Reading time: 6 minutes
The Wars of the Roses are normally portrayed as a series of battles between two warring houses, York and Lancaster, over who was rightly king of England. However, they were about much more than that. In many ways, the wars were really about standards of government.
1. Where was Marco Polo born?
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Reading time: 10 minutes The following Open Letter was sent by the Australian Historical...
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Reading time: 7 minutes
Nancy Wake (1912–2011) was an agent for the Special Operations Executive and the most wanted woman in France during the Second World War. Dubbed the ‘White Mouse’ by the Nazis, she was the one who always got away.
1. Which line divides North and South Korea?
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Reading time: 7 minutes
Rome.
The capital city of modern day Italy, and one of the most famous, successful and longest-lasting empires to ever exist on planet Earth.
The Romans, both in the eras of the Roman Republic and the Empire, had a knack for stealing, adapting, and improving upon technologies, tactics, and ideas they encountered from other cultures – often those they fought, ranging from the Etruscans to the Greeks and Persians.
Reading time: 14 minutes This essay examines the sources of Russian power and conduct from an historical, cultural and geopolitical perspective. It aims to help assessment of Russia’s future behaviour. My approach is based on the essay The Sources of Soviet Conduct written by the famous US State Department diplomat and leading Russian expert George Kennan (under the pseudonym ‘X’) in the journal Foreign Affairs in 1947. Kennan was struggling to get Washington to understand the threat from the Soviet Union so soon after the end of World War II, when the USSR had been an ally of the United States.
Reading time: 5 minutes Nations establish their borders through treaties. Rivers are sometimes relied on to set boundaries, but even here tensions rise when there are disputes about interpretation. Is the boundary on the river banks, the deepest part of the river, or the very centre of the flow?
Reading time: 9 minutes Focusing on life in ancient Rome, Pompeii, Herculaneum and Ostia, I’m deeply impressed by the brilliant engineers who designed these underground marvels and the magnificent architecture that masks their functional purpose. Sewer galleries didn’t run under every street, nor service every area. But in some cities, including Rome itself, the length and breadth of the main sewer, the Cloaca Maxima, rivals the extent of the main sewer lines in many of today’s cities. We shouldn’t assume, though, that Roman toilets, sewers and water systems were constructed with our same modern sanitary goals in mind.
1. Which line of English monarchs originated in Wales?
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1. When did the Japanese Shogun impose a sakoku (seclusion) policy?
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1. When did Nicolaus Copernicus publish ‘On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres’ which explained that the Earth orbits around the Sun?
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1. When did the Exxon Valdez oil spill occur?
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1. Who was the first person to fly solo around the world?
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1. Who led the 1911-1914 Australasian Antarctic Expedition?
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1. When was the first Sino-Indian War?
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1. Which country fought alongside the French and British against the Egyptians during the Suez crisis?
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1. What is the 1916 armed insurrection against British rule in Ireland known as?
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1. Where did Joanna Plantagenet, sister of Richard I Lionheart, become Queen?
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1. In the 1300s, which Empire produced approximately half the world’s gold?
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1. Which Empire operated the Manila Galleon trade?
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1. When did the Wars of the Roses end?
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1. Who painted ‘The Basket of Apples’ in 1893?
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1. Who led the victorious army at the Battle of Poltava?
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1. Which conflict did the Battle of Culloden bring to a close?
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1. Which Greek God did the Colossus of Rhodes represent?
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1. In 1947, what was the first living thing sent into space?
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1. When did the Berlin wall fall?
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1. When did the Spanish Empire reach its greatest extent?
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1. After Shackleton’s ship was crushed by ice in Antarctica in 1916, where did he sail an open boat to in order to organise rescue?
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1. When did the first crusade begin?
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1. Who painted Liberty Leading the People in 1830?
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1. How does history view the English King who agreed to Magna Carta?
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1. Which previous empire did the Byzantine Empire grow out of?
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1. Who painted The Creation of Adam in 1512?
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1. When was the term ‘The Silk Road’ first used?
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1. What is the town of Bury St Edmunds named after?
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1. Who painted Boating on the Seine in 1879?
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1. When did the most recent ice age end?
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History Guild would like to acknowledge the Boonwurrung people, the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we are based, and pay our respects to their Elders, past, present and emerging.