History
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘History’
The leader of 5th-century BC Athens lavished public money on the city and its adoring citizens, and wherever he led they followed.
The story of Pericles, the 5th-century BC Athenian leader, is one of personal magnetism and a matchless cultural legacy, and also a warning. Democracy should give us the freedom to demand more of ourselves. If we use it merely to demand more from politicians, we corrupt ourselves and them too.
Hoping to please opinion at home, the French Emperor pressured the Turks into new outrages against their Christian population, and Russia hit back.
The Crimean War of 1853-1856 cost over 600,000 lives, and in the short term changed very little for those involved. It all started because the French Emperor, Napoleon III, wanted to curry favour with Roman Catholic opinion in Europe, but in no time at all France, Russia and Britain had committed themselves to positions from which they could not back down.
Remembered as the inspiration of the famous Olympic road race, but much more important than that.
The Battle of Marathon is remembered today chiefly as the inspiration for the modern road race. But its real significance was that it kept Greece from being asset-stripped by Persia, and so helped to save Western civilization.
Socrates was placed on death row while Athens celebrated a religious festival.
The philosopher Socrates (470/469 - 399 BC) was sensationally tried for ‘corrupting youth and for impiety’, code for challenging the government of Athens. Ironically, by law his execution had to be delayed while they commemorated the abolition of human sacrifice.
The Wars of the Roses pitted two royal houses against each other for the crown of England.
Henry VI was a descendant of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster; his closest relative was Richard, Duke of York. From 1455 to 1471, the two royal families, the Red Rose and the White, strove bitterly for the crown of England.