Portal:History/Featured article
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2006 (Julius Caesar, Anschluss, Attila the Hun, Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, Space Race, Yagan, S. A. Andrée's Arctic balloon expedition of 1897, History of Louisville, Kentucky, Claudius )
2007 (Theramenes, Laika, Great Fire of London, RMS Titanic, Elias Ashmole, Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, History of the Yosemite area, Indo-Greek Kingdom, History of Cape Colony from 1870 to 1899, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Italian Renaissance, Samuel Adams )
History of Miami, Florida. The area in which the city of Miami, Florida would later be founded by Europeans was inhabited for more than a thousand years by the Tequesta Indians. Pedro Menéndez de Avilés and his men first visited and claimed the area around Miami for Spain in 1566. A Spanish mission was established one year later. Fort Dallas was built in the mid-1800s and subsequently was a site of fighting during the Second Seminole War.
The Miami area was better known as "Biscayne Bay Country" in the early years of its growth. The few published accounts from that period describe the area as a wilderness that held much promise. The area was also characterized as “one of the finest building sites in Florida.” However, the Great Freeze of 1894 changed all that, and the crops of the Miami area were the only ones in Florida that survived. Julia Tuttle, a local citrus grower, convinced Henry Flagler, a railroad tycoon, to expand his Florida East Coast Railroad to Miami. On July 28, 1896, Miami was officially incorporated as a city with a population of just over 300.
Miami prospered during the 1920s but weakened after the collapse of the Florida land boom of the 1920s, the 1926 Miami Hurricane and the Great Depression in the 1930s. When World War II began, Miami, well-situated due to its location on the southern coast of Florida, played an important role in the battle against German submarines. The war helped to expand Miami's population to almost half a million. After Fidel Castro rose to power in 1959, many Cubans emigrated to Miami, further increasing the population. In the 1980s and 1990s, various crises struck South Florida, among them the Arthur McDuffie beating and the subsequent riot, drug wars, Hurricane Andrew, and the Elián González uproar. Miami remains a major international financial and cultural center.
Ziad Jarrah (Arabic: زياد سمير جراح; (May 11, 1975—September 11, 2001), was the hijacker who acted as pilot of United Airlines Flight 93, part of the September 11, 2001 attacks. He is believed to have taken over as the pilot of the aircraft and made an unsuccessful attempt to crash the plane into the U.S. Capitol.
There are many variations on his name, including Ziad Samir Al-Jarrah, Zaid Jarrahi, Ziad Jarrah Jarrat, and Ziyad Samir Jarrah. After a wealthy and secular upbringing, Jarrah became involved in the planning for the September 11 attacks in college. Unique among the hijackers, he had a German girlfriend and was close to his family. There have been some questions as to whether or not Jarrah was actually on Flight 93 and whether he was a hijacker; the 9/11 Commission concluded that his was not a case of mistaken identity and that he piloted the plane. In October 2006, an al-Qaeda video was released showing Jarrah and Mohammed Atta recording their wills in January 2000 in Osama Bin Laden's Tarnak Farms base near Kandahar.
"England expects that every man will do his duty" was a signal sent by Admiral Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson from his flagship HMS Victory as the Battle of Trafalgar was about to commence on October 21, 1805. Trafalgar was the decisive naval engagement of the Napoleonic Wars. It gave the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland control of the seas, removing all possibility of a French invasion and conquest of Britain. Although there was much confusion surrounding the wording of the signal in the aftermath of the battle, the significance of the victory and Nelson's death during the battle led to the phrase becoming embedded in the English psyche, and it has been regularly quoted, paraphrased and referenced up to the modern day.
The history of Lithuania between 1219 and 1295 deals with the establishment and early history of the first Lithuanian state, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The beginning of the 13th century marks the end of the prehistory of Lithuania. From this point on the history of Lithuania is recorded in chronicles, treaties, and other written documents. In 1219, twenty-one Lithuanian dukes signed a peace treaty with Halych-Volhynia. This event is widely accepted as the first proof that the Baltic tribes were uniting and consolidating. Despite continuous warfare with two Christian orders, the Livonian Order and the Teutonic Knights, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was established and gained some control over the lands of Black Ruthenia, Polatsk, Minsk, and other territories east of modern-day Lithuania that had become weak and vulnerable after the collapse of Kievan Rus'.
Charles Edward Magoon (December 5, 1861 – January 14, 1920) was an American lawyer, judge, diplomat, and administrator who is best remembered as a governor of the Panama Canal Zone and an occupation governor of Cuba. He was also the subject of several small scandals during his career.
As a legal adviser working for the United States Department of War, he drafted recommendations and reports that were used by Congress and the executive branch in governing the United States' new territories following the Spanish–American War. These reports were collected as a published book in 1902, then considered the seminal work on the subject. During his time as a governor, Magoon worked to put these recommendations into practice.
The arrest and assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem, then president of South Vietnam, marked the culmination of a successful CIA-backed coup d'état led by General Duong Van Minh in November 1963. On the morning of November 2, 1963, Diem and his adviser, younger brother Ngo Dinh Nhu, were arrested after the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) had been successful in a bloody overnight siege on Gia Long Palace in Saigon. The coup was the culmination of nine years of autocratic and nepotistic family rule in South Vietnam. Discontent with the Diem regime had been simmering below the surface, and exploded with mass Buddhist protests against long-standing religious discrimination after the government shooting of protesters who defied a ban on the flying of the Buddhist flag.
When rebel forces entered the palace, the Ngo brothers were not present, as they had escaped the night before to a loyalist shelter in Cholon. The brothers had kept in communication with the rebels through a direct link from the shelter to the palace, and misled them into believing that they were still in the palace. The Ngo brothers soon agreed to surrender and were promised safe exile; after being arrested, they were instead executed in the back of an armoured personnel carrier by ARVN officers on the journey back to military headquarters at Tan Son Nhut Air Base.
While no formal inquiry was conducted, the responsibility for the deaths of the Ngo brothers is commonly placed on Minh's bodyguard, Captain Nguyen Van Nhung, and on Major Duong Hieu Nghia, both of whom guarded the brothers during the trip. Minh's army colleagues and US officials in Saigon agreed that Minh ordered the executions. They postulated various motives, including that the brothers embarrassed Minh by fleeing the Presidential Palace, and that the brothers were killed to eliminate a later political comeback. The generals initially attempted to cover up the execution by suggesting that the brothers had committed suicide, but this was contradicted when photos of the Ngos' bloodied bodies surfaced in the media.
- July 2008
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