The History Network

On September 10th 490 BC, hoplites from the Greek city of Athens faced an invasion force sent from the enormous and powerful Persian Empire to the east on the field at Marathon, a bay 26.2 miles (42.195 kilometres) northeast of Athens. The Athenians...

The Athenian army moved into position for the coming struggle. The right wing was commanded by Callimachus – for it was the regular practice at that time in Athens that the polemarch should lead the right wing; then followed the tribes, in order of...

At the end of the First World War France and Italy had wanted the German High Seas Fleet divided between them, Britain and the USA wanted it scuttled, which Germany did anyway without permission. The resulting Treaty of Versailles imposed strict...

When the Indian Mutiny broke out in May 1857, members of the Honourable East India Company became involved. Soon, several outstandingly brave deeds by them and other volunteer civilians were reported back in England but there was no official way to...

At the end of the 19th century tensions had been high between the United States and Spain - the point of friction being Spanish colonial rule specifically in Cuba. When the USS Maine mysteriously exploded in Havana harbour, it pushed the American...

The battle of Königgrätz (also known as the battle of Sadowa or the battle of Chlum) was the most decisive clash between the armies of Prussia and those of Austria and her allies during the short, seven-week long, Austro-Prussian War in 1866. The...

Agitation from the Armenian community for political reform and autonomy, brewing since the 1870s, was further intensified by large-scale massacres that occurred across the empire in 1894–1897 and in Cilicia in 1909; additionally, the more seemingly...

In his 1944 book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, Raphael Lemkin says that "genocide is composite and manifold, and that it signifies a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of the essential foundations of life of a [specific]...

At the end of the Seven Years War, the Proclamation of 1763 was issued by the British, which granted any lands west of the Appalachian Mountains in the Ohio Valley of North America to the Native Americans. American colonists could not settle any of...

The Allied landings at Normandy on June 6, 1944 were the largest amphibious operation ever undertaken in military history. Across five separate beaches, over 150,000 men made up the landing forces from the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada. To...