PODCAST: HISTORY UNPLUGGED
J. Edgar Hoover’s 50-Year Career of Blackmail, Entrapment, and Taking Down Communist Spies
This section has been created to answer some of the most popular and interesting history-related questions our users may ask. In Ask HistoryOnTheNet, we hope to provide many interesting tidbits of information that make history all the more fascinating.
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Why did Hitler kill himself? On 30 April 1945, Adolf Hitler committed suicide along with his wife, Eva in his bunker in Berlin. According to testimonies, both swallowed cyanide pills and he shot himself in the head for good measure. Their remains were burnt in the Reich Chancellery garden outside…
The question "how many people died in WW1?" is a complicated one. World War One was one of the deadliest conflicts in the history of the human race, in which over 16 million people died. By way of comparison, far more lives were lost in the Second World War than…
World War II was mainly caused by certain ideologies that made countries and dictators act violently to get what they want. Some of the main-long term causes include the rise of facism in Italy, the militarism of Japan, which invaded China in the 1930s and the Nazi takeover of Germany.…
The Manhattan Project was a code name of an effort started in late 1941 to design and build the atomic bomb. In 1939, Einstein and other scientists urged the American Government to start building an atomic bomb when they heard that German physicists had discovered the secrets of splitting uranium…
Direct democracy is also often called "pure democracy" and involves having the citizens as individuals vote on issues instead of elected representatives. Representative democracy is however more common worldwide. Examples of Direct Democracy Ancient Athens is an example of direct democracy where the people themselves voted on major matters. Every…
The Schlieffen plan was a battle plan that was proposed by Alfred, graf (count) von Schlieffen in 1905, which suggested that Germany could win a quick Franco-German war while fending of Russia. Helmuth von Moltke, Schlieffen's successor, decided to implement this plan during World War I, but heavily modified it,…
Who invented the atomic bomb? The question is a bit misleading, as modern scientific research did not progress as it did in the days of Archimedes, with one scientist shouting "Eureka!" upon his discovery after laboring for months in solitude. As with many other inventions, the development of the atomic…
"Bolshevik" means "majority" and were a faction of The Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, which was formed after the Second Congress in 1903 when it split from the Mensheviks. The Congress agreed that Russia needed a revolution in order to establish Socialism. The Bolsheviks became the leading party during…
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is the largest, oldest and most well-known civil rights group. It was founded in February 1909 and now has over half a million members. The principal goal of the NAACP is to ensure social, economic and political equality of minorities in…
The president of the United States has various powers and duties, which are specified in the Constitution in Article II. Although the president still has to answer to Congress, the vagueness and ambiguity of Article II have made it possible in the past for presidents to expand their authority beyond…
