differences between Sicilians and Italians are much vaster than the tiny geographical separating them might intimate. For example, the linguistic differences between the two are substantial, as Sicilian is practically its own language, rather than just a dialect.

Various flying saucer sightings got the attention of the governments of the United States and other nations. The world was gripped in a Cold War, and some officials wondered if the UFOs might be experimental craft from some hostile power, most likely the Soviet Union. The American government in particular wanted to investigate the phenomenon to find out if this might be the case, as well as to calm public fears over what was appearing in the skies. Another motivation was to quash all the calls flooding into Air Force bases and police stations.

Although he is unquestionably one of the most studied leaders of the 19th century, Simón Bolívar remains today as enigmatic as he was two centuries ago, when his vision and presence largely inspired the overthrow of the Spanish Empire in the New World.

Little Turtle’s War: The History and Legacy of the 18th Century Conflict Between the United States and Native Americans in the Northwest Territory examines the life of one of the most famous Native American leaders, the events that brought about the war, and the results.

It would not be a stretch to say that for a very tiny geographical territory (just 20,747 square kilometers), the Basque Country has inspired a plethora of intense stereotypes. Some of these stereotypes have been cast upon its people from the outside while others have been strategically propagated by the people themselves. For such a small area of land that is home to only 3,000,000 people, the Basque Country is anything but small in terms of its history, which is why opinions about its people are so intense, so consequential, and so contradictory.

The short war between a confederation of Native American tribes under Little Turtle’s leadership has been referred to by many names, including the Northwest Indian War, the Ohio War, and the Miami War, but it is probably best known as Little Turtle’s War. Before Little Turtle’s War, it was believed that the U.S. did not need a professional army, that ordinary citizens would take up arms in times of threat and serve in militias as they had done in the fight against the British.

If you want to discover the captivating life of Anne Hutchinson, then pay attention.... Her steps were determined and steady, even though the plank of the wooden ship bobbed up and down in the glittering but frigid water that splashed against the wet dock. In the first light of day, these were the times tinged with the hues of promise shadowed only by the vague unknown. Anne Hutchinson was just a follower, or so she thought, but she had many queued up behind her as she followed her spiritual mentor to Boston in the early days of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Clara Barton: The Life and Legacy of the Civil War Nurse Who Founded the American Red Cross chronicles her remarkable life, and the manner in which she changed nursing in America forever. You will learn about Clara Barton like never before.

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 Bismark, 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.

Some refugees who had fled from Germany, in an attempt to escape Nazi persecution, were rounded up, interned, and later used in a prisoner exchange program between the United States and German governments. The American government also went to great lengths to secure Germans living across Latin America, who they believed posed a tangible threat, should they cross America’s southern border. In spite of a preponderance of evidence affirming the occurrence of these events, the United States government persistently denied it for decades.

The internment of Japanese Americans in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor is second only to slavery in terms of America's most tragic and regrettable chapters in history. While the forced relocation and internment of Japanese Americans living on the West Coast during the Second World War is widely recognized - they have even received apologies and compensation from the US government - what is not as well-known is that between 1941 and 1948, approximately 10,000 Americans of German descent were also forcibly interned at camps scattered across the United States.