Portal:History

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For a topic outline on this subject, see List of basic history topics

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The History Portal

History is the interpretation of past events, societies and civilisations. The term history comes from the Greek historia (ἱστορία), "an account of one's inquiries," and shares that etymology with the English word story. The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica stated that "history in the wider sense is all that has happened, not merely all the phenomena of human life, but those of the natural world as well. It is everything that undergoes change; and as modern science has shown that there is nothing absolutely static, therefore, the whole universe, and every part of it, has its history."

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This month's featured article

Samantha Reed Smith (June 29, 1972, in Houlton, Maine – August 25, 1985, in Lewiston-Auburn, Maine) was an American schoolgirl from Manchester, Maine who became famous in the Cold War-era United States and Soviet Union. In 1982, Smith wrote a letter to the newly appointed Soviet Communist Party General Secretary Yuri Andropov, and received a personal reply which included a personal invitation to visit the Soviet Union, which she accepted.

Smith attracted extensive media attention in both countries as a "Goodwill Ambassador", and became known as "America's Youngest Ambassador" participating in peacemaking activities in Japan. She wrote a book and co-starred in the television series, Lime Street, before her death at the age of 13 in the Bar Harbor Airlines Flight 1808 plane crash.

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This month's featured picture

Broadside advertising reward for capture of Lincoln assassination conspirators, illustrated with photographic prints of John H. Surratt, John Wilkes Booth, and David E. Herold.

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Did you know...

Horatia Nelson

...that Horatia N. Thompson (pictured) was christened with Lord Nelson and Mrs Hamilton as godparents and was later adopted by them as an orphan, even though they were her biological parents?

...that the 1609 Treaty of Antwerp was influenced by the writings of Hugo Grotius in the Mare Liberum, which was published at the insistence of the Dutch East India Company during the course of the treaty negotiations?

...that Grand Duke Nicholas Mikhailovich of Russia let a soldier tasked with his execution take care of a cat?

...that, after driving the French Republicans from Italy, Russian Field-Marshal Alexander Suvorov managed to conduct a masterful flight across the snow-capped Alps?

...that George Rogers Clark was called the "Conqueror of the Northwest" because of his victorious Illinois campaign in the American Revolutionary War?

...that the crown-cardinals of Austria, France, and Spain could exercise the jus exclusivae during papal conclaves from the 16th to 20th centuries?

...that some accounts regarding the fighting during the Battle of Bonchurch states that some of the female population of the Isle of Wight participated by firing arrows at the French troops?

...that the Mongol Empire, also known as the Mongolian Empire was the largest contiguous empire in world history and for some time was the most feared in Eurasia?

...that the pioneers traveled to the Salt Lake Valley in the Great Basin using wagons, handcarts, and, in some cases, personally carrying their belongings. Their trail along the Platte River and over the Sweetwater River became known as the Mormon Trail?

...that when Mawewe, the putative king of Gazaland (in 19th-century Mozambique), played rough with the colonial Portuguese by demanding tribute and threatening to exterminate the Europeans if they refused to pay, Paiva de Andrade, then governor of Lourenço Marques, responded by sending a single rifle cartridge to Mawewe, saying that this would be the form his tribute would take?

...that the Muslim conquests (632–732), (Arabic: فتح‎, Fataḥ, literally opening,) also referred to as the Islamic conquests or Arab conquests, began after the death of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. He established a new unified political policy in the Arabian Peninsula which under the subsequent Rashidun (The Rightly Guided Caliphs) and Umayyad Caliphates saw a century of rapid expansion of Muslim power?

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History subportals


Archaeology	Classical Civilisation

Egyptology	Ancient Germanic culture

History of science	War

Ancient Rome	Roman military

Ancient Greece	Byzantine Empire

Middle Ages	Crusades

Heraldry and vexillology	New France

British Empire	American Revolutionary War

September 11 attacks	American Civil War

History of Canada	Military history of France