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The life of Joan Crawford is one of the most famous Hollywood rags-to-riches tales. While it is common to think of Hollywood as a land offering great opportunity to hardworking actresses, the Horatio Alger myth rarely applies in reality, but it applied almost perfectly to Joan Crawford. Joan Crawford's life and career also shed light on the treatment of women in pop culture and in cinema during the early 20th century. Her career was not only limited to film acting, as she acted in musical revues and was previously an unabashed flapper during the Roaring Twenties.

Despite the enormous esteem he has garnered from virtually every corner of the music world, Jerry Garcia has continued to elude both fans and music historians as they attempt to determine his origins and categorize his art and influence on American music. Part of their difficulty lies in the fact that his work as the frontman for the Grateful Dead, "one of the most prolific and iconic guitarists of the twentieth century", tended toward a blending of the traditional with the experimental.

The events of the Arab Spring have come to be overshadowed by the civil war in the Arabic-speaking nation of Syria, which has been ruled throughout the 21st century by Bashar al-Assad. Though he had not planned on ruling Syria, several events conspired to make Bashar the successor of his father, Hafez. Though the West frequently looked for signs that Bashar might be a reformer, due in part to his formerly popular Western wife, Assad remained part of a critical alliance with Iran and the sub-state groups Hamas and Hezbollah.

The Romans were master builders, and much of what they built has stood the test of time. Throughout their vast empire they have left grand structures, from the Forum and Pantheon in Rome to the theatres and hippodromes of North Africa and the triumphal gates in Anatolia and France. Wherever they went, the Romans built imposing structures to show their power and ability, and one of their most impressive constructions was built on the northernmost fringe of the empire.

The vast expanses of southern Russia and the Ukraine provided the Eastern Front arena where the armies of Third Reich dictator Adolf Hitler and Soviet dictator Josef Stalin wrestled lethally for supremacy in 1943. Endless rolling plains - ideal "tank country" - vast forests, sprawling cities, and enormous tracts of agricultural land formed the environment over which millions of men and thousands of the era's most formidable military vehicles fought for their respective overlords and ideologies.

"The golden age of piracy" generally refers to the era when history's most famous pirates roamed the seas of the West Indies from 1670-1720.

Tyranny in ancient Greece was not a phenomenon limited to any particular period. Tyrants could be found in power throughout Greece, ruling poleis from the 7th century BC right through to the 2nd century BC, when Roman domination effectively put an end to this form of government throughout the Hellenistic world. That said, the heyday of tyranny was undoubtedly the 7th and 6th centuries BC, and it is in this period, known as the Age of Tyrants, that large numbers of tyrannies arose, particularly in the Peloponnese.

Though scarcely mentioned in the world of early 21st century politics, Manchuria represented a key region of Asia during the first half of the 20th century. Once the heartland of the fierce Manchu empire, this northeastern Chinese region's rich natural resources made it a prize for nations in the process of entering the modern age, and three ambitious nations in the midst of such a transformation lay close enough to Manchuria to attempt to claim it: Japan, Russia, and China.

Jamestown is fondly remembered today for being the first permanent English settlement in the colonies, but it was not fondly remembered by those who lived and died there. The English quickly learned it would be difficult to establish a permanent settlement because of the poor weather, the swampy terrain, the hostile natives living nearby, and the general inexperience and ineptitude of the English settlers.

It had taken about 40 years for Chicago to grow from a small settlement of about 300 people into a thriving metropolis with a population of 300,000, but in just two days in 1871, much of that progress was burned to the ground. In arguably the most famous fire in American history, a blaze in the southwestern section of Chicago began to burn out of control on the night of October 8, 1871.

Virtually everyone in America is familiar with theories about UFOs, or “flying saucers” as they were often called then, but even this name dates back only to 1947. Before that time, they were called “ghost rockets” or “ghost airplanes” or “ghost airships.” Before the age of flight, the flying objects were called various things such as “flying chariots.” No matter what terminology is used, every generation has clearly had its own belief that mankind is not alone.

Conspiracy theories, and particularly the belief that elements of the world are secretly controlled by individuals or groups, have been around for as long as people have lived in groups. Perhaps that’s inevitable—after all, those who are excluded from power are very likely to be inclined to see their position not as an outcome of their own choices or situation but because of the secret machinations of shadowy groups. One of the most widely discussed conspiracy theories concerns what has become known as the New World Order.

Since the dawn of humanity, people have both cared for those who have deceased yet also tried to keep them away, typically out of a fear of the dead. In time, that fear helped produce all kinds of legends and beliefs about the dead coming back, and one of the most persistent ones is of the vampire.

Exhibitionism and narcissism coupled with talent are not the sole property of modern entertainment, as some might suppose. From the beginnings of American theater and film, various personality types prone to self-intoxication by the status of their own careers have acted-out at will in their public lives. For them, there is no barrier between the professional and the private.

The relationship between Scotland and England has always been rocky. For most of their history, they have been at loggerheads and frequently at war, and, even after the Act of Union of 1707 which united the two nations, there were at least four Scottish uprisings. Today, the Scottish threat to separate from the post-Brexit UK is well-known. England has historically viewed the northern nation as a threat, and Scotland for its part has feared, with justification, its richer and more powerful neighbor.

In the wake of taking Constantinople, the Ottoman Empire would spend the next few centuries expanding its size, power, and influence, bumping up against Eastern Europe and becoming one of the world’s most important geopolitical players. It would take repeated efforts by various European coalitions to prevent a complete Ottoman takeover of the continent, and one of the most important battles among those efforts took place at Vienna in 1529.

Over the course of the 19th century, the people of Sicily found themselves at the center of a struggle for freedom, one that ended up being long and often very bloody. It was during these crucial years of struggle that the Sicilian mafia, La Cosa Nostra ("Our Thing"), started to take shape. Cosa Nostra: The Notorious History and Legacy of the Sicilian Mafia examines how the world’s most famous mob formed, its inner workings, and the events that made it feared around the world.

The saga of English predominance in Ireland began in the 12th century following the Norman invasion of England, when a band of Norman adventurers, established on the Welsh mainland, set off across the Irish Sea to test their prospects on the shores of England’s western neighbor. Ireland at the time was ruled in provinces by local kings, each with limited power and authority, and often at war with one another.

The Great Wall of China is perhaps the wonder of the world that has most captured the human imagination, and as the quotes about it indicate, the wall has acquired special significance even outside of China. The places and ways in which it has taken hold vary greatly, but one thing is certain: The Great Wall of China is as amazing as it is mysterious, and it's as mundane as it is magical.

On Wednesday, March 28, 1979, 36 seconds after the hour of 4:00 a.m., several water pumps stopped working in the unit 2 nuclear power plant on Three Mile Island, 10 miles southeast of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania