Showing results by narrator "Bill Hare" in All Categories

While the cell is sparse and cold, at least this one has a bed. The figure resting there is too thin; too still, the prominent bones the result of long starvation, the stillness the product of too much anguish and abuse. He watches, though. An anxious, intelligent mind still occupies this frail and failing body, one that watches and wonders about the new guard occupying his cell each night.

The Battle of Red Cliffs changed Chinese history. It marked the end of the Han Dynasty, one of the greatest in China’s history, and pushed China into the era of the Three Kingdoms, an era of perpetual warfare and chaos. Furthermore, the battle also had a dramatic effect on Chinese culture, media, and literature, and the battle and its major participants remain legendary in China.

The ancient Greeks used a number of forms of divination to determine the future and seek advice from the gods as to which actions they should take in any given situation. The most popular of these ways to consult the Gods was through a visit to an oracle - usually a person - at a fixed shrine. The oldest of these Greek sites was at Dodona in Epirus, and while it continued to be a major oracle for the Greek world through antiquity, it was quickly overtaken by the oracle at Delphi as the most consulted by kings, politicians, and ordinary Greeks alike.

Otherwise known as the “Roma” or by their popular misnomer “the gypsies”, the members of this highly undervalued and grossly misrepresented community have long been considered outcasts. More often than not, the Romani are branded by even those who fancy themselves liberals as “pikeys”, “gyppos”, and “gips”. There's also a regrettably common term “gypped” meaning “to cheat, or swindle” which perpetuates the damaging stereotype that the Roma are dishonest nuisances and societal pests.

Of all the authors and poets American schoolchildren may be exposed to over the course of their education, Robert Frost is often one of the first, and on rare occasions that he is not, it is still a near certainty that some of his most famous poems will be discussed at some point. Frost may not be as remembered or influential as other American literary giants, or even poets such as Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, but his career was historic in terms of its length and breadth of accomplishments.

The Jim Crow South has been notorious for miscarriages of justice for decades, and cases like the Scottsboro Boys continue to be commemorated for the manner in which institutionalized racism ensured the wrongful convictions of minorities. The attention given to these cases raised nearly every potential issue implicating criminal procedure among the states. While the Bill of Rights had ensured a number of rights for criminal defendants, the states had previously been allowed to interpret those rights, leading to instances where defendants weren't provided adequate legal representation.

Hong Kong: The History and Legacy of Asia’s Leading Financial Center chronicles the turbulent history of Hong Kong, and how it became one of the wealthiest places in the world despite its challenging political environment.

Nowadays, the pope is synonymous with unparalleled piety, compassion, and benevolence. To many, the pope is the embodiment of godly love in its purest form. This is a far cry from how things were just a few centuries ago. Back in the day, the most notorious of popes were nothing more than power-hungry dictators and cutthroat political experts. Indeed, by the late 14th century, tensions within the Church reached a breaking point, resulting in the infamous split of the Catholic Church, one that saw multiple popes fighting to knock the others off their thrones.

Miletus was an ancient city located on the west coast of present-day Turkey. It was the main city in the land of Ionia, a territory that stretched over 2,000 square kilometers of western Anatolia. With its four great harbors and a strategic location, Miletus became one of the most important coastal cities of western Anatolia, linking the Hellenistic world with the great civilizations of Babylon, Egypt, and eventually, Persia. Over time, Miletus was ruled by the Minoans, Mycenaeans, Hittites, Ionians, Persians, Seleucids, Attalids, Romans, Byzantines, Seljuk Turks, and Ottomans.

In 1977, two spacecraft were launched from Earth to explore the outer Solar System, and incredibly, the now-ancient technology from the 1970s is still working, sending daily reports back to the planet that sent the two robotic envoys on their way, over 40 years ago. Voyager 1 and 2 have done far more than accomplish their original missions. In fact, they are now exploring interstellar space, far beyond the outer planets, in the cold wasteland between the stars.

The invasion across the Channel came in the early morning hours of June 6, 1944. That day, forever known as D-Day, the Allies commenced Operation Overlord by staging the largest and most complex amphibious invasion in human history. The complex operation would require tightly coordinated naval and air bombardment, paratroopers, and even inflatable tanks that would be able to fire on fortifications from the coastline, all while landing over 150,000 men across nearly 70 miles of French beaches.

At one point or another, just about everyone has heard of the dodo bird, which is almost universally described as a cuddly, whimsical creature renowned for its alleged stupidity. This prehistoric avian had been known for hundreds of years, before it was made popular around the world in Lewis Carroll’s 1865 classic Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

For much of the past 30 years, Iraq has been one of the world’s greatest hot spots. The 1980s saw Ba’athist strongman Saddam Hussein go to war with Iran as well as the Kurds, who maintained an autonomous region of their own in Northern Iraq. Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait touched off a Gulf War that was followed by biting sanctions. And the 2003 American-led invasion against Hussein’s regime provided the uninformed an all-too-brutal crash course on Iraq’s ethnic and religious divisions and the Middle East’s as a whole.

The OSS and CIA: The History of America’s Intelligence Community during World War II and the Establishment of the Central Intelligence Agency looks at the agencies’ organizational characteristics, historical inception, early Cold War growth, and recent influence. You will learn about the OSS and CIA like never before.

French Senegal: The History of the French Colony and Senegal’s Transition to Independence examines how France established the colony, and how that colony affected events in the 20th century before Senegal became a modern nation.

To the Aztecs, Huitzilopochtli wore a blue-green hummingbird helmet and was draped in pure white heron feathers. He carried a smoking mirror, an obsidian mirror, a shield, darts, and the serpent Xiuhcoatl that carried with it the fury and might of the sun. Everything about him - from his clothes to his weapons - emanated and defined royalty.

Worship of the Feathered Serpent can be traced back 2,000 years, and the Serpent’s cults appear all across Mesoamerica. The Olmec, the Aztec, and both the Yucatec and K’iche Mayans all had different names for this deity, including Kukulkan, Q’uq’umatz, and Tohil...Quetzalcoatl was and remains one of the most interesting and enlightening stories ever to have come out of any civilization, and his stories offer a better understanding of the Mesoamerican world.

The center of political and commercial interaction in the Ancient Greek polis was the agora. The word essentially means a gathering place or an open space, and in all Greek city states, the agora was central to all aspects of daily life and commerce. As the agora developed as a civic space, particularly from the sixth century BCE onward in Athens, the architectural splendor of the buildings associated with it became an ever more obvious demonstration of the power and glory of Athenian democracy.

The most iconic images of the First World War are of the war on land. But part of that same generation faced a very different war, one that was just as important in deciding the fate of Europe. This was the war at sea. Here, events took place that would draw America into the war, providing the Allies with a new pool of manpower and so ensuring that the scales of the conflict tipped in their favor. At sea just as much as on land, this was a war that would shape the future of the world.

The Portuguese Inquisition: The History of the Portuguese Empire’s Religious Persecution of Non-Christians in Portugal and Asia looks at how the Inquisition came to be and how people were persecuted by it over the course of several centuries. You will learn about the Portuguese Inquisition like never before.