Modern Era
Stanley Meets Livingstone (1871): The Famous Encounter at Ujiji
Stanley found Livingstone alive at Ujiji, supplied him and made himself famous; Livingstone stayed in Africa and died there in 1873.
All Articles
Every Chronicle article on world history, newest first: battles, empires, disasters, discoveries and revolutions.
Modern Era
Compromise of 1850: Henry Clay's Last Bid to Save the Union
Five laws passed in September 1850 eased the crisis over slavery in the lands won from Mexico, but the Fugitive Slave Act deepened Northern hostility to slavery.
Modern Era
Clifton Suspension Bridge (1864): Brunel's Bridge Over the Avon
The bridge, begun in 1831 and abandoned in 1843, was completed by engineers of the Institution of Civil Engineers as a memorial to Brunel and opened in 1864.
Modern Era
Unification of Italy: The Risorgimento from 1815 to 1871
The Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed in 1861 and completed with Venetia in 1866 and Rome in 1870, which became the capital in 1871.
Middle Ages
Mesa Verde and Cliff Palace: Ancestral Puebloan Cliff Dwellings
Hundreds of cliff dwellings were built in the 1200s and then left by about 1300, when their people migrated south to the ancestral homes of today's Pueblo nations.
Middle Ages
Husuni Kubwa: The Sultan's Palace at Kilwa (c. 1320s)
A vast palace and trading complex was built for the sultans of Kilwa but was abandoned, apparently unfinished, within a few decades.
Middle Ages
Mongol Invasions of Dai Viet (1258-1288): Tran Hung Dao
All three Mongol-Yuan invasions were repelled; Dai Viet kept its independence while sending nominal tribute to the Yuan court.
Middle Ages
Great Anti-Buddhist Persecution (845): Emperor Wuzong's Purge
Buddhist monasteries were closed and their wealth seized; foreign religions were banned; the policy was largely reversed after Wuzong died in 846.
Middle Ages
Great Mosque of Samarra: The Spiral Minaret of the Abbasids
A vast congregational mosque with a spiral minaret was completed in the Abbasid capital; its ruins and the Malwiya survive as a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Middle Ages
Albigensian Crusade (1209-1229): War Against the Cathars
The Cathar church was broken and the County of Toulouse passed under the control of the French crown by the Treaty of Meaux-Paris (1229).
Middle Ages
Donation of Constantine: The Forgery Behind Papal Power
A forged imperial grant supported papal claims for centuries until humanist scholars, above all Lorenzo Valla, proved it a fake.
Middle Ages
Varangian Guard: Norse and English Warriors of Byzantium
A Scandinavian, Rus and later largely English unit became the emperors' most trusted bodyguard for more than two centuries.