The history of the world (or world history) describes the history of humanity (or human history) as determined by the study of archaeological and written records, beginning with the invention of writing.

The roots of civilization reach back to the earliest introduction of primitive technology and culture, while Prehistory begins in the Palaeolithic Era, or "Early Stone Age", which is followed by the Neolithic Era, or "New Stone Age", and the Agricultural Revolution (between 8000 and 5000 BCE) in the Fertile Crescent. The latter period marked a change in human history, as humans began the systematic husbandry of plants and animals. Agriculture advanced, and most humans transitioned from a nomadic to a settled lifestyle as farmers in permanent settlements. Nomadism continued in some locations, especially in isolated regions with few domesticable plant species, but the relative security and increased productivity provided by farming allowed human communities to expand into increasingly larger units, fostered by advances in transportation.

As farming developed, grain agriculture became more sophisticated and prompted a division of labour to store food between growing seasons. Labour divisions then led to the rise of a leisured upper class and the development of cities. The growing complexity of human societies necessitated systems of writing and accounting. Many cities developed on the banks of lakes and rivers as early as 3000 BCE, when some of the first prominent, well-developed settlements had arisen in Mesopotamia ("the Land between the Rivers"), on the banks of Egypt's Nile River, in the Indus River valley and along the major rivers of China.

The history of the Old World (particularly Europe and the Mediterranean) is commonly divided into ancient history (or "Antiquity"), up to 476 CE; post-classical history (or "the Middle Ages"), from the 5th through 15th centuries, including the rise of Christianity, the Islamic Golden Age (c. 750 CE – c. 1258 CE) and the early Italian Renaissance (beginning around 1300 CE); the early modern period, from the 15th century to the late 18th, including the Age of Enlightenment; and the late modern period, from the Industrial Revolution to the present, including contemporary history.

In the mid-15th century, the invention of modern printing, employing movable type, revolutionized communication, helping end the Middle Ages and ushering in the Scientific Revolution. By the 18th century, the accumulation of knowledge and technology, especially in Europe, had reached a critical mass that brought about the Industrial Revolution. Outside the Old World, including ancient China and ancient India, historical timelines unfolded differently. However, by the 18th century, due to extensive world trade and colonization, the histories of most civilizations had become substantially intertwined (see Globalization). In the last quarter-millennium, the rates of growth of population, knowledge, technology, communications, commerce, weapons destructiveness and environmental degradation have greatly accelerated, creating opportunities and perils that now confront the planet's human communities.

Prehistory

Early humans

Genetic measurements indicate that the ape lineage which would lead to Homo sapiens diverged from the lineage that would lead to chimpanzees (the closest living relative of modern humans) around six million years ago. It is thought that the Australopithecine genus, which were likely the first apes to walk upright, eventually gave rise to genus Homo. Anatomically modern humans arose in Africa about 200,000 years ago, and reached behavioural modernity about 50,000 years ago.

Modern humans spread rapidly from Africa into the frost-free zones of Europe and Asia around 60,000 years ago. The rapid expansion of humankind to North America and Oceania took place at the climax of the most recent ice age, when temperate regions of today were extremely inhospitable. Yet, humans had colonized nearly all the ice-free parts of the globe by the end of the Ice Age, some 12,000 years ago. Other hominids such as Homo erectus had been using simple wood and stone tools for millennia, but as time progressed, tools became far more refined and complex. At some point, humans began using fire for heat and cooking. They also developed language in the Palaeolithic period and a conceptual repertoire that included systematic burial of the dead and adornment of the living. Early artistic expression can be found in the form of cave paintings and sculptures made from wood and bone, showing a spirituality generally interpreted as animism, or even shamanism. During this period, all humans lived as hunter-gatherers, and were generally nomadic. Archaeological and genetic data suggest that the source populations of Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers survived in sparsely wooded areas and dispersed through areas of high primary productivity while avoiding dense forest cover.

Rise of civilization

The Neolithic Revolution, beginning about 8,000 BCE, saw the development of agriculture, which drastically changed the human lifestyle. Mesopotamia is the site of the earliest developments of the Neolithic Revolution. It has been identified as having "inspired some of the most important developments in human history including the invention of the wheel, the planting of the first cereal crops and the development of cursive script, Mathematics, Astronomy and Agriculture."

Farming permitted far denser populations, which in time organized into states. Agriculture also created food surpluses that could support people not directly engaged in food production. The development of agriculture permitted the creation of the first cities. These were centres of trade, manufacturing and political power with nearly no agricultural production of their own. Cities established a symbiosis with their surrounding countrysides, absorbing agricultural products and providing, in return, manufactured goods and varying degrees of military control and protection.

The development of cities was synonymous with the rise of civilization. Early civilizations arose first in Lower Mesopotamia (3500 BCE), followed by Egyptian civilization along the Nile (3000 BCE), the Harappan civilization in the Indus Valley (in present-day India and Pakistan; 2500 BCE) and Chinese civilization in the Yellow River and Yangtze river (2200 BCE). These societies developed a number of unifying characteristics, including a central government, a complex economy and social structure, sophisticated language and writing systems, and distinct cultures and religions. Writing was another pivotal development in human history, as it made the administration of cities and expression of ideas far easier.

As complex civilizations arose, so did complex religions, and the first of their kind apparently originated during this period. Entities such as the Sun, Moon, Earth, sky, and sea were often deified. Shrines developed, which evolved into temple establishments, complete with a complex hierarchy of priests and priestesses and other functionaries. Typical of the Neolithic was a tendency to worship anthropomorphic deities. Among the earliest surviving written religious scriptures are the Egyptian Pyramid Texts, the oldest of which date to between 2400 and 2300 BCE. Some archaeologists suggest, based on ongoing excavations of a temple complex at Göbekli Tepe ("Potbelly Hill") in southern Turkey, dating from c. 11,500 years ago, that religion predated the Agricultural Revolution rather than following in its wake, as had generally been assumed.

Ancient history

Timeline
Dates are approximate. Consult particular article for details.

 Regions not included in the timeline include: Southern Africa, the Caribbean, Central Asia, Northern Europe,
Korea, Oceania, Siberia, Southeast Asia, and Taiwan.

Cradles of civilization

The Bronze Age is part of the three-age system (Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age) that for some parts of the world describes effectively the early history of civilization. During this era the most fertile areas of the world saw city-states and the first civilizations develop. These were concentrated in fertile river valleys: the Tigris and Euphrates in Mesopotamia, the Nile in Egypt, the Indus in the Indian subcontinent, and the Yangtze and Yellow River in China.

Sumer, located in Mesopotamia, is arguably the first known complex civilization, developing the first city-states in the 4th millennium BCE. It was in these cities that the earliest known form of writing, cuneiform script, appeared c. 3000 BCE. Cuneiform writing began as a system of pictographs. These pictorial representations eventually became simplified and more abstract. Cuneiform texts were written on clay tablets, on which symbols were drawn with a blunt reed used as a stylus. Writing made the administration of a large state far easier.

Transport was facilitated by waterways—by rivers and seas. The Mediterranean Sea, at the juncture of three continents, fostered the projection of military power and the exchange of goods, ideas, and inventions. This era also saw new land technologies, such as horse-based cavalry and chariots, that allowed armies to move faster.

These developments led to the rise of empires. Such extensive civilizations brought peace and stability over wider areas. The first empire, controlling a large territory and many cities, developed in Egypt with the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt c. 3100 BCE, while in Crete the Minoan civilization had entered the Bronze Age by 2700 BCE and is regarded as the first civilization in Europe. Over the next millennia, other river valleys would see monarchical empires rise to power. In the 25th century and 24th century BCE, Assyria and the Akkadian Empire, respectively, arose in Mesopotamia.

Over the following millennia, civilizations would develop across the world. Trade would increasingly become a source of power as states with access to important resources or controlling important trade routes would rise to dominance. In c. 2500 BCE, the Kerma Culture developed in Sudan, south of Egypt. In modern Turkey the Hittites controlled a large empire and by 1600 BCE, Mycenaean Greece began to develop. In India this era was the Vedic period, which laid the foundations of Hinduism and other cultural aspects of early Indian society, and ended in the 6th century BCE. From around 550 BCE, many independent kingdoms and republics known as the Mahajanapadas were established across the subcontinent.

As complex civilizations arose in the Eastern Hemisphere, most indigenous societies in the Americas remained relatively simple for some time, fragmented into diverse regional cultures. During the formative stage in Mesoamerica, (about 1500 BCE to 500 CE), more complex and centralized civilizations began to develop, mostly in what is now Mexico, Central America, and Peru. They include civilizations such as the Olmec, Maya, Zapotec, Moche, and Nazca. They developed agriculture as well, growing maize and other crops unique to the Americas, and creating a distinct culture and religion. These ancient indigenous societies would be greatly affected by European contact during the early modern period.

Axial Age

Beginning in the 8th century BCE, the "Axial Age" saw the development of a set of transformative philosophical and religious ideas, mostly independently, in many different places.  Chinese Confucianism, Indian Buddhism and Jainism, and Jewish monotheism are all claimed by some scholars to have developed in the 6th century BCE. (Karl Jaspers' Axial-Age theory also includes Persian Zoroastrianism, but other scholars dispute his timeline for Zoroastrianism.)  In the 5th century BCE, Socrates and Plato made substantial advances in the development of ancient Greek philosophy.

In the East, three schools of thought would dominate Chinese thinking until the modern day. These were Taoism, Legalism, and Confucianism. The Confucian tradition, which would become particularly dominant, looked for political morality not to the force of law but to the power and example of tradition.  Confucianism would later spread to the Korean Peninsula and toward Japan.

In the West, the Greek philosophical tradition, represented by Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and other philosophers, along with accumulated science, technology, and culture, diffused throughout Europe, Egypt, the Middle East, and Northwest India, starting in the 4th century BCE after the conquests of Alexander III of Macedon (Alexander the Great).

Regional empires

The millennium from 500 BCE to 500 CE saw a series of empires of unprecedented size develop. Well-trained professional armies, unifying ideologies, and advanced bureaucracies created the possibility for emperors to rule over large domains whose populations could attain numbers upwards of tens of millions of subjects.
The great empires depended on military annexation of territory and on the formation of defended settlements to become agricultural centres. The relative peace that the empires brought encouraged international trade, most notably the massive trade routes in the Mediterranean, the maritime trade web in the Indian Ocean, and the Silk Road. In southern Europe, the Greeks (and later the Romans), in an era known as "classical antiquity," established cultures whose practices, laws, and customs are considered the foundation of contemporary Western culture.

Major regional empires of this period include:

The Median Empire, from c. 700 BCE, centred in present-day Iran, but extending west to present-day Turkey and east to present-day India. The Median Empire gave way to successive Iranian empires of the period, including the world's first superpower The Achaemenid Empire (550-330 BCE) up to the Sasanian Empire (224-651 CE).

The Delian League (from 477 BCE) and the succeeding Athenian Empire (454-404 BCE), centred in present-day Greece.
Alexander the Great (356-323 BCE), of Macedon, founded an empire of conquest, extending from present-day Greece to present-day India. The empire divided shortly after his death, but the influence of his Hellenistic successors made for an extended Hellenistic period (323 – 30 BCE) throughout the region.
The Maurya Empire (322 – 185 BCE) in present-day India. In the 3rd century BCE, most of South Asia was united into the Maurya Empire by Chandragupta Maurya and flourished under Ashoka the Great. From the 3rd century CE, the Gupta dynasty oversaw the period referred to as ancient India's Golden Age. From the 4th to 6th centuries, northern India was ruled by the Gupta Empire. In southern India, three prominent Dravidian kingdoms emerged: Cheras, Cholas, and Pandyas. The ensuing stability contributed to heralding in the golden age of Hindu culture in the 4th and 5th centuries.
The Roman Empire, centred in present-day Italy. Beginning in the 3rd century BCE, the Roman Republic began expanding its territory through conquest and colonization. By the time of Augustus (63 BCE - 14 CE), who would become the first Roman Emperor, Rome had already established dominion over most of the Mediterranean. The empire would continue to grow, controlling much of the land from England to Mesopotamia, reaching its greatest extent under the emperor Trajan (d. 117 CE). In the 3rd century CE, the empire would split into western and eastern regions, with (sometimes) separate emperors. The Western empire would fall, in 476 CE, to German influence under Odoacer. The eastern empire, now known as the Byzantine Empire, with its capital at Constantinople, would continue for another thousand years, until overthrown by the Ottoman Empire in 1453 CE.
The Qin dynasty (221 – 206 BCE), the first imperial dynasty of China, followed by the Han Empire (206 BCE – 220 CE). The Han Dynasty was comparable in power and influence to the Roman Empire that lay at the other end of the Silk Road. While the Romans constructed a vast military of unprecedented power, Han China was developing advanced cartography, shipbuilding, and navigation. The East invented blast furnaces and were capable of creating finely tuned copper instruments. As with other empires during the Classical Period, Han China advanced significantly in the areas of government, education, mathematics, astronomy, technology, and many others.
The Kingdom of Aksum, centred in present-day Ethiopia. By the 1st century CE the Kingdom of Aksum had established itself as a major trading empire, dominating its neighbours in South Arabia and Kush, and controlling the Red Sea trade. They minted their own currency, and carved enormous monolithic steles such as the Obelisk of Axum to mark their Emperors' graves.
Successful regional empires were also established in the Americas, arising from cultures established as early as 2500 BCE. In Mesoamerica, vast pre-Columbian societies were built, the most notable being the Zapotec Empire (700 BCE – 1521 CE), and the Maya civilization, which reached its highest state of development during the Mesoamerican Classic period (c. 250 – 900 CE), but continued throughout the Post-Classic period until the arrival of the Spanish in the 16th century CE. Maya civilization arose as the Olmec mother culture gradually declined. The great Mayan city-states slowly rose in number and prominence, and Maya culture spread throughout the Yucatán and surrounding areas. The later empire of the Aztecs was built on neighbouring cultures and was influenced by conquered peoples such as the Toltecs.

Some areas experienced slow but steady technological advances, with important developments such as the stirrup and moldboard plough arriving every few centuries. There were, however, in some regions, periods of rapid technological progress. Most important, perhaps, was the Mediterranean area during the Hellenistic period, when hundreds of technologies were invented. Such periods were followed by periods of technological decay, as during the Roman Empire's decline and fall and the ensuing early medieval period.

Declines, falls and resurgence
The empires faced common problems associated with maintaining huge armies and supporting a central bureaucracy. These costs fell most heavily on the peasantry, while land-owning magnates increasingly evaded centralized control and its costs. Barbarian pressure on the frontiers hastened internal dissolution. China's Han dynasty fell into civil war in 220 CE, beginning the Three Kingdoms period, while its Roman counterpart became increasingly decentralized and divided about the same time in what is known as the Crisis of the Third Century. The great empires of Eurasia were all located on temperate and subtropical coastal plains. From the Central Asian steppes, horse-based nomads (mainly Mongols and Turks) dominated a large part of the continent. The development of the stirrup and the breeding of horses strong enough to carry a fully armed archer made the nomads a constant threat to the more settled civilizations.

The gradual break-up of the Roman Empire, spanning several centuries after the 2nd century CE, coincided with the spread of Christianity westward from the Middle East. The Western Roman Empire fell under the domination of Germanic tribes in the 5th century, and these polities gradually developed into a number of warring states, all associated in one way or another with the Catholic Church. The remaining part of the Roman Empire, in the eastern Mediterranean, would henceforth be the Byzantine Empire. Centuries later, a limited unity would be restored to western Europe through the establishment in 962 of the Holy Roman Empire, comprising a number of states in what is now Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Belgium, Italy, and parts of France.

In China, dynasties would rise and fall, but, by sharp contrast to the Mediterranean-European world, dynastic unity would be restored. After the fall of the Eastern Han Dynasty and the demise of the Three Kingdoms, nomadic tribes from the north began to invade in the 4th century, eventually conquering areas of northern China and setting up many small kingdoms. In 581 the Sui Dynasty successfully reunified the whole of China and laid the foundations for the Chinese golden age under the Tang dynasty (618-907).

Over the course of history, polities have tended to develop by accretion or takeover, variously amicable or hostile, and have often disintegrated. The histories even of now small countries often show earlier periods of imperialist expansion. The Roman Empire is merely one of the more memorable and paradigmatic examples of political expansion and contraction. The Chinese Empire, on the other hand, is an example of long-term political expansion and persistence—of an empire which recovered from all its declines and falls, and which challenges the paradigm of inevitable permanent imperial fall.

A champion of world history, Arnold Toynbee, concludes that the history of the world is not just a cycle of expansions and contractions. The cycle proceeds on a spatially growing scale. Formerly expansive countries become small relative to greater countries that arise on the periphery. In any historical system, "it had been common form for the states at the centre to be pigmies by comparison with the relatively gigantic size of the states on the periphery, and for the central area ... to be the arena into which the surrounding giants descend to meet and do battle with one another." The "abrupt changes of scale" have brought into existence new constellations of states. The "pigmies of today were apt to be the giants of yesterday." Examples are from the Axial Mediterranean and China, and early modern Italy. These "examples of peripeteia—the reversal of roles—in the play of the balance of power conform to a uniform pattern; and in Western history, by the time of writing [1954], this pattern of events had repeated itself."

Post-classical history

The Postclassical Era is named for the more Eurocentric era of "Classical antiquity," but "the Postclassical Era" refers to a more global outline. The era is commonly dated from the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century. The Western Roman Empire fragmented into numerous separate kingdoms, many of which would be later confederated under the Holy Roman Empire. The Eastern Roman, or Byzantine, Empire survived until late in the Middle Ages. The Postclassical period also corresponds to the Early Muslim conquests, the subsequent Islamic Golden Age, and the commencement and expansion of the Arab slave trade, followed by the Mongol invasions in the Middle East and Central Asia, and the founding (1299) of the Ottoman Empire. South Asia saw a series of middle kingdoms of India, followed by the establishment of Islamic empires in India. In western Africa, the Mali Empire and the Songhai Empire developed. On the southeast coast of Africa, Arabic ports were established where gold, spices, and other commodities were traded. This allowed Africa to join the Southeast Asia trading system, bringing it contact with Asia; this, along with Muslim culture, resulted in the Swahili culture. The Chinese Empire experienced the successive Sui, Tang, Song, Yuan, and the beginning of the Ming Dynasty. Middle Eastern trade routes along the Indian Ocean, and the Silk Road through the Gobi Desert, provided limited economic and cultural contact between Asian and European civilizations. During this same period, civilizations in the Americas, such as the Inca, Maya, and Aztec, reached their height. All would be seriously compromised by contact with European colonists at the beginning of the Modern period.

Western Asia and North Africa

Prior to the advent of Islam in the 7th century, the Middle East was dominated by the Byzantine Empire and the Persian Sasanian Empire, which constantly fought each other for control of disputed regions such as Armenia. This was also a cultural battle, with the Byzantine Hellenistic and Christian culture competing against the Persian Iranian traditions and Zoroastrian religion. The formation of the Islamic religion created a new contender that quickly surpassed both of these empires. Islam overall greatly impacted the political, economic, and military history of the Old World, especially the Middle East.

From their centre on the Arabian Peninsula, Muslims began their expansion during the early Postclassical Era. By 750 CE, they came to conquer most of the Middle East, North Africa, and parts of Europe, ushering in an era of learning, science, and invention known as the Islamic Golden Age. The knowledge and skills of the ancient Middle East, of Greece, and of Persia were preserved in the Postclassical Era by Muslims, who also added new and important innovations from outside, such as the manufacture of paper from China and decimal positional numbering from India. Much of this learning and development can be linked to geography. Even prior to Islam's presence the city of Mecca had served as a centre of trade in Arabia, and the Islamic prophet Muhammad himself was a merchant. With the new Islamic tradition of the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, the city became even more a centre for exchanging goods and ideas. The influence held by Muslim merchants over African-Arabian and Arabian-Asian trade routes was tremendous. As a result, Islamic civilization grew and expanded on the basis of its merchant economy, in contrast to the Europeans, Indians, and Chinese who based their societies on an agricultural landholding nobility. Merchants brought goods and their faith to China, India, southeast Asia, and the kingdoms of western Africa, and returned with new discoveries and inventions.

Motivated by religion and dreams of conquest, the kings of Europe launched a number of Crusades to try to roll back Muslim power and retake the Holy Land. The Crusades were ultimately unsuccessful, and served more to weaken the Byzantine Empire especially with the sack of Constantinople in 1204, which began to lose increasing amounts of territory to the Ottoman Turks. Arab domination of the region ended in the mid-11th century with the arrival of the Seljuq Turks, migrating south from the Turkic homelands in Central Asia. In the early 13th century, a new wave of invaders, the Mongol armies of the Mongol Empire, swept through the region, but were eventually eclipsed by the Turks and the founding of the Ottoman Empire in 1299.

Europe

Europe during the Early Middle Ages was characterized by depopulation, deurbanization, and barbarian invasion, all of which had begun in Late Antiquity. The barbarian invaders formed their own new kingdoms in the remains of the Western Roman Empire. In the 7th century, North Africa and the Middle East, once part of the eastern empire, became part of the Caliphate after conquest by Muhammad's successors. Although there were substantial changes in society and political structures, the break was not as extreme as once put forth by historians, with most of the new kingdoms incorporating as many of the existing Roman institutions as they could. Christianity expanded in western Europe and monasteries were founded. In the 7th and 8th centuries the Franks, under the Carolingian dynasty, established an empire covering much of western Europe; it lasted until the 9th century, when it succumbed to pressure from new invaders – the Vikings, Magyars, and Saracens.

During the High Middle Ages, which began after 1000, the population of Europe increased greatly as new technological and agricultural innovations allowed trade to flourish and crop yields to increase. Manorialism – the organization of peasants into villages that owed rents and labour service to nobles – and feudalism – a political structure whereby knights and lower-status nobles owed military service to their overlords in return for the right to rents from lands and manors – were two of the ways of organizing medieval society that developed during the High Middle Ages. Kingdoms became more centralized after the decentralizing effects of the breakup of the Carolingian Empire. The Crusades, which were first preached in 1095, were an attempt by western Christians to regain control of the Holy Land from the Muslims, and succeeded long enough to establish some Christian states in the Near East. Intellectual life was marked by scholasticism and the founding of universities, while the building of Gothic cathedrals was one of the outstanding artistic achievements of the age.

The Late Middle Ages were marked by difficulties and calamities. Famine, plague and war devastated the population of western Europe. The Black Death alone killed approximately 75 to 200 million people between 1347 and 1350. It was one of the deadliest pandemics in human history. Starting in Asia, the disease reached Mediterranean and western Europe during the late 1340s, and killed tens of millions of Europeans in six years; between a third and a half of the population.

The Middle Ages witnessed the first sustained urbanization of northern and western Europe. Many modern European states owe their origins to events unfolding in the Middle Ages; present European political boundaries are, in many regards, the result of the military and dynastic achievements during this tumultuous period. The Middle Ages lasted until the beginning of the Early modern period in the 16th century, marked by the rise of nation states, the division of Western Christianity in the Reformation, the rise of humanism in the Italian Renaissance, and the beginnings of European overseas expansion which allowed for the Columbian Exchange.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Medieval Sub-Saharan Africa was home to many different civilizations. The Kingdom of Aksum declined in the 7th century as Islam cut it off from its Christian allies and its people moved further into the Ethiopian Highlands for protection. They eventually gave way to the Zagwe dynasty who are famed for their rock cut architecture at Lalibela. The Zagwe would then fall to the Solomonic dynasty who claimed descent from the Aksumite emperors and would rule the country well into the 20th century. In the West African Sahel region, many Islamic empires rose, such as the Ghana Empire, the Mali Empire, the Songhai Empire, and the Kanem Empire. They controlled the trans-Saharan trade in gold, ivory, salt and slaves.

South of the Sahel civilizations rose in the coastal forests where horses and camels could not survive. These include the Yoruba city of Ife (noted for its naturalistic art) and the Oyo Empire, the Benin Empire of the Edo people centred in Benin City, the Igbo Kingdom of Nri which produced advanced bronze art at Igbo-Ukwu, and the Akan who are noted for their intricate architecture.

In what is now modern Zimbabwe various kingdoms evolved from the Kingdom of Mapungubwe in modern South Africa. They flourished through trade with the Swahili people on the East African coast. They built large defensive stone structures without mortar such as Great Zimbabwe, capital of the Kingdom of Zimbabwe, Khami, capital of Kingdom of Butua, and Danangombe (Dhlo-Dhlo), capital of the Rozwi Empire. The Swahili people themselves were the inhabitants of the East African coast from Kenya to Mozambique who traded extensively with Asians and Arabs, who introduced them to Islam. They built many port cities such as Mombasa, Zanzibar, and Kilwa, which were known to Chinese sailors under Zheng He and Islamic geographers.

South Asia
In northern India, after the fall (550 CE) of the Gupta Empire, the region divided into a complex and fluid network of smaller kingly states. Early Muslim incursions began in the west in 712 CE, when the Arab Umayyad Caliphate annexed much of present-day Pakistan. Arab military advance was largely halted at that point, but Islam still spread in India, largely due to the influence of Arab merchants along the western coast. Post-classical dynasties in Southern India included those of the Chalukyas, the Rashtrakutas, the Hoysalas, the Cholas, the Islamic Mughals, the Marathas and the Mysores. Science, engineering, art, literature, astronomy, and philosophy flourished under the patronage of these kings.

East Asia
After a period of relative disunity, the Sui dynasty reunified China in 581, and under the succeeding Tang dynasty (618–907) China entered a second Golden Age. The Tang dynasty eventually splintered, however, and after half a century of turmoil the Song Dynasty reunified China, making it the richest, most skilled, and most populous country on Earth. Pressure from nomadic empires to the north became increasingly urgent. By 1142, North China had been lost to the Jurchens in the Jin–Song Wars, and the Mongol Empire conquered all of China in 1279, along with almost half of Eurasia's landmass. After about a century of Mongol Yuan dynasty rule, the ethnic Chinese reasserted control with the founding of the Ming dynasty (1368).

In Japan, the imperial lineage had been established by this time, and during the Asuka period (538 to 710) the Yamato Province developed into a clearly centralized state. Buddhism was introduced, and there was an emphasis on the adoption of elements of Chinese culture and Confucianism. The Nara period of the 8th century marked the emergence of a strong Japanese state and is often portrayed as a golden age. During this period, the imperial government undertook great public works, including government offices, temples, roads, and irrigation systems. The Heian period (794 to 1185) saw the peak of imperial power, followed by the rise of militarized clans, and the beginning of Japanese feudalism. The feudal period of Japanese history, dominated by powerful regional families (daimyō) and the military rule of warlords (shogun), stretched from 1185 to 1868. The emperor remained, but mostly as a figurehead, and the power of merchants was weak.

Postclassical Korea saw the end of the Three Kingdoms era, the three kingdoms being Goguryeo, Baekje and Silla. Silla conquered Baekje in 660, and Goguryeo in 668, marking the beginning of the North–South States Period (남북국시대), with Unified Silla in the south and Balhae, a successor state to Goguryeo, in the north. In 892 CE, this arrangement reverted to the Later Three Kingdoms, with Goguryeo (then called Taebong and eventually named Goryeo) emerging as dominant, unifying the entire peninsula by 936. The founding Goryeo dynasty ruled until 1392, succeeded by the Joseon Dynasty, which ruled for approximately 500 years.

Central Asia
Starting with the Sui Dynasty (581-618), the Chinese began expansion into eastern Central Asia, and had to deal with Turkic nomads, who were becoming the most dominant ethnic group in Central Asia. Originally the relationship was largely cooperative, but in 630 the Tang dynasty began an offensive against the Turks, capturing areas of the Mongolian Ordos Desert. The Tang Empire competed with the Tibetan Empire for control of areas in Inner and Central Asia. In the 8th century, Islam began to penetrate the region and soon became the sole faith of most of the population, though Buddhism remained strong in the east. The desert nomads of Arabia could militarily match the nomads of the steppe, and the early Arab Empire gained control over parts of Central Asia.

The Hephthalites were the most powerful of the nomad groups in the 6th and 7th centuries, and controlled much of the region. In the 9th through 13th centuries the region was divided between several powerful states including the Samanid dynasty, the Seljuq dynasty, and the Khwarezmid Empire. The most spectacular power to rise out of Central Asia developed when Genghis Khan united the tribes of Mongolia. The Mongol Empire spread to comprise all of Central Asia and China as well as large parts of Russia, and the Middle East. After Genghis Khan died in 1227, most of Central Asia continued to be dominated by the successor Chagatai Khanate. In 1369, Timur, a Turkic leader in the Mongol military tradition, conquered most of the region. Timur's large empire collapsed soon after his death, however. The region then became divided among a series of smaller Khanates, including the Khanate of Khiva, the Khanate of Bukhara, the Khanate of Kokand, and the Khanate of Kashgar.

Southeast Asia
The beginning of the Middle Ages in Southeast Asia saw the fall (550 CE) of the Kingdom of Funan to the Chenla Empire, which was then replaced by the Khmer Empire (802 CE). The Khmer's capital city Angkor was the largest city in the world prior to the industrial age and contained over a thousand temples, the most famous being Angkor Wat. The Sukhothai (1238 CE) and Ayutthaya (1351 CE) kingdoms were major powers of the Thai people, who were influenced by the Khmer. Starting in the 9th century, the Pagan Kingdom rose to prominence in modern Myanmar. Other notable kingdoms of the period include the Srivijayan Empire and the Lavo Kingdom (both coming into prominence in the 7th century), the Champa and the Hariphunchai (both about 750), the Dai Viet (968), Lan Na (13th century), Majapahit (1293), Lan Xang (1354), and the Kingdom of Ava (1364). It was also during this period that Islam spread to present-day Indonesia (beginning in the 13th century), and the Malay states began to emerge.

Oceania
The Tuʻi Tonga Empire was founded in the 10th century CE and expanded between 1200 and 1500. Tongan culture, language, and hegemony spread widely throughout Eastern Melanesia, Micronesia and Central Polynesia during this period, influencing East 'Uvea, Rotuma, Futuna, Samoa and Niue, as well as specific islands / parts of Micronesia (Kiribati, Pohnpei, miscellaneous outliers), Vanuatu, and New Caledonia (specifically, the Loyalty Islands, with the main island being predominantly populated by the Melanesian Kanak people and their cultures). At around the same time, a powerful thalassocracy appeared in Eastern Polynesia centred around the Society Islands, specifically on the sacred Taputapuatea marae, which drew in Eastern Polynesian colonists from places as far away as Hawai'i, New Zealand (Aotearoa), and the Tuamotu Islands for political, spiritual and economic reasons, until the unexplained collapse of regular long-distance voyaging in the Eastern Pacific a few centuries before Europeans began exploring the area. Indigenous written records from this period are virtually non-existent, as it seems that all Pacific Islanders, with the possible exception of the enigmatic Rapa Nui and their currently undecipherable Rongorongo script, had no writing systems of any kind until after their introduction by European colonists; however, some indigenous prehistories can be estimated and academically reconstructed through careful, judicious analysis of native oral traditions, colonial ethnography, archaeology, physical anthropology and linguistics research.

The Americas
In North America, this period saw the rise of the Mississippian culture in the modern United States c. 800 CE, marked by the extensive 12th-century urban complex at Cahokia. The Ancestral Puebloans and their predecessors (9th - 13th centuries) built extensive permanent settlements, including stone structures that would remain the largest buildings in North America until the 19th century. In Mesoamerica, the Teotihuacan civilization fell and the Classic Maya collapse occurred. The Aztec came to dominate much of Mesoamerica in the 14th and 15th centuries. In South America, the 14th and 15th centuries saw the rise of the Inca. The Inca Empire of Tawantinsuyu, with its capital at Cusco, spanned the entire Andes Mountain Range, making it the most extensive Pre-Columbian civilization. The Inca were prosperous and advanced, known for an excellent road system and unrivaled masonry.

Modern history

Modern history (the "modern period," the "modern era," "modern times") is history of the period following the Middle Ages. "Contemporary history" is history that only covers events from c. 1900 to the present day.

Early modern period

"Early modern period" is a term used by historians to refer to the period between the Middle Ages (Post-classical history) and the Industrial Revolution – roughly 1500 to 1800. The Early Modern period is characterized by the rise of science, and by increasingly rapid technological progress, secularized civic politics, and the nation state. Capitalist economies began their rise, initially in northern Italian republics such as Genoa. The Early Modern period also saw the rise and dominance of the mercantilist economic theory. As such, the Early Modern period represents the decline and eventual disappearance, in much of the European sphere, of feudalism, serfdom and the power of the Catholic Church. The period includes the Protestant Reformation, the disastrous Thirty Years' War, the Age of Discovery, European colonial expansion, the peak of European witch-hunting, the Scientific revolution, and the Age of Enlightenment.

Renaissance

Europe's Renaissance, beginning in the 14th century, consisted of the rediscovery of the classical world's scientific contributions, and of the economic and social rise of Europe. The Renaissance also engendered a culture of inquisitiveness which ultimately led to Humanism and the Scientific Revolution. Although it saw social and political upheaval and revolutions in many intellectual pursuits, the Renaissance is perhaps known best for its artistic developments and the contributions of such polymaths as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, who inspired the term "Renaissance man."

European expansion

During this period, European powers came to dominate most of the world. Although the most developed regions of European classical civilization were more urbanized than any other region of the world, European civilization had undergone a lengthy period of gradual decline and collapse. During the Early Modern Period, Europe was able to regain its dominance; historians still debate the causes.

This success of Europe in this period stands in contrast to that of other regions. For example, one of the most advanced civilizations of the Middle Ages was China. It had developed an advanced monetary economy by 1,000 CE. China had a free peasantry who were no longer subsistence farmers, and could sell their produce and actively participate in the market. According to Adam Smith, writing in the 18th century, China had long been one of the richest, most fertile, best cultivated, most industrious, most urbanized, and most prosperous countries in the world. It enjoyed a technological advantage and had a monopoly in cast iron production, piston bellows, suspension bridge construction, printing, and the compass. However, it seemed to have long since stopped progressing. Marco Polo, who visited China in the 13th century, describes its cultivation, industry, and populousness, almost in the same terms as travellers in the 18th century describe them.

One theory of Europe's rise holds that Europe's geography played an important role in its success. The Middle East, India and China are all ringed by mountains and oceans but, once past these outer barriers, are nearly flat. By contrast, the Pyrenees, Alps, Apennines, Carpathians and other mountain ranges run through Europe, and the continent is also divided by several seas. This gave Europe some degree of protection from the peril of Central Asian invaders. Before the era of firearms, these nomads were militarily superior to the agricultural states on the periphery of the Eurasian continent and, as they broke out into the plains of northern India or the valleys of China, were all but unstoppable. These invasions were often devastating. The Golden Age of Islam was ended by the Mongol sack of Baghdad in 1258. India and China were subject to periodic invasions, and Russia spent a couple of centuries under the Mongol-Tatar yoke. Central and western Europe, logistically more distant from the Central Asian heartland, proved less vulnerable to these threats.

Geography contributed to important geopolitical differences. For most of their histories, China, India, and the Middle East were each unified under a single dominant power that expanded until it reached the surrounding mountains and deserts. In 1600 the Ottoman Empire controlled almost all the Middle East, the Ming dynasty ruled China, and the Mughal Empire held sway over India. By contrast, Europe was almost always divided into a number of warring states. Pan-European empires, with the notable exception of the Roman Empire, tended to collapse soon after they arose. Another doubtless important geographic factor in the rise of Europe was the Mediterranean Sea, which, for millennia, had functioned as a maritime superhighway fostering the exchange of goods, people, ideas and inventions.

Nearly all the agricultural civilizations have been heavily constrained by their environments. Productivity remained low, and climatic changes easily instigated boom-and-bust cycles that brought about civilizations' rise and fall. By about 1500, however, there was a qualitative change in world history. Technological advance and the wealth generated by trade gradually brought about a widening of possibilities.

Many have also argued that Europe's institutions allowed it to expand, that property rights and free-market economics were stronger than elsewhere due to an ideal of freedom peculiar to Europe. In recent years, however, scholars such as Kenneth Pomeranz have challenged this view. Europe's maritime expansion unsurprisingly — given the continent's geography — was largely the work of its Atlantic states: Portugal, Spain, England, France, and the Netherlands. Initially the Portuguese and Spanish Empires were the predominant conquerors and sources of influence, and their union resulted in the Iberian Union, the first global empire on which the "sun never set". Soon the more northern English, French and Dutch began to dominate the Atlantic. In a series of wars fought in the 17th and 18th centuries, culminating with the Napoleonic Wars, Britain emerged as the new world power.

Regional developments
Persia came under the rule of the Safavid Empire in 1501, succeeded by the Afsharid Empire in 1736, and the Qajar Empire in 1796. Areas to the north and east were held by Uzbeks and Pashtuns. The Ottoman Empire, after taking Constantinople in 1453, quickly gained control of the Middle East, the Balkans, and most of North Africa.

In Africa, this period saw a decline in many civilizations and an advancement in others. The Swahili Coast declined after coming under Portuguese (and later Omani) control. In west Africa, the Songhai Empire fell to the Moroccans in 1591 when they invaded with guns. The South African Kingdom of Zimbabwe gave way to smaller kingdoms such as Mutapa, Butua, and Rozwi. Ethiopia suffered from the 1531 invasion from neighbouring Muslim Adal Sultanate, and in 1769 entered the Zemene Mesafint (Age of Princes) during which the Emperor became a figurehead and the country was ruled by warlords, though the royal line later would recover under Emperor Tewodros II. The Ajuran Empire, in the Horn of Africa, began to decline in the 17th century, succeeded by the Geledi Sultanate. Other civilizations in Africa advanced during this period. The Oyo Empire experienced its golden age, as did the Benin Empire. The Ashanti Empire rose to power in what is modern day Ghana in 1670. The Kingdom of Kongo also thrived during this period. European exploration of Africa reached its zenith at this time.

In the Far East, the Chinese Ming Dynasty gave way (1644) to the Qing, the last Chinese imperial dynasty, which would rule until 1912. Japan experienced its Azuchi–Momoyama period (1568 – 1603), followed by the Edo period (1603-1868). The Korean Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910) ruled throughout this period, successfully repelling 16th- and 17th-century invasions from Japan and China. Japan and China were significantly affected during this period by expanded maritime trade with Europe, particularly the Portuguese in Japan. During the Edo period, Japan would pursue isolationist policies, to eliminate foreign influences.

On the Indian subcontinent, the Delhi Sultanate and the Deccan sultanates would give way, beginning in the 16th century, to the Mughal Empire. Starting in the northwest, the Mughal Empire would by the late 17th century come to rule the entire subcontinent, except for the southernmost Indian provinces, which would remain independent. Against the Muslim Mughal Empire, the Hindu Maratha Empire was founded on the west coast in 1674, gradually gaining territory – a majority of present-day India—from the Mughals over several decades, particularly in the Mughal–Maratha Wars (1681-1701). The Maratha Empire would fall to the British in 1818, under the control of the British East India Company, with all former Maratha and Mughal authority devolving to the British Raj in 1858.

In 1511, the Portuguese overthrew the Malacca Sultanate in present-day Malaysia and Indonesian Sumatra. The Portuguese held this important trading territory (and the valuable associated navigational strait) until overthrown by the Dutch in 1641. The Johor Sultanate, centred on the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, became the dominant trading power in the region. European colonization would affect the whole of Southeast Asia – the British in Myanmar and Malaysia, the French in Indochina, the Dutch in the Netherlands East Indies, and the Spanish in the Philippines. Only Thailand would successfully resist colonization.

The Pacific islands of Oceania would also be affected by European contact, starting with the circumnavigational voyage of Ferdinand Magellan, who landed on the Marianas and other islands in 1521. Also notable were the voyages (1642–44) of Abel Tasman to present-day Australia, New Zealand and nearby islands, and the voyages (1768-1779) of Captain James Cook, who made the first recorded European contact with Hawaii. Britain would found its first colony on Australia in 1788.

In the Americas, the western European powers vigorously colonized the newly discovered continents, largely displacing the indigenous populations, and destroying the advanced civilizations of the Aztecs and the Inca. Spain, Portugal, Britain, and France all made extensive territorial claims, and undertook large-scale settlement, including the importation of large numbers of African slaves. Portugal claimed Brazil. Spain claimed the rest of South America, Mesoamerica, and southern North America. Britain colonized the east coast of North America, and France colonized the central region of North America. Russia made incursions onto the northwest coast of North America, with a first colony in present-day Alaska in 1784, and the outpost of Fort Ross in present-day California in 1812. In 1762, in the midst of the Seven Years' War, France secretly ceded most of its North American claims to Spain in the Treaty of Fontainebleau. Thirteen of the British colonies declared independence as the United States of America in 1776, ratified by the Treaty of Paris in 1783, ending the American Revolutionary War. Napoleon Bonaparte won France's claims back from Spain in the Napoleonic Wars in 1800, but sold them to the United States in 1803 as the Louisiana Purchase.

In Russia, Ivan the Terrible was crowned (1547) the first Tsar of Russia, and by annexing the Turkic Khanates in the east, transformed Russia into a regional power. The countries of western Europe, while expanding prodigiously through technological advancement and colonial conquest, competed with each other economically and militarily in a state of almost constant war. Often the wars had a religious dimension, either Catholic versus Protestant, or (primarily in eastern Europe) Christian versus Muslim. Wars of particular note include the Thirty Years' War, the War of the Spanish Succession, the Seven Years' War, and the French Revolutionary Wars. Napoleon came to power in France in 1799, an event foreshadowing the Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century.

Late Modern period

1750–1914

The Scientific Revolution changed humanity's understanding of the world and led to the Industrial Revolution, a major transformation of the world's economies. The Scientific Revolution in the 17th century had made little immediate impact on industrial technology; only in the second half of the 18th century did scientific advances begin to be applied significantly to practical invention. The Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain and used new modes of production — the factory, mass production, and mechanization — to manufacture a wide array of goods faster and using less labour than previously. The Age of Enlightenment also led to the beginnings of modern democracy in the late-18th century American and French Revolutions. Democracy and republicanism would grow to have a profound effect on world events and on quality of life.

After Europeans had achieved influence and control over the Americas, the imperial activities turned to the lands of the Asia and Oceania. In the 19th century the European states had social and technological advantage over Eastern lands. Britain gained control of the Indian subcontinent, Egypt and the Malay Peninsula; the French took Indochina; while the Dutch cemented their control over the Dutch East Indies. The British also colonized Australia, New Zealand and South Africa with large numbers of British colonists emigrating to these colonies. Russia colonized large pre-agricultural areas of Siberia. In the late 19th century, the European powers divided the remaining areas of Africa. Within Europe, economic and military challenges created a system of nation states, and ethno-linguistic groupings began to identify themselves as distinctive nations with aspirations for cultural and political autonomy. This nationalism would become important to peoples across the world in the 20th century.

During the Second Industrial Revolution, the world economy became reliant on coal as a fuel, as new methods of transport, such as railways and steamships, effectively shrank the world. Meanwhile, industrial pollution and environmental damage, present since the discovery of fire and the beginning of civilization, accelerated drastically.

The advantages that Europe had developed by the mid-18th century were two: an entrepreneurial culture, and the wealth generated by the Atlantic trade (including the African slave trade). By the late 16th century, silver from the Americas accounted for the Spanish empire's wealth. The profits of the slave trade and of West Indian plantations amounted to 5% of the British economy at the time of the Industrial Revolution. While some historians conclude that, in 1750, labour productivity in the most developed regions of China was still on a par with that of Europe's Atlantic economy (see the NBER Publications by Carol H. Shiue and Wolfgang Keller), other historians like Angus Maddison hold that the per-capita productivity of western Europe had by the late Middle Ages surpassed that of all other regions.

1914–1945

The 20th century opened with Europe at an apex of wealth and power, and with much of the world under its direct colonial control or its indirect domination. Much of the rest of the world was influenced by heavily Europeanized nations: the United States and Japan. As the century unfolded, however, the global system dominated by rival powers was subjected to severe strains, and ultimately seemed to yield to a more fluid structure of independent nations organized on Western models.

This transformation was catalysed by wars of unparalleled scope and devastation. World War I destroyed many of Europe's empires and monarchies, and weakened Britain and France. In its aftermath, powerful ideologies arose. The Russian Revolution of 1917 created the first communist state, while the 1920s and 1930s saw militaristic fascist dictatorships gain control in Italy, Germany, Spain and elsewhere.

Ongoing national rivalries, exacerbated by the economic turmoil of the Great Depression, helped precipitate World War II. The militaristic dictatorships of Europe and Japan pursued an ultimately doomed course of imperialist expansionism. Their defeat opened the way for the advance of Socialism and Communism into Central Europe, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania, Albania, China, North Vietnam and North Korea.

1945–2000

After World War II ended in 1945, the United Nations was founded in the hope of allaying conflicts among nations and preventing future wars. The Soviet Union, the United States, the United Kingdom and China were recognized as the Allied "Big Four" during the war and considered as the primary victors of World War II. With the addition of France, these five countries became the permanent seats in the United Nations Security Council. The war had, however, left two nations, the United States and the Soviet Union, with principal power to guide international affairs. Each was suspicious of the other and feared a global spread of the other's political-economic model. This led to the Cold War, a forty-five-year stand-off between the United States, the Soviet Union, and their respective allies. With the development of nuclear weapons and the subsequent arms race, all of humanity were put at risk of nuclear war between the two superpowers. Such war being viewed as impractical, proxy wars were instead waged, at the expense of non-nuclear-armed Third World countries.

The Cold War lasted to the 1990s, when the Soviet Union's communist system began to collapse, unable to compete economically with the United States and western Europe; the Soviets' Central European "satellites" reasserted their national sovereignty, and in 1991 the Soviet Union itself disintegrated. The United States for the time being was left as the "sole remaining superpower". After the 1970s, the United States' superpower status came into question as that country's economic supremacy began to show signs of slippage.

In the early postwar decades, the African and Asian colonies of the Belgian, British, Dutch, French and other west European empires won their formal independence. These nations faced challenges in the form of neocolonialism, poverty, illiteracy and endemic tropical diseases.

Many Western and Central European nations gradually formed a political and economic community, the European Union, which expanded eastward to include former Soviet satellites.

The 20th century saw explosive progress in science and technology, and increased life expectancy and standard of living for much of humanity. As the developed world shifted from a coal-based to a petroleum-based economy, new transport technologies, along with the dawn of the Information Age, led to increased globalization. Space exploration reached throughout the Solar System. The structure of DNA, the template of life, was discovered, and the human genome was sequenced, a major milestone in the understanding of human biology and the treatment of disease. Global literacy rates continued to rise, and the percentage of the world's labour pool needed to produce humankind's food supply continued to drop.

The technologies of sound recordings, motion pictures, and radio and television broadcasting produced a means for rapid dissemination of information and entertainment. In the last decade of the twentieth century, a rapid increase took place in the use of computers, including personal computers. A global communication network emerged in the Internet.

The century saw several global threats emerge or become more serious or more widely recognized, including nuclear proliferation, global climate change, deforestation, overpopulation, deadly epidemics of diseases such as Ebola virus, near-Earth asteroids and comets, supervolcano eruptions, and the dwindling of global natural resources (particularly fossil fuels).

Contemporary history

21st century

A man-made hazard to world survival that dominated concerns in the second half of the 20th century, continues into the 21st.  Countries ambitious to develop and deploy nuclear weapons are discouraged from doing so by countries that already possess them.  At the same time, nuclear-armed countries have shown little urgency about honoring their 20th-century pledge to eventually eliminate all nuclear weapons.  Such weapons continue to be equally hazardous to their owners as to their potential targets.

The 21st century has been marked by growing economic globalization and integration, with consequent increased risk to interlinked economies, and by the expansion of communications with mobile phones and the Internet.  The rise of the personal computer and the the Worldwide Web has caused fundamental changes in multiple aspects of human society, in both business and personal spheres.

The early 21st century saw escalating intra- and international strife in the Middle East and Afghanistan, stimulated by vast economic disparities, by dissatisfaction with governments dominated by Western interests, by inter-ethnic and inter-sectarian feuds, and by the longest war in the history of the United States, the proximate cause for which was Osama bin Laden's provocative 2001 destruction of New York City's World Trade Center.

U.S. military involvements in the Middle East and Afghanistan drained U.S. economic resources at a time when the U.S. and other Western countries were experiencing mounting socioeconomic dislocations aggravated by the robotization of work and the exportation of industries to cheaper-workforce countries.

Worldwide demand and competition for resources has risen due to growing populations and industrialization, especially in India, China and Brazil (see List of countries by carbon dioxide emissions per capita). This increased demand is causing increased levels of environmental degradation and a growing threat of global warming. That, and a need for reliable energy supplies independent of politically volatile regions, has spurred the development of alternate, renewable sources of energy (notably solar energy and wind energy), proposals for cleaner fossil-fuel technologies and for expanded use of nuclear energy (somewhat dampened by nuclear-plant accidents), and, conversely, calls to eschew the indiscriminate large-scale employment of the "fissile-fossil complex" of fissile- (nuclear) and fossil-fuel (coal, petroleum, natural-gas) energy generation.

See also

History topics

 Economic history of the world
 Civilization
 Historical powers
 Medieval demography
 Historic recurrence
 History of science
 History of technology
 Technological singularity
 Historiography
 Development criticism
 Flood myth
 List of millennia

History by period
 List of archaeological periods
 List of time periods

History by region

 History of Africa
 History of Asia
 History of Central Asia
 History of East Asia
 History of South Asia
 History of Southeast Asia
 History of Europe
 History of the Middle East
 History of Oceania
 History of Australia
 History of New Zealand
 History of the Pacific Islands
 History of the Americas
 History of Central America
 History of the Maya civilization
 History of South America
 History of North America
 History of the Caribbean
 History of Antarctica

Notes

References

 Martin Rees, interviewed by Erin Biba, "An Apocalypse Think Tank", Scientific American, vol. 312, no. 6 (June 2015), p. 26.
 Williams, H. S. (1904). The Historians' History of the World; a comprehensive narrative of the rise and development of nations as recorded by over two thousand of the great writers of all ages. New York: The Outlook Company; [etc.].
 Blainey, Geoffery (2000). A Short History Of The World. Penguin Books, Victoria. ISBN 0-670-88036-1
 Gombrich, Ernst H. A Little History of the World. Yale. UK and USA, 2005.
 H. G. Wells (1920), The Outline of History Volume One, New York, MacMillan.
 H. Spodek (2001), The World's History: combined volume, Upper Saddle River, NJ, Prentice Hall.
 G.W. Trompf, The Idea of Historical Recurrence in Western Thought, from Antiquity to the Reformation, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1979, ISBN 0-520-03479-1.
 G. Parker (1997), The Times Atlas of World History, London, Times Books.
 Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000, New York, Random House, 1987, ISBN 0-394-54674-1
 The Biosphere (A Scientific American Book), San Francisco, W.H. Freeman and Co., 1970, ISBN 0-7167-0945-7. This seminal book, originally a 1970 Scientific American magazine issue, covered virtually every major concern and concept that has since been debated regarding materials and energy resources, population trends and environmental degradation.
 David Biello, "The Carbon Capture Fallacy", Scientific American, vol. 314, no. 1 (January 2016), pp. 58–65.

 Energy and Power (A Scientific American Book), San Francisco, W.H. Freeman and Co., 1971, ISBN 0-7167-0938-4.

 Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man, Free Press, 1992, ISBN 0-02-910975-2.
 Marshall Hodgson, Rethinking World History: Essays on Europe, Islam, and World History, Cambridge, 1993.
 William Nordhaus, "A New Solution: the Climate Club" (a review of Gernot Wagner and Martin Weitzman, Climate Shock: The Economic Consequences of a Hotter Planet, Princeton University Press, 250 pp, $27.95), The New York Review of Books, vol. LXII, no. 10 (4 June 2015), pp. 36–39.
 Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe and the Making of the Modern World Economy, Princeton, 2000.
 Clive Ponting, World History: a New Perspective, London, 2000.
 W.N.Weech (editor), History of the World, Odhams, Long Acre, London, WC2 (no ISBN), 1944.
 Ronald Wright, A Short History of Progress, Toronto, Anansi, 2004, ISBN 0-88784-706-4.
 Guy Ankerl, Coexisting Contemporary Civilizations: Arabo-Muslim, Bharati, Chinese, and Western, Geneva, INUPRESS, 2000, ISBN 2-88155-004-5.
 Zongzheng, Xue (1992). A History of Turks. Beijing: Chinese Social Sciences Press.
 Whitfield, Susan (2004). The Silk Road: Trade, Travel, War, and Faith. Serendia Publications, Inc. ISBN 978-1-932476-13-2.
 Eric Schlosser, Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety, Penguin Press, 2013, ISBN 1594202273.

Further reading
 Baten, Joerg (ed.)(2016). A History of the Global Economy: 1500 to present. ISBN 978-1-107-50718-0.
 Fournet, Louis-Henri (1986). Diagrammatic Chart of World History. Editions Sides. ISBN 978-2-868-61096-6
 Frankopan, Peter (2015). The Silk Roads: A New History of the World Knopf. ISBN 978-1101946329.
 Gonick, Larry (1997). The Cartoon History of the Universe, Volume One, Main Street Books. ISBN 978-0-385-26520-1; Volume Two, Main Street Books, 1994, ISBN 978-0-385-42093-8, Volume Three, W. W. Norton & Company, 2002, ISBN 978-0-393-32403-7.
 Landes, David (1999). The Wealth and Poverty of Nations W. W. Norton & Company, New York. ISBN 978-0-393-31888-3.
 Landes, David, "Why Europe and the West? Why Not China?", Journal of Economic Perspectives, 20:2, 3, 2006.
 McNeill, William H. (1963). The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
 Novick, Sheldon, The Careless Atom, Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1969.

External links

 Crash Course World History
 British Museum - A History of the World (archived).
 Pella, John & Erik Ringmar, History of International Relations Open Textbook Project, Cambridge: Open Book. (archived).

World
World history
Articles which contain graphical timelines
Romi panam

Sonvsaracho Itihas


Jan Skácel (7 February 1922 in Vnorovy – 7 November 1989 in Brno) was a Czech poet of Moravian origin, widely acclaimed as one of the best poets who had been writing in Czech.

He often juxtaposed the fear stoked by the communist regime in Czechoslovakia and the highly free syntax of Czech language. His poems are closely connected to the traditions and the nature of the region he lived in, Southern Moravia.

His poems were mentioned in the book Ignorance written by Milan Kundera.

Skácel was the editor of Host do domu, an important literary magazine between 1963 and 1969. He was awarded the German international literary Petrarca-Preis and Slovenian international Vilenica prize in 1989.

When in 1996 she won the Georg-Büchner Prize for literature, the German poet Sarah Kirsch named Skácel as a major influence.

Works

Poetry
Kolik příležitostí má růže Prague, 1957 (How many chances the rose has)
Co zbylo z anděla Prague, 1960 (What remained of angel)
Hodina mezi psem a vlkem Prague, 1962 (An hour between dog and wolf)
Smuténka Prague, 1965 (title is neologism with root "smutný" = sad, it associates botanic name)
Vítr jménem Jaromír Prague, 1966 (Wind called Jaromír)
Metličky Prague, 1968 (Little whisks)
Tratidla Brno, 1974 (neologism with root "tratit" = to lose, it associates toponyme)
Dávné proso Brno, 1981 (Ancient Millet)
Naděje s bukovými křídly Prague, 1983 (Hope with Wings of Beech)
Odlévání do ztraceného vosku Brno, 1984 (Lost-wax casting)
Kdo pije potmě víno Brno, 1988 (Drinker of wine in the dark)
A znovu láska Brno, 1991 (Love again)

Prose
Jedenáctý bílý kůň Brno 1966 (The eleventh white horse)
Třináctý černý kůň Brno 1993 (The thirteenth black horse)

References

1922 births
1989 deaths
People from Hodonín District
Czech poets
Czech male poets
20th-century Czech poets
20th-century male writers
Masaryk University alumni
Czechoslovak writers

Jan Skácel


A bollard is a sturdy, short, vertical post. The term originally referred to a post on a ship or quay used principally for mooring boats. It now also refers to posts installed to control road traffic and posts designed to prevent automotive vehicles from colliding or crashing into pedestrians and structures.

Etymology
The term is probably related to bole, meaning a tree trunk. The earliest citation given by the Oxford English Dictionary (referring to a maritime bollard) dates from 1844, although a reference in the Caledonian Mercury in 1817 describes bollards as huge posts.

History

Wooden posts were used for basic traffic management from at least the beginning of the 18th century. An early well-documented case is that of the "two oak-posts" set up next to the medieval Eleanor cross at Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire, in 1721, at the expense of the Society of Antiquaries of London, "to secure Waltham Cross from injury by Carriages".

Types

Maritime

In the maritime contexts in which the term originates, a bollard is either a wooden or iron post found as a deck-fitting on a ship or boat, and used to secure ropes for towing, mooring and other purposes; or its counterpart on land, a short wooden, iron, or stone post on a quayside to which craft can be moored. The Sailor's Word-Book of 1867 defines a bollard in a more specific context as "a thick piece of wood on the head of a whale-boat, round which the harpooner gives the line a turn, in order to veer it steadily, and check the animal's velocity". Bollards on ships, when arranged in pairs, may also be referred to as "bitts".

Road traffic

Roadside bollards

Bollards can be used either to control traffic intake size by limiting movements, or to control traffic speed by narrowing the available space. Israel's Transportation Research Institute found that putting bollards at highway exits to control traffic also reduced accidents.

Permanent bollards can be used for traffic-control or guarding against vehicle-ramming attacks. They may be mounted near enough to each other that they block ordinary cars/trucks, for instance, but spaced widely enough to permit special-purpose vehicles, bicycles, and pedestrians to pass through. Bollards may also be used to enclose car-free zones. Bollards and other street furniture can also be used to control overspill parking onto sidewalks and verges.

Traffic-island bollards

Traffic bollards are used to highlight traffic islands. They are primarily used at intersections within the splitter islands (a raised or painted area on the approach of a roundabout used to separate entering from exiting traffic, deflect and slow entering traffic, and provide a stopping place for pedestrians crossing the road in two stages).

Illuminated bollards are also used to supplement street signs and street lighting to provide a visual cue to approaching drivers that an obstacle exists ahead during hours of darkness and during periods of low visibility:

Internally illuminated traffic bollards have been in existence throughout the United Kingdom and Ireland since the 1930s, although the term "bollard" only seems to have been in common use since the late 1940s. An illuminated bollard has a recessed base light unit in the foundation to illuminate the traffic bollard from all angles. The main components are housed below the road or pedestrian surface (typically a concrete surface). Therefore, if a vehicle strikes the traffic bollard, the units below the surface are not damaged. In addition, most new modern traffic bollards installed along UK roadways today are made of materials that make them completely collapsible. When struck by a vehicle at low or high speed, the traffic bollard shell reverts to its original position with minimal to no damage to the unit.

Reflective bollards may also be used; they need no power or maintenance, and can be built to recover to their normal position after being struck.

Bell

A bell bollard is a style of bollard designed to deflect vehicle tires. The wheel mounts the lower part of the bollard and is deflected by its increasing slope. Such bollards are effective against heavy goods vehicles that may damage or destroy conventional bollards or other types of street furniture.

Retractable
Manually retractable bollards (lowered by a key mechanism) are found useful in some cases because they require less infrastructure.

The term "robotic bollards" has been applied to traffic barricades capable of moving themselves into position on a roadway.

Self-righting or self-recovering bollards can take a nudge from a vehicle and return to the upright position without causing damage to the bollard or vehicle. They are popular in car park buildings and other areas of high vehicle usage.

Flexible
Flexible bollards are bollards designed to bend when struck by vehicles. They are typically made from synthetic plastic or rubber that is stiff on its own, but pliable under the weight of a car or truck. When struck, flexible bollards give way to some extent, reducing damage to vehicles and surrounding surfaces, and return to their original, upright position. Some flexible bollards do not provide physical protection from vehicles; rather they offer clear visual guidance for drivers. Other flexible bollards have been designed to provide physical protection as well as reduced damage by incorporating strong elastic materials. These can be all plastic or plastic/steel hybrids but combine varying degrees of stopping power and flexibility.

Protective

Bollards are used by government agencies and private businesses to protect buildings, public spaces, and the people in them from car ramming attacks.

These bollards protect utilities, electronics, machinery, buildings, or pedestrians from accidental or intentional collisions with vehicles. As collisions also cause damage to vehicles, operators, or the bollards themselves, new bollards have been developed that absorb some of the impact energy, lessening the violence of the collision. Some are made of forgiving plastics while others are made of steel but fitted with an elastomer to absorb the impact energy.

Bollards are widely used to contribute to safety and security. The American Bar Association (ABA) states that bollards are used to contribute to homeland security. The American National Institute of Building Sciences site—the Whole Building Design Guide (WBDG)—recommends in its Design Guidance that open spaces surrounding and contiguous to buildings be included as integral parts of a security design.

There are two main kinds of security-related bollard:

 Non-crash-resistant bollards.
 Crash- and attack-resistant bollards used to protect places at risk of being attacked.

According to the National Institute of Building Sciences, non-crash-resistant bollards are "perceived impediments to access" and address the actions of two groups:

 Law-abiding persons who comply with civil prescriptions of behavior as defined by the manner in which bollards are put to use;
 Potentially threatening and disruptive persons for whom bollard applications are proscriptive by announcing their behavior is anticipated, and that additional levels of security await them.

High security bollards are impact-tested in accordance with one or more of three major crash test ratings for vehicle barriers. These are PAS 68 (UK), IWA-14 (International) and ASTM (US).

Bollard sleeves in various alloys or finishes are designed to cover security bollards to enhance their visual attractiveness.

U-shaped bollards are typically used for the protection of equipment and are common in areas that need coverage over a wider area than of a normal bollard, such as fuel stations and bike lanes.

Parking bollards
Bollards have become common use for reserving parking spots from unauthorized vehicles. Parking bollards are typically situated in the centre of a parking bay as a physical obstruction. They then fold either manually or automatically to admit authorized users. These bollards are often used in smaller parking lots such as visitor parking or corporate parking lots, as an alternative to boom gates.

Other applications
The National Clearinghouse for Educational Facilities (NCEF), managed by the National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS), cited three dozen applications of bollards.

US fire regulations
According to the International Fire Code (IFC-2009) and the American National Fire Protection Association Fire Code 1 (NFPA-1) all new buildings or renovated buildings must have fire access roadways to accommodate fire apparatus and crews and other first responders. Thus the choice of bollard styles must apply to the NFPA's Code 1710. Bollards are now designed in terms of how long it takes to remove or collapse them to allow first responders entry to the access roadway.

Artwork

In Geelong, Victoria, Australia, decorative bollards, sculpted and painted by Jan Mitchell, are placed around the city to enhance the landscape as a form of outdoor public sculpture. Usually they are made of timber, minimally modified from the traditionally cylindrical, wooden, maritime bollard shape, but brightly painted to resemble human figures. Such figures – which may be historical or contemporary, particular or generic – are sited singly or in clusters along the waterfront and in other areas where people gather. Decorative bollards have become a well-known feature of the city of Geelong and reflect its history as a major Australian port.

In Antwerp, Belgium, artist Eddy Gabriel transformed a bollard to look like a toadstool in 1993. This example was followed by other artists, turning the quayside of the river Scheldt into a street art gallery.

In Norwich, England, a set of 21 bollards was installed in 2008 in the Lanes area north of City Hall, designed by artist Oliver Creed and commissioned by the City Council as part of a regeneration programme. They are coloured "madder red", in reference to the red dye extracted from the madder plant and used for dying cloth, one of the city's major industries during the 16th century; and they bear bronze finials also alluding to local history. 10 of these depict the madder plant, while the other 11 have unique designs, usually relevant to the specific location in which the bollard is placed, including a scene of sheep-shearing, a Green Man, a swan's head in Swan Lane, and so on.

On the forecourt of Cambridge University Library, England, a line of 14 bronze bollards made to resemble piles of books was installed in 2009. This work, Ex Libris, was created by sculptor Harry Gray. The ten outer bollards are static, but the "books" making up the four central bollards can be swivelled, so that the lettering on their spines aligns to form the Latin phrase Ex Libris ("from/out of the books"), commonly used on bookplates.

Gallery

See also

 Amsterdammertje
 Automatic number-plate recognition
 Coal-tax post
 Guard rail
 Guard stone
 Highway marker
 Jersey barrier
 Milestone
 Stanchion
 Sump buster
 Traffic barrier
 Traffic cone

References

Further reading

External links

Road infrastructure
Road safety
Street furniture
Streetworks
Traffic signs

Bollard


Adam Charles Kokesh (born February 1, 1982 in San Francisco, California) is an American political activist. He is a decorated veteran of the War in Iraq, Kokesh came to disparage war and advocate nonviolent resistance to power. He is a member of the Libertarian Party. He has called for a "new American revolution" for the "orderly dissolution of the federal government." He was raised in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He now lives in Arizona.

Kokesh announced that he would run for President of the United States under the Libertarian Party ticket in the 2020 United States presidential election.

References

Other websites

 Adam Kokesh.com (Kokesh 2020 announcement as of November 2016)
 Adam Kokesh on Amazon
 The Freedom Line website

1982 births
Living people
American political activists
Military people from New Mexico
American political writers
Politicians from Arizona
Politicians from San Francisco
Politicians from Santa Fe, New Mexico
Writers from San Francisco
Writers from Santa Fe, New Mexico
Writers from Arizona
Libertarian Party (United States) politicians
2020 United States vice-presidential candidates
2020 United States presidential candidates
Businesspeople from San Francisco
Businesspeople from Arizona
Businesspeople from Santa Fe, New Mexico
American YouTubers

Adam Kokesh


Alessandra Ferri OMRI (born 6 May 1963) is an Italian prima ballerina. She danced with the Royal Ballet (1980–1984), American Ballet Theatre (1985–2007) and La Scala Theatre Ballet (1992–2007) and as an international guest artist, before temporally retiring on 10 August 2007, aged 44, then returning in 2013. She was eventually granted the rank of prima ballerina assoluta.

Career
Alessandra Ferri was born in Milan, Italy. She began studying ballet at the La Scala Theatre Ballet School, later transferring to the upper school of the Royal Ballet School.  She represented the Royal Ballet School in the 1980 Prix de Lausanne, winning a scholarship which enabled her to continue studying at the school.

Royal Ballet
Ferri joined the Royal Ballet in 1980, and in 1982, for her first major role in the ballet Mayerling, she was nominated for the Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding First Achievement of the Year in Ballet.  In 1983, she was nominated for and won the Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding Individual Performance of the Year in a New Dance Production for her role in Sir Kenneth MacMillan's Valley of Shadows.  In 1983, she was promoted to the rank of Principal Dancer.

American Ballet Theatre
In 1985, Ferri left the Royal Ballet at the request of Mikhail Baryshnikov to become a Principal Dancer with American Ballet Theatre, under Baryshnikov's own direction. She stated that she needed a more rigorous training program that the company could provide. In 2007 she brought Roberto Bolle to dance opposite her in her farewell performance of Romeo and Juliet.

La Scala Theatre Ballet
In 1992, Ferri became a Guest Star of American Ballet Theatre and began a very close collaboration with La Scala Theatre Ballet, becoming recognised as Prima Ballerina Assoluta of the company.

Return from retirement
She returned to dance after retirement in 2013, starring in The Piano Upstairs at Spoleto. Performances since have included Lea in Cheri for Signature Theatre, The Raven for Gotham Chamber Opera and in Woolf Works with Royal Ballet.

In June 2017, she appeared at the Royal Opera House in the ballet Marguerite and Armand.

Created roles

1981 – Chanson (pas de deux) – Choreography by Sir Kenneth MacMillan, with the Royal Ballet.
1982 – Invitation au Voyage – Choreography by Michael Corder, with the Royal Ballet.
1983 – Consort Lessons – Choreography by David Bintley, with the Royal Ballet.
1983 – Valley of Shadows – Choreography by Sir Kenneth MacMillan, with the Royal Ballet.
1984 – Different Drummer – Choreography by Sir Kenneth MacMillan, with the Royal Ballet.
1985 – Swan Lake – Choreography by Rosella Hightower, with La Scala Ballet.
1986 – Requiem – Choreography by Sir Kenneth MacMillan, with the American Ballet Theatre.
1989 – Le Diable Amoureux – Choreography by Roland Petit, with the Ballet National de Marseille.
1990 – Birdy – Choreography by Jean-Pierre Aviotte, with the Ballet National de Marseille.
1991 – White Man Sleeps – Choreography by Daniel Ezralow, with Maggiodanza.
1992 – Un Petit Train de Plaisir – Choreography by Amedeo Amodio, with Aterballetto.
1993 – Le Baiser de la Fée – Choreography by Micha Van Hoecke, with La Scala Ballet.
1994 – Le Sang d'un Poète, La Voix Humaine – Choreography by Roland Petit, for Teatro Studio, Milan.
1995 – William Tell – Choreography by Heinz Spoerli, with the Ballet Nacional de Cuba.
1996 – Armide – Choreography by Heinz Spoerli, with La Scala Ballet.
1997 – Vespri Siciliani – Choreography by Heinz Spoerli, with the Rome Opera Ballet.
1997 – In Volo – Choreography by Jean-Christophe Maillot, with the American Ballet Theatre.
1998 – Quartetto – Choreography by William Forsythe, with La Scala Ballet.
1998 – Faust Tango – Choreography by Oscar Araiz, for the Ravenna Festival.
1999 – Mambo Suite – Choreography by Annamaria Steckelman, for the Colon Theatre, Buenos Aires.
2004 – Europa Riconosciuta – Choreography by Heinz Spoerli, with La Scala Ballet.
2013 - The Piano Upstairs - Choreography by Alessandra Ferri, Spoleto Festival dei 2 Mondi
2013 - Cheri - Choreography by Martha Clarke, Signature Theater, New York
2015 - Woolf Works - Choreography by Wayne McGregor, Royal Ballet, Covent Garden London
2016 -  Duse - Choreography by John Neumeier, Hamburg Ballett, Hamburg
2017 -  Witness Choreography by Wayne McGregor, City Center, New York
2018 -   Afterite Choreography by Wayne McGregor, American Ballet Theatre, New York Metropolitan Opera House

Guest appearances
As an international guest artist, Ferri performed with the Paris Opera Ballet at the Palais Garnier and the Opéra Bastille, the Kirov Ballet at the Mariinsky Theatre, the National Ballet of Canada, the Tokyo Ballet, the Cuban National Ballet,  the Hamburg Ballet, the Stuttgart Ballet, the Ballet National de Marseille, the Ballet National de Nancy and others.

She is best appreciated in story ballets by Kenneth MacMillan, Roland Petit, John Cranko and John Neumeier.

She danced with important male dancers: Rudolf Nureyev (in Los Angeles for his 50 birthday in 1988), Mikhail Baryshnikov in the 1987 film Dancers, Anthony Dowell, Patrick Dupond, Peter Schaufuss, Maximiliano Guerra, Laurent Hilaire, Manuel Legris, Julio Bocca (her favourite), Herman Cornejo, Marcelo Gomes, and Carlos Acosta.

Personal life
Ferri has two daughters: Matilde (born in 1997) and Emma (born in 2001), who joined their mother on stage at her farewell performance. Their father is the Italian photographer Fabrizio Ferri, who founded the art school Università dell'Immagine, in Milan, Italy.

Video recordings
1984 – Sir Kenneth MacMillan's – Romeo and Juliet as Juliet, with Wayne Eagling and London's Royal Ballet.
1987 – Herbert Ross's film Dancers as Francesca, with Mikhail Baryshnikov, Leslie Browne, Julie Kent, Tommy Rall and American Ballet Theatre (VHS Tape Only).
1987 – George Balanchine's La Sonnambula as The Sleepwalker, with Mikhail Baryshnikov and American Ballet Theatre.
1996 – Giselle as Giselle, with Massimo Murru and La Scala Ballet.
1998 – Romeo & Juliet Pas de Deux with Julio Bocca, on a mixed bill DVD titled American Ballet Theatre Now – Variety and Virtuosity.
2000 – Romeo and Juliet as Juliet, with Angel Corella and La Scala Ballet.
2003 – Sir Frederick Ashton's The Dream as Titania, with Ethan Stiefel, Herman Cornejo and American Ballet Theatre.
2003 – Roland Petit's La Chauve-Souris as Bella, with Massimo Murru and La Scala Ballet.
2007 – George Balanchine's A Midsummer Night's Dream as Titania, with Roberto Bolle, Massimo Murru and La Scala Ballet.
2017 - Wayne McGregor's Woolf Works, with Royal Ballet.

Awards and honours (selected)
1982 – Olivier Award – Outstanding First Achievement of the Year in Ballet – Nominated
1983 – Olivier Award – Outstanding Individual Performance of the Year in a New Dance Production – WON
1990 – Premio Léonide Massine, Positano
1992 - Named "Prima Ballerina Assoluta"
2000 – Prix Benois de la Danse, Moscow
2004 – Order of Merit of the Italian Republic (Knight)
2005 – Dance Magazine Award, New York
2016 – Critics' Circle National Dance Award : Grishko Award for the best female dancer (Woolf Works, The Royal Ballet)
2016 – Olivier Award – Outstanding Achievement in Dance for her performances in Chéri and Woolf Works at Royal Opera House

Notes and references

External links
 ABT page for Alessandra Ferri
 Ballerina Gallery page for Alessandra Ferri

1963 births
Living people
La Scala Theatre Ballet dancers
People educated at the Royal Ballet School
Prix de Lausanne winners
Prix Benois de la Danse winners
Principal dancers of The Royal Ballet
American Ballet Theatre principal dancers
Prima ballerina assolutas
Prix Benois de la Danse jurors
Laurence Olivier Award winners
Italian ballerinas
Naturalized citizens of the United States
20th-century Italian ballet dancers
Knights of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic

Alessandra Ferri


Miss America is an American beauty contest. It is an annual competition open to women from the United States between the ages of 17 and 24. Contestants are judged on talent and interviews in addition to their physical attractiveness. It is run by the Miss America Organization, a non-profit organization based in Linwood, New Jersey. The corporation has developed the "Miss America Scholarship Program", which awards educational scholarships to successful competitors.

The contest began in Atlantic City, New Jersey in 1921. It was an idea of newspaper reporter, Harry Finley, to increase newspaper sales and to promote Atlantic City. The first competition had eight entrants. The entrants were selected by their local city newspapers and their prize was a holiday in Atlantic City, and to take part in the "Intercity Beauty Contest". This was held as part of the second annual Atlantic City Pageant. Margaret Gorman, "Miss Washington D.C.", a school girl from Washington D.C was selected by the Washington Herald. She won the "Inter-City Beauty, Amateur" and "The Most Beautiful Bathing Girl in America" contests. She was given the Golden Mermaid Trophy. Because these were awkward titles, in 1922 Gorman was renamed as "Miss America".

Winners

References

Other websites

 Official site

Lists of American people

List of Miss America winners


Audience Council England was created upon establishment of the BBC Trust in January 2007. It replaced the Broadcasting Council of England. Audience Council England plays a key role helping the BBC Trust understand the needs, interests and concerns of audiences. There are also councils in each of the nations: Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The Audience Council England meets at least six times per year to assess the BBC's performance in England. It can meet in various locations around the nation. The regional panel chairs will give their regions view on the various BBC services, both national and regional, as well as provide their contribution to the Trust's formal consultations.

Members

Audience Council England is chaired by the BBC Trust member for England and the members, twelve in total, are the chairs of the regional panels (formerly known as the Regional Audience Councils). Each BBC region has its own regional panel. Alison Hastings is currently the BBC Trust member for England.

Regional panels

The regional panels meet three times a year in their own region usually in the area's BBC headquarters. They have a specific responsibility in keeping Audience Council England in touch with the views of the viewers and listeners in their region. In the meetings, the chair is present as well as representatives from BBC management, usually the Head of Region.  Each regional panel has up to sixteen members from different backgrounds and locations within the broadcast region; members are appointed for up to three years; it is a voluntary position.

The regional panels represent the following regions:
BBC North East and Cumbria
BBC Yorkshire
BBC North West
BBC Yorkshire and Lincolnshire
BBC East Midlands
BBC West Midlands
BBC East
BBC South
BBC London
BBC West
BBC South East
BBC South West

See also

BBC Trust
Audience Council Scotland
Audience Council Wales
BBC English Regions

External links
BBC Audience Council England
BBC Trust

BBC
2007 establishments in England
Organizations established in 2007
Communications and media organisations based in the United Kingdom
Mass media in England

Audience Council England


This article is about the transportation of illegal liquor. For the computer use of the term bootlegging see Copyright infringement of software.

Rum-running, or bootlegging, is the illegal business of taking alcoholic beverages where they are against the law. It is usually done to evade taxation or prohibition laws.

Rum-running usually means smuggling over water. The term is thought to come from the start of the Prohibition era in the United States. This is when ships from Bimini in the western Bahamas transported cheap rum to Florida to be sold illegally. But there was little profit in cheap rum. They soon started smuggling Canadian whisky, French champagne, and English gin to major cities like New York City and Boston. This gave them a high profit. It was said that some ships carried $200,000 worth of alcohol in a single trip.

Bootlegging usually means smuggling over land. It is thought the term "bootlegging" started during the American Civil War. Soldiers would sneak liquor into army camps by hiding bottles of liquor in their boots or under their trouser legs.

References

Organized crime
Alcoholic drinks

Rum-running


Texas Chainsaw (promoted as Texas Chainsaw 3D) is a 2013 American horror movie directed by John Luessenhop, with a screenplay by Adam Marcus, Debra Sullivan and Kirsten Elms and a story by Stephen Susco, Marcus and Sullivan.

It is the seventh installment in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise and was presented in 3D. The movie is a sequel to the 1974 movie The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

It stars Alexandra Daddario, Dan Yeager, Trey Songz, Tania Raymonde, Scott Eastwood, Thom Barry, Paul Rae and Bill Moseley, with Gunnar Hansen and Marilyn Burns.

It was released January 4, 2013. It was a commercial success, making $47.2 million from a $20 million budget. It was also the last movie both Burns and Hansen starred in before they both died in 2014 and 2015 respectively.

A prequel that takes place before the original 1974 movie, titled Leatherface, was released in 2017.

References

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies
2013 horror movies

Texas Chainsaw 3D


Robert Newman (March 20, 1752 – May 26, 1804) was an American sexton at the Old North Church in Boston, Massachusetts. He is considered a Patriot in the American Revolution for hanging lanterns along with vestryman John Pulling in his church's steeple on April 18, 1775, part of a warning signal devised by Paul Revere during the Battles of Lexington and Concord.

Life and career

Newman had become sexton of Christ Church, now known as Old North Church, in 1772. He lived with his mother in 1775, and she was renting part of their home to British officers. After pretending to go to bed on the night of April 18, Newman snuck out of his house undetected by the officers and joined vestryman John Pulling and Thomas Bernard, who assisted him with the signal. Bernard served as a lookout while Pulling and Newman went to the belfry, the tallest structure in the area. Using a code devised by Revere, Newman hung two lanterns in the church's belfry to warn Patriots that the British were about to descend upon Lexington via the Charles River. The signal was spotted across the river, and allies began spreading the word. Newman returned home after the signal was set, and though he was later arrested, nothing could be proven against him. He said he had given the keys of the church to Pulling, and when British authorities went to question Pulling, he had already escaped to Nantucket, where he remained until it was safe to return.

Newman continued as sexton until his death. The famous steeple was toppled by a Snow Hurricane of 1804 in the fall after Newman died. He was survived by his second wife, Mary Hammon, whom he married in 1790. He is buried at Copp's Hill Burying Ground in Boston. His collected letters were published on the bicentennial of his signal, in 1975.

References

External links

1752 births
1804 deaths
Patriots in the American Revolution
People from colonial Boston
People of colonial Massachusetts
Burials in Boston

Robert Newman (sexton)


The steam locomotives of British Railways were used by British Railways over the period 1948-1968.  The majority of these were inherited from the Big Four British railway companies. In the 1950s, new British Railways Standard steam locomotives were introduced.

Numbering
BR locomotives were numbered in the following series:
 1 series, former Great Western Railway steam locomotives
 10,000 series, diesel locomotives and electric locomotives
 30,000 series, former Southern Railway steam locomotives
 40,000 and 50,000 series, former London, Midland and Scottish Railway steam locomotives
 60,000 series, former London and North Eastern Railway steam locomotives
 70,000 series, British Railways Standard steam locomotives
 90,000 series, former War Department steam locomotives (originally in 70,000 series)
 92,000 series, BR Standard Class 9F

Steam locomotives

Steam locomotives of British Railways