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Most anyone who has received a basic education in world history knows the story of how "in 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue." Most also know that Christopher Columbus made first contact with the Americas while searching for a water route to Asia. However, far fewer people remember that the search for such a route continued for centuries after Columbus' death.

Ancient Greece and its mythology has fascinated people for thousands of years, and few elements have intrigued people quite like the Eleusinian Mysteries, which the Greeks believed transformed the initiates and gave them knowledge that eased both the living of life on earth and allayed fears of death, allowing an acceptance of their ultimate fate. The influence of the Eleusinian Mysteries was also far-reaching.

The United States has no shortage of famous military units, from the Civil War's Iron Brigade to the 101st Airborne, but one would be hard pressed to find one that had to go through as many hardships off the field as the Tuskegee Airmen, a group of African American fighter pilots who overcame Jim Crow at home and official segregation in the military to serve their country in the final years of World War II.

For much of the 20th century, South American governments in large part lived under a system of military junta governments. The mixture of indigenous peoples, foreign settlers and European colonial superpowers produced cultural and social imbalances into which military forces intervened as a stabilizing influence. The proactive personalities of military heads and the rigid structures of such a hierarchy guaranteed the "strong man" commanding officer an abiding presence in the form of executive dictator.

In the warm predawn darkness of June 22, 1941, three million men waited along a front hundreds of miles long, stretching from the Baltic coast of Poland to the Balkans. Ahead of them in the darkness lay the Soviet Union, its border guarded by millions of Red Army troops echeloned deep throughout the huge spaces of Russia.

It is common for a culture to create intricate mythologies around its combat arts champions, but those fighters who have produced enough accomplishments to merit such adulation are limited to a few in each generation. In the second half of the 20th century, boxer Muhammad Ali commanded such reverence, and in the martial arts, two stars have primarily reestablished the combat genre for the international movie-going population. In terms of raw popularity, Chuck Norris represents the West.

Radio legends Kenneth Williams (Beyond Our Ken, Hancock’s Half Hour) and Ted Ray (Ray’s a Laugh) join forces for this quickfire mix of characters, songs and sketches, first broadcast on Radio 2 in 1974. Accompanied by Quote… Unquote’s Nigel Rees and veteran actress/comedian Miriam Margolyes, they cross their comedy swords and trade playful repartee.

The road to the modern age of cultural harmony and acceptance is one of the finest feats of human progress, but having said that, there was once a time when the mere doubt of a religious figure's existence was not only punishable by law, it could very well cost a man his life. This was the crime of heresy.

In his review of Salvador Dali's first autobiography, George Orwell declared that "One ought to be able to hold in one's head simultaneously the two facts that Dali is a good draughtsman and a disgusting human being." Whether or not one agrees with the famous author's assessment, Orwell captures the polarizing nature of Salvador Dali, and the extent to which his undeniable technical virtuosity often brushed against his penchant for provoking his audiences (not to mention provoking long-entrenched standards of "proper" taste).

Broadcasting on the BBC Light Programme from December 1950 until July 1952, Calling All Forces was the biggest show of its day, attracting the biggest names of the time. Written by a young Bob Monkhouse and Denis Goodwin, it became a showcase for aspiring young comedians including Peter Sellers, Tony Hancock, Jimmy Edwards, Cyril Fletcher, Benny Hill, Kenneth Horne, Bill Kerr and Bob Monkhouse himself.

As God's chosen people, the Jews were to obey all that he commanded, and in so doing, glorify his name to all the world; but they would not. Instead they shamed his name by their wicked disobedience. No matter how many times God reached out his hand of mercy toward them, revealing more of his goodness and love, they would once again turn a blind eye to him, stopping their ears, and refusing to hear or obey him. They honored him with their lips, while their hearts were far from him. Is it any wonder God tired of offering himself to them?

The "Golden Age" of television was in part so named because it was the era in which new technology was pioneered and industry rules were still being written. Here was a fascinating new medium, founded by executives with no previous body of experience, and a myriad of directions in which to proceed. Numerous factions spent the next generation wresting control over content and the content/product relationship.

The most famous church in Jerusalem for nearly 2,000 years, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, often called the Church of the Resurrection, was built in the era of St. Constantine, and the church as a structure has no history separable from the city of Jerusalem and its environs. It is venerated as being on the site where Jesus was crucified and buried, and naturally, making it a crucial pilgrimage site for Christians, and it is now the home of the Greek Orthodox Jerusalem Patriarchate.

Over the last 150 years, historians and Americans have endlessly debated over the Civil War, including its causes and the best and worst generals. Nowhere has there been a sharper debate than over the career and legacy of George McClellan, with a majority viewing him as the North's biggest goat and a small but vocal minority insisting that McClellan was a very good general who was made a scapegoat by the Lincoln Administration and its supporters.

Nazi Germany's North African defeat opened up the possibility of taking the war in the West to the European continent for the first time since France's lightning conquest by the Wehrmacht in 1940. The British chose Sicily as the target for military operations in the summer of 1943. The preparations included bombing missions over Italy ahead of an amphibious landing, and on April 4, 1943, one of the planes that took off from Libya to bomb Naples was the Lady Be Good, a B-24D Liberator bomber with a crew that had never flown a combat mission.

Early in the war, the Ottomans knew the Dardanelles strait would most certainly be attacked and had prepared significant defenses. The plan drafted by the then First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, was meant to destroy Ottoman defenses along the Dardanelles. However, Allied forces comprised of British, Irish, Australian, and New Zealand troops were unable to penetrate the Ottoman defenses, advancing only about 100 meters from the shores. The Ottomans, led by German General Liman von Sanders, further reinforced their positions.

In Charles River Editors' History for Kids series, your children can learn about history's most important people and events in an easy, entertaining, and educational way. This concise but comprehensive book will keep your kid's attention all the way to the end.

The most unique city-state in Ancient Greece was Sparta, which continues to fascinate contemporaneous society. It is not entirely clear why Sparta placed such a great emphasis on having a militaristic society, but the result was that military fitness was a preoccupation from birth. If a Spartan baby did not appear physically fit at birth, it was left to die. Spartan children underwent military training around the age of seven years old, and every male had to join the army around the age of 18.

The enduring image of World War I is of men stuck in muddy trenches, and of vast armies deadlocked in a fight neither could win. It was a war of barbed wire, poison gas, and horrific losses as officers led their troops on mass charges across No Man's Land and into a hail of bullets. While these impressions are all too true, they hide the fact that trench warfare was dynamic and constantly evolving throughout the war as all armies struggled to find a way to break through the opposing lines.

In any telling of military history, people can be easily seduced by straightforward explanations that say why one side won and the other was doomed, but in the Civil War, no greater epic of war tests that like the Vicksburg campaign. The Greatest Civil War Battles: The Vicksburg Campaign comprehensively covers the events that led up to the siege, the fighting itself, and the aftermath of the campaign.