Hourly History

When the establishment of the State of Israel was announced on May 14, 1948, it seemed to many people that the new nation could not survive for long. The haste with which it was created meant that Israel lacked the infrastructure of government, and...

The politics and recent history of the Middle East can seem baffling to outsiders. Nowhere was that more evident than during the Lebanon War that raged in 1982. Even contemporary reporting often made fundamental mistakes, and there was little general...

Abigail Adams was just as much a founding mother as her husband John Adams was a founding father. Like him, she was there from the very beginning when the first foundations of the United States were laid. While John debated independence in...

As president, Abraham Lincoln had one goal and that was to preserve the Union at all costs. His determination to hold the North and South together would ultimately lead to the bloodiest war in American history, the abolition of slavery, and his own...

As the sole legitimate child of Lord Byron, Ada Lovelace was the progeny of literary royalty. Many might have naturally expected her to go into the field of her father, but instead of delving into poetry, she delved into the hard sciences of...

The most notorious man in history, Adolf Hitler, is best known for having perpetrated crimes against humanity over the six-year course of World War II. His brutal extermination policies are responsible for the deaths of close to 30 million people he...

Born into upper-middle-class British society during the late Victorian era, Agatha Christie would go on to become the best-selling fiction writer of all time. Her novels have been translated into forty-four languages and have sold more than two...

From its beginnings as a loosely definable group of philosophical ideas to the culmination of its revolutionary effect on public life in Europe, the Age of Enlightenment is the defining intellectual and cultural movement of the modern world. Using...

The Akkadian Empire was one of the first empires in human history and certainly the first to involve the central government of a large, multi-ethnic populace. It also introduced things like the very first postal system and facilitated advances in...

Al Capone and Chicago at one time were almost synonymous. While opinions of the infamous mob leader varied from group to group, Capone was at one point seen by many as a lovable outlaw and modern Robin Hood. How could this man who ran the most vicious...

Alan Rickman was one of Britain’s most beloved actors. His portrayal of the cunning Hans Gruber in the 1988 blockbuster Die Hard set a new standard for movie villains with his perfect blend of charm and menace. Rickman then became a household name...

Alan Turing had a radical and ingenious mind. He is considered one of the fathers of artificial intelligence, and his theories on this matter range from purely mechanical to almost spiritual. During World War II, his decryption of the Nazis’ Enigma...

In the world of philosophy and spirituality, few figures stand as distinctively as Alan Watts. With a charismatic and eloquent demeanor, he effortlessly blended insights from Zen Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, and other spiritual traditions with Western...

How did one insignificant patent clerk change the world? Step into the world of Albert Einstein in this book and find out what was so extraordinary about him.Why did it take so long for him to win the Nobel Prize? What kind of a father was Einstein to...

Albert Speer was the man in charge of designing Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich. Yet he was more than just an architect—he was one of Hitler’s closest confidants and a key player in the Nazi war machine. Born into a wealthy German family, Speer’s life was...

Educator. Innovator. Inventor. These three words sum up Alexander Graham Bell, one of the greatest scientific men of his era. He is most famous for the invention of the telephone, a device which he predicted would transform human society. And it...

Alexander Hamilton did not rise to public prominence as an austere New Englander or a gentlemanly Virginian. He was not born in the colonies at all. He was born in the West Indies, the son of a woman of French descent who had left her husband for...

Alexander the Great. A boy, groomed for greatness from the earliest age, who would put his stamp on the world for generations to come. A man who sought immortality and achieved it in just ten years. A soldier whose genius for strategy and tactics is...

Discover the remarkable life of Alexandra Feodorovna....Alexandra Feodorovna, the last Empress of Russia, remains one of the most tragic figures of the twentieth century. Born into European royalty and later married to Tsar Nicholas II, she became...

Alfred Hitchcock’s work is legendary, and although he himself was known as a rather quiet and subdued figure in public, those who knew him privately saw a fiery disposition and unbridled passion lurking just beneath the surface of his placid exterior....

Alfred Nobel began his career as a distinguished inventor, but his inventions often failed to bring him the peace of mind that he craved. One invention in particular—explosive dynamite—left him full of regret. He knew that it wouldn’t be long before...

In the winter of 878, the Great Heathen Army swept across Anglo-Saxon England. Kingdom after kingdom had fallen to the Viking onslaught—Northumbria, East Anglia, Mercia—all crushed beneath the boots of Norse warriors. Now only Wessex remained, and its...

Amelia Earhart was a legend—but perhaps an unlikely one at that. You see, Amelia Earhart was not always the dashing heroine that most of us associate with her name. She began life as a rather shy girl, who often found herself having to hide from her...

Beginning with the birth of the nation, slavery divided and caused conflict for the United States of America, worsening during the country’s early decades as the practice became more economically vital. Finally, in 1861, the American Civil War erupted...