Steve Knupp

One of the most important and memorable events of the United States’ westward push across the frontier came with the discovery of gold in the lands that became California in January 1848. Located thousands of miles away from the country’s power...

Through most of history, people have been closely tied to nature, hunting in forests and having an intimate knowledge of the animals in their regions. So-called “primitive” peoples were walking encyclopedias of the natural world, and yet most believed...

Holy relics can be found in many different religions, whether Christian, pagan, Hindu, or Buddhist. A relic is defined as something directly associated with a revered saint, teacher, ancestor, or some miraculous manifestation of deity in the material...

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...

In the warm predawn darkness of June 22, 1941, 3 million men waited along a front hundreds of miles long, stretching from the Baltic coast of Poland to the Balkans. Ahead of them in the darkness lay the Soviet Union, its border guarded by millions of...

Given the RAF’s importance, it should come as no surprise that some of the pilots ranked among Britain’s most recognized war heroes, and Guy Gibson remains one of the most famous and highly decorated British soldiers in World War II. His exploits in...

Before the mid-19th century, European intervention in much of tropical Africa was extremely difficult because of the disease gradient. The combination of malaria and yellow fever commonly killed off half of European troops stationed in West Africa...

Altogether, the Battle of Stalingrad was the deadliest battle in the history of warfare, and the Soviets’ decisive victory there is considered one of the biggest turning points in the entire war, and certainly in the European theater. Over the next...

Discover the captivating story within the pages of "My Father's Story: The Murder of the Best Man I've Ever Known" by Eric Johnson. The story unfolds when Eric delves into the life and tragic death of his father, Bill Johnson, who was brutally...

When people think about unidentified flying objects (UFOs), they tend to think of flying discs piloted by gray beings with large heads and enormous eyes. They tend to think that these sightings only started relatively recently and that belief in UFOs...

“Politics is the systematic cultivation of hatred.” - TalleyrandWhile Metternich is most associated with the Congress of Vienna, France, despite its turbulence, had its own influential representative there: Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord....

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...

The outcome of the English Civil War was no doubt unthinkable to many across Europe before it actually happened, and the Battle of Edgehill represented the first sign that things might not go according to the typical plan. The tiny hamlet of Edgehill...

In 1494, there were five sovereign regional powers in Italy: Milan, Venice, Florence, the Papal States and Naples. In 1536, only one remained: Venice. These decades of conflict precipitated great anxiety among Western thinkers, and Italians responded...

Before the Vietnam War, most Americans would have been hard pressed to locate Vietnam on a map. South Vietnamese President Diệm’s regime was extremely unpopular, and war broke out between Communist North Vietnam and South Vietnam around the end of the...

Thinking of Spain as a modern nation state today distorts the complicated reality that the Iberian Peninsula faced in the past. Spain was a nation in progress, consisting of regions united under the Spanish crown, but with strong regional identities...

The KGB is one of the most famous abbreviations of the 20th century, and it has become synonymous with the shadowy and often violent actions of the Soviet Union’s secret police and internal security agencies. In fact, it is often used to refer to the...

Rome’s Imperial Crisis has been difficult for historians to summarize, which is why, despite being one of the most intriguing periods in Roman history, it is often overlooked by people who have chosen to focus on the more cohesive periods before and...

On July 12, 1588, the legendary Spanish Armada headed for the English Channel. The Spanish plan was to take this invasion, led by the Duke of Parma, to the coast of southeast England, where they would be unleashed to conquer Elizabethan England for...

When trains were introduced as a popular means of transportation, some of the first tracks laid terminated in New York, and the expansion of railroads led to the birth of train stations across the country. In general, these were small buildings where...

Much has been written about the Space Race, which is still taught across America today, but the story of human space exploration is mostly one of cooperation. Even in the summer of 1969, the Soviets had given the United States the flight plan for its...

On April 24, 1990, the Space Shuttle Discovery lifted off from Kennedy Space Center on the Space Shuttle Program’s 35th mission, but this was no ordinary mission. In its payload bay, Discovery was carrying the Hubble Space Telescope, with the...

Rome faced many formidable enemies over the course of nearly 1,000 years, but perhaps none were as enigmatic and forgotten as King Mithridates VI of Pontus. Despite numerous ancient sources detailing the life of the foreign monarch and his wars with...

When most people think of “ancient American civilizations,” the Aztec, Maya, or Inca cultures probably come to mind immediately, because the societies in Mesoamerica have left behind permanent structures for millions of visitors from around the world...