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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The Glorious Revolution, which took place in England in 1688, involved overthrowing Kings James II (also called James VII of Scotland) and replacing him with the William III of Orange-Nassau, the Dutch stadtholder and his wife, Mary. This revolution also caused a whole balance shift in how the country is…
The main cause of the fall of the Roman Empire is still a topic of debate among historians, maybe because it is a symbol of what we fear about our own civilization. There are many different theories about why a superpower that ruled for 500 years crumbled and fell, but…
The first crusade was a response to a very inspiring speech by Pope Urban II on November 27, 1095. At the start of the 11th century, Christians were often persecuted in Jerusalem under Islamic rule. Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos was also threatened by the Islamic Seljuq Turks and called…
Martin Luther King, Jr. was an activist and pastor who promoted and organized non-violent protests. He played a pivotal role in advancing civil rights in America and has won a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to fight racial inequality in a non-violent matter. Martin Luther King's Activities Brought publicity…
The Battle of Gettysburg was the bloodiest battle of the Civil War and the largest one ever fought on American soil, involving around 75,000 Confederate soldiers and 85,000 soldiers on the Union's side. The battle had around 51,000 casualties and started out as a bit of a chance encounter, even…
The Truman Doctrine arose from a speech by President Harry Truman, but it has informally become the basis of the U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War and afterwards. Historians often refer to the Truman speech as the day the Cold War started, because the policy was geared towards containing…
Josef Mengele was an anthropologist and SS physician, who is infamous for his inhuman medical experiments on the prisoners in Auschwitz, a Nazi concentration camp. He used to be an assistant to Dr. Otmar von Verschuer, a scientist who did a lot of research on twins, and did his own…
The discovery of penicillin has pioneered the invention of antibiotics that we take for granted today, but is still saving the lives of thousands of people every day. The person rightly credited for its discovery is sir Alexander Fleming, but the story does not stop there. Without the efforts of…
Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birth date is January 15, 1929. He was born in Atlanta, Georgia and was known for being a very passionate civil-rights activist, who had a great impact on the relations between races in the U.S. in the 1950s. He played a great role in creating the…
Why Did Japan Attack Pearl Harbor? After more than 75 years, the question remains for students of the history of World War Two: Why did Japan attack Pearl Harbor? The attack on Pearl Harbor ranks as the most successful military surprise attack in the early years of combined naval/aerial combat.…
