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Amid the upheaval in the Islamic world following Muhammad’s death, the Umayyad Caliphate lasted for less than a century, but it spent that time becoming one of the most influential of the major caliphates. Its official existence was from 661-750, and the rulers were the male members of the Umayyad dynasty, roughly translated from Arabic as the “Sons of Umayyah.” Its primary base of power was in Syria following the creation of a dynastic, hereditary rule headed by one of Syria’s long-lasting governors, Muawiya ibn Abi Sufyan.

Dopamine Detox: The 10-Day Reset System doesn't ask you to try harder. It changes the neurological conditions that make the phone feel necessary in the first place.

Although the Sumerians continue to get second or even third billing compared to the Babylonians and Assyrians, perhaps because they never built an empire as great as the Assyrians or established a city as enduring and great as Babylon, they were the people who provided the template of civilization that all later Mesopotamians built upon. The Sumerians are credited with being the first people to invent writing, libraries, cities, and schools in, and many would argue that they were the first people to create and do those things anywhere in world.

Though extremely different men in most ways, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Third Reich Fuhrer Adolf Hitler shared a passion for science, technology, and (sometimes impractical) "wonder weapons." In some cases, this fixation paid off handsomely, as in the case of British centrimetric radar, a compact, powerful radar type that enabled fitment to individual aircraft and contributed to the defeat of German U-boats.

This is not just the story of one boarding school or one student’s prep school experience. Frank is a legendary storyteller, so in this book we get the universal story of boys seeking manhood away from home and of men teachers, trying to strike the right balance between the tough and the tender (and view achieving the balance).

As the Japanese swept across Asia in the early years of World War II, the retreating Allies looked for ways to keep up the fight. In Malaya and Burma, agents had been left behind to stir resistance behind enemy lines, building up anti-Japanese operations from the safety of the jungle. In China, the American Office of Strategic Services helped both Nationalists and Communists in resisting the Japanese.

The Third Reich's Luftwaffe began World War II with significant advantages over other European air forces, playing a critical role in the German war machine's swift, powerful advance. By war's end, however, the Luftwaffe had been decimated by combat losses and crippled by poor decisions at the highest levels of military decision-making, and it proved unable to challenge Allied air superiority despite a last-minute upsurge in German aircraft production.

Uranium is best known for the destructive power of the atom bombs, which ushered in the nuclear era at the end of World War II, but given the effectiveness of nuclear power, nuclear power plants were constructed around the developed world during the second half of the 20th century. While nuclear power plants were previously not an option and thus opened the door to new, more efficient, and more affordable forms of energy for domestic consumption, the use of nuclear energy understandably unnerved people living during the Cold War and amidst ongoing nuclear detonations.

Of the many campaigns during the Middle Ages, few are as remarkable or seemingly impossible to win at the start as the First Crusade (1095-99), and the true crowning achievement of that crusade, which resulted in two centuries of Western European Christian states in the Middle East and the permanent firing of the European imagination, was the conquest of Jerusalem on July 15, 1099 after three weeks of siege.

On the morning of January 28, 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger launched for the 10th time, beginning mission STS-51-L. Space shuttles had already successfully completed 24 missions, and no American spacecraft had ever failed to reach orbit during an official mission.

The Third Reich's Luftwaffe began World War II with significant advantages over other European air forces, playing a critical role in the German war machine's swift, powerful advance. By war's end, however, the Luftwaffe had been decimated by combat losses and crippled by poor decisions at the highest levels of military decision-making, and it proved unable to challenge Allied air superiority despite a last-minute upsurge in German aircraft production.

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

The Harlem Hellfighters, also known as the 369th Infantry Regiment of the U. S. Army, embody a significant intersection of America’s military history and racial history. Initially raised as the 15th New York (Colored) National Guard and later federalized for World War I, the regiment was "loaned" to the French Army, where it compiled an extraordinary combat record, with a remarkable 191 days on the line and suffering about 1,400 casualties while never yielding its sector (Morrow & Sammons, 2014, pp. 3–6; Harris, 2003, pp. 233–235).

The Congress of Vienna, which took place over several months during 1814 and 1815, was an attempt to resolve the numerous challenges presented by Napoleon’s expansion and his subsequent defeat. The talks have been seen as a critical moment in European history, and depending on the point-of-view, the results were either a diplomatic breakthrough or the last gasps of the continent’s conservative elites. It was also a crucial step toward German unification, although this was not clear at the time.

Just 12 days before Pigg’s death, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had already immortalized the men of the Royal Air Force with one of the West’s most famous war-time quotes. But the sentiment and gratitude Churchill expressed back in 1940 is very much alive today. The sacrifice made by “The Few”, the British and Allied fighter pilots who won the Battle of Britain in 1940, remains close to the hearts of the British public, and the piece by the BBC is typical of the national sentiment manifested in air shows, museums, TV programs and books.

As a basic definition, it may be said that an Ice Age is simply a period of time during which thick ice sheets cover vast areas of land. These sheets have advanced and retreated, at times taking over the entire planet, and conversely disappearing nearly altogether. Glacial ice formed by this regularly occurring process does not sit in a state of inertia, but moves dynamically, reshaping the geological features of the continents.

What happens when you put good people in a bad place? That was the question that an experiment in 1971 set out to answer when Stanford University professor and psychologist Philip Zimbardo used funding provided by the U.S. Office of Naval Research to create a make-believe prison in the basement of a university building. Male students were offered the chance to take part in the two-week experiment (and to make $15 per day). All applicants were carefully screened to ensure that they were healthy, emotionally and psychologically stable. 24 men were selected out of 75 that had applied.

Naval combat underwent a significant metamorphosis during World War II. Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan launched some of the most powerful battleships ever to sail the world's oceans, yet the conflict witnessed the emergence and triumph of the aircraft carrier as the 20th century's true monarch of the seas.

Japan's blissful isolation changed with the arrival of American Commodore Matthew Perry in 1853. In awe of the American weapons and ships, the Tokugawa shogunate quickly realized that they needed to evolve and modernize their military to survive, and a time of rapid change descended on Japan. Within a mere 30 years, the Tokugawa period’s great samurai caste was extinct. Military service was no longer the exclusive domain of the privileged warrior class who had combined the military with an intricate network of social status and vassalship to their feudal lords.

Before the advent of the digital age, the ability to write clearly and succinctly was mandatory for many walks of life, including commercial, diplomatic, academic, philosophical, and historical pursuits. George Orwell’s campaign for perfectly written English in an artistic and content-oriented sense might seem obsessive now, but the importance of written accuracy and well-conveyed meaning for that age cannot be overstated.