WORLD HISTORY FACTS LIST



WORLD HISTORY FACTS LIST

1. Archaeology is the study of human artifacts.

2. Anthropology is the study of hominid remains.

3. Cultural diffusion is the exchange of traits between cultures due to any type of contact.

4. A Dynasty is a succession of rulers from a single family or group.

5. Theocracy is a government run by religious officials

6. Polytheism is the belief in many gods.

7. Mandate of heaven is the ancient Chinese belief that the right of a government to rule has been given by the gods.

8. Monotheism is the belief in one god.

9. Hammurabi was the Babylonian king who presided over the codification of the first known written law code.

10. The Fertile Crescent runs from the eastern shores of the Mediterranean to the northern Persian Gulf.

11. Mesopotamia lies between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers and was home to Sumer.

12. The Nile is the world’s longest river, flowing through northeast Africa, and fostered ancient Egypt.

13. Ancient Egyptians built pyramids as tombs to honor their god-kings.

14. Nomads are people who wander from place to place in search of food.

15. Ancient Sumer was divided into city-states that are decentralized, independent political units.

16. Ancient Egyptians wrote in pictographs called hieroglyphs.

17. Cuneiform was a relatively adaptable Mesopotamian writing system.

18. The Covenant was the promise that the Hebrews would receive Cannan in return for their devotion to the one and only God.

19. Moses renewed the Covenant with God by delivering the Ten Commandments to the Hebrews.

20. Caste is a general term describing social class in Indian culture.

21. Hinduism is polytheistic religion of Aryan origin with no specific founding event or person.

22. Dharma is the Hindu concept of duty based on class, age and gender

23. Karma is the Hindu concept that your soul accumulates a record of all good and bad behavior throughout its existence.

24. Moksha and Nirvana are respectively the Hindu and Buddhist concepts of the end of the reincarnation cycle.

25. Buddhism is a polytheistic faith in which adherents believe anyone can achieve ultimate enlightenment.

26. Siddharta Gautama was the Indian prince who renounced his privilege and established Buddhism. Believers call him Buddha.

27. Reincarnation is the Hindu-Buddhist belief in a cycle of many deaths and rebirths of the same soul.

28. Qin Shihuangdi was the first Chinese emperor, and established a highly centralized empire.

29. Mandarins were civil servants of the Han dynasty who got their jobs by passing rigorous exams.

30. Daoism is a belief system that focuses on the individual’s relationship with nature and believes all people should strive to achieve a balance between the opposing forces within them.

31. Confucianism is a belief system that emphasizes respect for family and maintenance of social roles.

32. The Greek culture and establishment of city-states was greatly influenced by its steep mountains and twisting coastline geography.

33. A myth is a traditional story that seeks to explain some mysterious aspect of nature or existence.

34. A polis was a Greek city-state, comprised of a single city and the countryside that supported it.

35. Socrates was a Greek philosopher who developed a method of teaching by asking challenging questions.

36. Athens, one of the greatest Greek city-states, valued culture and learning in addition to physical strength.

37. Sparta was a warlike Greek city-state that valued strength, but disliked learning and commerce.

38. An oligarchy is any government ruled by a small group of people.

39. A citizen is a person who is imbued with both the political privileges and duties of a particular society.-

40. Democracy is a political form in which all citizens directly participate in the political process- the people vote.

41. The Peloponnesian wars were civil conflicts between the Greek states leading to the decline of Athens and Greek power in general.

42. Alexander the Great was a Macedonian general who unified Greece, conquered Persia and established an empire stretching to the Indus river.

43. Patricians were the Roman upper-class landowners who created the republic.

44. Plebeians were the Roman middle-class that gradually gained rights in the republic.

45. The Senate was the all-patrician, law making body in early Rome.

46. Tribunes were plebeian legislators with veto power in the Roman republic.

47. A republic is a political structure in which citizens choose representatives to govern society.

48. The creation of the Twelve Tables of Roman law established a written, pubic code that assured greater equality for citizens.

49. The Romans used food handouts and increasingly brutal “circuses” to occupy the growing class of jobless poor.

50. Julius Caesar rose from the army to become a consul, and dictator of Rome.

51. Caesar originally server as a consul in a triumvirate of three men with Crassus and Pompey.

52. Augustus overthrew the Senate that murdered Caesar to become Rome’s first emperor.

53. Jesus Christ was a Jew from the Roman province of Judea who was perceived by some Jews to be the Messiah. He is the savior of the Christian religion.

54. Emperor Constantine gave the first legal recognition to Christianity in the fourth century.

55. The Pax Romana was a period of great peace and prosperity for Rome in the 1st and 2nd centuries.

56. Muhammad was a caravan leader from Mecca who established the Islamic faith.

57. The Koran is the holiest book of Islam, said to be the word of Allah as told to Muhammad by the angel Gabriel.

58. The Five Pillars of Islam: Faith, prayer, alms, fasting and pilgrimage, are the central tenants of the faith.

59. Mecca, site of the Ka’aba, is the holiest city of Islam.

60. A Caliph is a successor to the prophet Muhammad, who has both religious and political authority in Islamic culture.

61. Justinian was the Byzantine emperor who preserved Roman legal traditions by having his scholars unify them into a single code.

62. The Schism of 1054 marked a split of the Eastern Orthodox away from the Catholic structure of the western European Christian Church.

63. Feudalism is a political system in which vassals receive a fief from their lord in return for military service.

64. A fief is a grant of land and the peasants living on it.

65. Manorialism is an economic system in which serfs receive land to work and military protection in return for taxes in the form of agricultural production.

66. A serf is a peasant who is not free to leave the manor.

67. The inquisition was the Church court created to try heretics.

68. At the battle of Hastings in 1066 William the Conqueror and his Norman lords captured England from the Anglo-Saxons.

69. Common law is the practice of basing legal rulings on the rulings from precedent cases.

70. The Magna Carta was a document King John was forced by his nobles to sign guaranteeing that he would not deny their traditional property and tax rights.

71. Charles Martel was the leader of the Franks who turned back the Muslim invasion of Europe in 732 at Tours.

72. Charlemagne unified Western European portion of the old Roman Empire in the early 9th century.

73. The Crusades were an unsuccessful attempt to regain Christian control of the holyland from the Turks in the 12th and 13th centuries. They resulted in considerable cultural diffusion.

74. Guilds were associations of craftsmen created to regulate quality, price and competition of goods in medieval Europe.

75. Charters were legal contracts granted to a group by the king, usually for commercial purposes.

76. Scholasticism was the dominant intellectual theory during the Middle Ages.

77. Leonardo DaVinci is considered by some to be the ultimate Renaissance man. His best known works are the Mona Lisa and the Last Supper.

78. Michaelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and sculpted David, a sixteen foot-high statue, from a single block of marble.

79. Dante, author of the Inferno, was one of the first authors in the Italian vernacular.

80. William Shakespeare was the author of dozens of plays in English. The wide accessibility of his work helped to unify the English language.

81. Machiavelli was an Italian statesman whose work Prince stands out as an early work of political science.

82. Johannes Gutenberg was a German metal worker who developed a relatively cheap, efficient, and easy-to-use printing press. His invention greatly increased the availability of written work.

83. Humanism was the dominant intellectual theory during the Renaissance (focus on the individual).

84. Martin Luther’s 95 Theses were the ‘spark’ that ignited the Protestant Reformation.

85. The sale of indulgences, forgiveness or salvation for your sins, was the Church behavior that provoked the writing of the 95 Theses.

86. Martin Luther did not want to break from the Catholic Church when he wrote the 95 Theses, rather he wanted to reform the Catholic Church.

87. John Calvin developed a sect of Protestantism based on the concept of predestination, the idea that God already decided your salvation before you were born.

88. Henry VIII broke from the Catholic Church and formed the Anglican Church in order to annul his marriage to his first wife, Catherine of Aragon.

89. Florence was the early center of Italian Renaissance Humanism.

90. The search for new outlets for trade, the desire to spread Christianity, and the quest for glory all fueled European exploration in the 15th and 16th centuries.

91. The Treaty of Tordesillias divided the globe into Spanish and Portuguese regions of exploration in 1494.

92. Many nations used joint stock companies to provide the capital necessary for world exploration.

93. Conquistadors were Spanish explorers on a mission to conquer specific regions on behalf of the King.

94. Mercantilism is the economic philosophy that a nation’s power comes from the accumulation of wealth in the form of gold- making sure you export more than you import.

95. The triangular trade attempted to achieve the goals of mercantilism by using slave labor to produce colonial raw materials, while profiting from the domestic production of manufactured goods.

96. Christopher Columbus attempted to reach Asia by sailing west, but instead made discoveries leading to the permanent European settlement of America.

97. Ferdinand Magellan achieved Columbus goal of sailing west to reach Asia, but demonstrated its impracticality.

98. Vasco Da Gama was the first European to reach Asia by an all water route.

99. Francis Drake made his fame by pirating French ships, demonstrating England’s early disinterest with colonies.

100. The Reconquista was the Spanish effort to drive the Moors out of Spain. It was concluded in 1492.

101. Divine right of kings is the concept that kings are chosen by God, and thus beyond question or limitation.

102. Joan of Arc, a French peasant girl, helped unify the French against England in the 100 Years War before her capture and execution.

103. England lost the 100 Years War to France, over control of the French throne.

104. The Edict of Nantes attempted to end religious civil war in France by granting greater religious freedom to Huguenots.

105. Cardinal Richelieu, King Louis XIII’s advisor, was instrumental in the trend toward the absolutism (political ideology of total power) of French kings.

106. Elizabeth I was England’s most beloved monarch, establish policy that expanded economic and military strength and civil stability.

107. The Peace of Augsburg in 1555 granted greater toleration the German Calvinists.

108. The Thirty Years War began over religious issue, but quickly became political, strengthening France and expending German disunity.

109. Russian Czar Peter the Great attempted to modernize and westernize Russia.

110. Louis XIV built the Palace of Versailles as a symbol of the king’s power and a tool to control his nobles.

111. Montesquieu’s Spirit of Laws praised the political concept of separation of powers into three branches.

112. Isaac Newton’s laws of motion, gravity and calculus all supported the concept that unchanging laws govern the universe.

113. Galileo’s reliance on tools like the telescope and the scientific method to support theories like heliocentrism got him into significant trouble with the Church.

114. Copernicus, a Polish astronomer, first advanced the concept of heliocentrsim but had difficulty proving it to the satisfaction of other scientists.

115. John Locke advanced the idea of government by consent to protect life, liberty and property in his Two Treatises on Government.

116. Jean Jacques Rousseau advocated government by general will to diminish inequality in The Social Contract.

117. Adam Smith argued for a free market economy guided by natural law in The Wealth of Nations.

118. The idea of Enlightened Monarchy held that strong kings could use their power to secure the freedoms being advocated by enlightenment philosophers.

119. Romanticism, an artistic style, reinforced an emphasis on faith, emotion and even mysticism.

120. A new emphasis on the scientific method focused on the experimentation and testing of hypothesis during the 17th and 18th centuries.

121. The concepts of natural rights and natural law hold that individuals have certain rights and freedoms simply by virtue of their existence.

122. Limited (Constitutional) Monarchy, in which a king or queen shares power with a legislature, evolved over many centuries in England.

123. The Puritan Revolution saw Protestants in Parliament remove the Catholic Stuart kings from the English throne.

124. Oliver Cromwell led the Puritan Roundheads in the Puritan Revolution, and then led the commonwealth government that replaced the monarchy.

125. Habeas Corpus is the right to be brought before a judge and charged with a specific crime if you are being held in jail.

126. The U.K.’s Prime Minister is the leader of the strongest party in Parliament and serves as the king’s chief advisor.

127. In the Glorious Revolution the restored Stuart monarchs were removed from the English throne without any bloodshed.

128. The Estates General was a weak French legislature composed of members of the clergy, nobility and common classes.

129. The French Revolution began in 1789 when commoners created the National Assembly, proclaiming the right to draft a constitution.

130. In the Reign of Terror extremists in control of the revolution executed thousands in an effort to silence critics of the revolution.

131. General Napoleon Bonaparte rose to prominence as a military leader, then took over France, first as an elected official, then as a dictator.

132. The destruction of the French navy by the British at the Battle of Trafalgar led Napoleon to abandon plans for an invasion of Britain.

133. The attack on and destruction of the old fortress and prison called the Bastille marks a symbolic beginning of the French Revolution.

134. Waterloo in Belgium was the sight of Napoleon’s final defeat in his quest to conquer Europe.

135. Improvements in agriculture caused a growth and urban shift in Europe’s population starting in the 18th century.

136. The English enclosure movement was supported by Parliament and increased crop yields on individual plots while driving many peasants off of that land.

137. The domestic system/Putting Out system/cottage industry system divided steps in the manufacturing process between several individuals, each working out of their own home.

138. Labor unions seek to strengthen the bargaining position of workers by engaging in collective bargaining where representatives negotiate a contract for all employees.

139. James Watt developed the first safe, efficient steam engines for industry.

140. Thomas Edison is famed for many inventions such as the phonograph and light bulb.

141. Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone.

142. Robert Fulton was the first to effectively apply steam engine technology to water transport.

143. Imperialism is the domination or control of the political, economic, and/or cultural life of one country by another.

144. A system in which an imperial nation sends a few governors and Generals to administer a local government and military operated by local officials is called a protectorate.

145. In a sphere of influence an imperial nations enjoys and exclusive economic or diplomatic relationship with another country or region.

146. The building and control of the Suez canal became a focal point of imperial conflict in Egypt.

147. Sepoys were Indian natives serving in the British army in India. They rebelled against the British over perceived religious insults.

148. The Indian Nation Congress was formed in the 1880’s to achieve independence from Britain. It succeeded by the 1940’s

149. Extraterritoriality is the legal concept that a visitor to a foreign land is subject to the laws of his home country and not those of the country he is in.

150. The Meiji gained control of Japanese government in the 1860’s and use economic and political modernization to reduce foreign influence in Japan.

151. Conflict between Peninsulares (European born Latin American governors) and Creoles (American born European settlers in Latin America) fueled conflict leading to independence for many Latin American nations.

152. Toussaint L’Ouverture began a slave uprising that ultimately led the Haitian independence.

153. Simon Bolivar was the general who achieved independence from Spain for much of South America.

154. In the Monroe Doctrine the U.S. stated it would tolerate no new imperial efforts in the Western Hemisphere.

155. The Congress of Vienna sought to establish stability and restore monarchy to Europe after the conquests of Napoleon.

156. Balance of Power was the diplomatic concept that nations would form alliances for the purpose of suppressing the development of a single dominant power in Europe.

157. The Concert of Europe refers to the ongoing diplomatic efforts of European nations to ensure stability in the aftermath of Napoleon.

158. Clemens Von Metternich was the Austrian Prime Minister who dominated the Concert.

159. Chartist attempted to expand the franchise in 19th century Britain.

160. The Home Rule movement in Ireland attempted to eliminate British control over Irish government

161. Various revolutions swept through Europe in 1848 reflecting a more liberal, anti-monarchist trend in European politics.

162. Camilio Cavour was the Sardinian Prime Minister who helped shape the move toward Italian unity.

163. The Zollverein was a free trade union between German states that helped build German Unity.

164. Napoleon III came to power in the wake of the 1848 revolution in France but quickly abandoned liberal principals and became an emperor.

165. Otto Von Bismarck, King William I’s Prussian prime minister was the man most responsible for achieving German political unity.

166. Prussian victory in the Franco-Prussian War was the final step in drawing small German states in to a larger union.

167. Karl Marx was the German philosopher most closely associated with the ideas of revolutionary socialism.

168. A system of interlocking and opposing alliance in Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries made the eruption of a major war over a minor issue more likely.

169. Nationalism, the desire to be ruled by people sharing a local culture, fueled political tensions in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

170. Serbia led the Slavic nationalist movement, and groups like the Black Hand violently opposed outside control.

171. In June 1914, Austria issued the Serbia ultimatum, insisting that Serbia cooperate with Austrian suppression of nationalism and investigation of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s assassination. Incomplete compliance with these demands led to Austria’s declaration of war.

172. The Schlieffen plan was an unsuccessful German plan to attack and quickly remove France from WWI.

173. Vladimir Lenin led the Bolsheviks, a group of revolutionary Russian communists who eventually gained control of the Russian revolution.

174. In the Brest-Litovisk Treaty, Lenin and the Communists took Russia out of WWI, leaving the Central powers with a one-front war.

175. At the conclusion of WWI, U.S. President Wilson pressed for acceptance of his 14 points, which provided for a non-punishing reconciliation of differences. Most provisions were rejected.

176. Wilson’s League of Nations was created after the War, but rejection by the U.S. senate and lack of enforcement power doomed it to long-term failure.

177. In the NEP, Soviet leaders temporarily permitted free markets for small businesses to help the economy recover.

178. Stalin’s five year plans set targets for Soviet industrial production that included harsh penalties for failure.

179. Stalin also pursued collectivization of agriculture. Stalin met resistance by the kulaks with repressive force that resulted in widespread famine.

180. The Commintern was a Soviet agency dedicated to the spread of communism to other countries.

181. The sinking of the Lusitania, a British passenger ship, demonstrated the growing tension between the neutral U.S. and the central Powers.

182. Adolph Hitler rose to political power in Germany by exploiting political and economic instability after WWI, and providing scapegoats like the Jews for disenchanted Germans.

183. The NAZI was the instrument of Hitler’s rise to, and exercise of power.

184. The Nuremberg laws of the 1930’s stripped German Jews of most citizenship rights.

185. Anschluss was the concept of German-Austrian unity, forbidden by the Versailles Treaty after WWI.

186. Blitzkrieg was the German tactic of devoting massive military force to a single objective and quickly removing an enemy from war.

187. Benito Mussolini was the leader of the Italian Fascist who allied with Hitler’s Nazis in WWII

188. In the city of Vichy in central France a provisional government that would collaborate with the NAZI was established for the Southern 2/3rds of France after the Northern section was conquered.

189. The Battle of Britain was a nightly aerial bombing of Britain by Germany. It failed in its purpose of weakening British resistance to future invasion.

190. The Japanese bombing of U.S. bases in Pearl Harbor led to the U.S. declaration of war.

191. In the holocaust the NAZI exterminated 12 million people, 6 million of them Jewish, in an effort to purge their domain of non-Germans.

192. On D-Day, June 6th 1944, the allies launched an offensive in Northern France that would eventually remove the NAZI armies from western Europe.

193. At Yalta, before WWII ended, the leaders of Russia, Britain and the U.S. met to discuss what would happen in Europe after the Nazi’s defeat.

194. Franklin Roosevelt was the U.S. president for most of WWII.

195. Winston Churchill was the British Prime Minister during WWII, but his party was voted out of power at the end of the war.

196. Harry Truman succeeded FDR and advanced the policy of containment, U.S. opposition to the spread of communism.

197. President Truman authorized the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in an effort to bring a swift end to the war in Asia and the Pacific.

198. Tensions between the democratic west and the Socialist Soviet block led to the Cold War, an international struggle for power that did not include large-scale war.

199. The Iron Curtain refers to the imaginary line dividing Soviet dominated eastern Europe from U.S. influenced western Europe.

200. The United Nations renewed the effort to provide a worldwide diplomatic body for the resolution of conflict.

201. The Marshall plan offered U.S. financial aid to any country that had democratic elections after WWII.

202. NATO and the Warsaw Pact were the opposing western and eastern military alliances in the Cold War era.

203. In response to a Soviet blockade of Berlin in 1947, the U.S. engaged in a daily airlift of supplies into the city to slave off Soviet domination.

204. By 1962 the Soviet dominated East Germans erected a wall to separate East and West Berlin and stem the flow of East Germans fleeing to the West.

205. The U.S. Clashed with China and the USSR in the 1950’s over the spread of communism to Korea. War there resulted in the creation of democratic South Korea and socialistic North Korea.

206. Fidel Castro led a successful, Soviet supported revolution in Cuba in the 1950’s where he still holds power today.

207. Mao Tse Dong led a communist revolution for control of China, squeezing the democratic nationalist onto Taiwan.

208. The U.S. efforts to stop the spread of communism to Viet Nam raged unsuccessfully through the 1960’s and 70’s

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