April 7 in History

The Corpus Juris (or Iuris) Civilis ("Body of Civil Law") is the modern name for a collection of fundamental works in jurisprudence, enacted from 529 to 534 by order of Roman Emperor Justinian I. It is also sometimes referred to metonymically after one of its parts, the Code of Justinian. The work as planned had three parts: the Code (Codex) is a compilation, by selection and extraction, of imperial enactments to date; the Digest or Pandects (the Latin title contains both Digesta and Pandectae) is an encyclopedia composed of mostly brief extracts from the writings of Roman jurists; and the Institutes (Institutiones) is a student textbook, mainly introducing the Code, although it has important conceptual elements that are less developed in the Code or the Digest. All three parts, even the textbook, were given force of law. They were intended to be, together, the sole source of law; reference to any other source, including the original texts from which the Code and the Digest had been taken, was forbidden. Nonetheless, Justinian found himself having to enact further laws; today these are counted as a fourth part of the Corpus, the Novellae Constitutiones (Novels, literally New Laws). The work was directed by Tribonian, an official in Justinian's court in Constantinople. His team was authorized to edit what they included. How far they made amendments is not recorded and, in the main, cannot be known because most of the originals have not survived. The text was composed and distributed almost entirely in Latin, which was still the official language of the government of the Eastern Roman Empire in 529–534, whereas the prevalent language of merchants, farmers, seamen, and other citizens was Greek. By the early 7th century, Greek had largely replaced Latin as the dominant language of the empire. The Corpus Juris Civilis was revised into Greek, when that became the predominant language of the Eastern Roman Empire, and continued to form the basis of the empire's laws, the Basilika (Greek: τὰ βασιλικά, 'imperial laws'), through the 15th century. The Basilika in turn served as the basis for local legal codes in the Balkans during the following Ottoman period and later formed the basis of the legal code of Modern Greece. In Western Europe, the Corpus Juris Civilis, or its successor texts like the Basilika, did not get well established originally and was only recovered in the Middle Ages, being "received" or imitated as private law. Its public law content was quarried for arguments by both secular and ecclesiastical authorities. This recovered Roman law, in turn, became the foundation of law in all civil law jurisdictions. The provisions of the Corpus Juris Civilis also influenced the canon law of the Catholic Church: it was said that ecclesia vivit lege romana – the church lives by Roman law. Its influence on common law legal systems has been markedly less, although still significant, with Latinate legal concepts and terminology from the Corpus having survived through Norman law, canon law, and civil law influences – such as the contrast, especially in the Institutes, between "law" (statute) and custom. The Corpus continues to have a major influence on public international law. Its four parts thus constitute the foundation documents of the Western legal tradition.

Empress Matilda (c. 7 February 1102 – 10 September 1167), also known as Empress Maud or Athelicia, was Holy Roman Empress as the consort of Emperor Henry V from 1110 until 1125, and was subsequently a claimant to the English throne during the civil war known as the Anarchy (1138–1153). Following the death of her father, King Henry I of England, as his only surviving legitimate child and nominated heir, she asserted her right to the English throne. However, her cousin Stephen of Blois usurped the crown. Matilda was the eldest child and only surviving daughter of Henry I of England and his first wife, Matilda of Scotland. As a child, she went to Germany where she was married to the future Henry V. She travelled with the emperor to Italy in 1116, was controversially crowned empress in St Peter's Basilica, and acted as the imperial regent in Italy. Matilda and Henry V had no children, and when he died in 1125, his rival Lothair of Supplinburg claimed the imperial crown. Matilda's brother, William Adelin, died in the White Ship disaster of 1120, leaving Matilda's father and realm facing a potential succession crisis. Upon her widowhood in the Holy Roman Empire, Henry I recalled Matilda to his Duchy of Normandy and arranged for her to marry Geoffrey of Anjou to form an alliance to protect his southern borders in France. Henry had no further legitimate children and nominated Matilda as his heir, making his court swear an oath of loyalty to her and her successors, but the decision was not popular in his Anglo-Norman court. Henry died in 1135, but Matilda and Geoffrey faced opposition from the barons. Henry's nephew and successor, King Stephen, enjoyed the backing of the English Church. Stephen took steps to solidify his new regime but faced threats both from neighbouring powers and from opponents within his kingdom. In 1139, Matilda crossed to England to take the kingdom by force, supported by her half-brother Robert, Earl of Gloucester, and her uncle David I of Scotland, while her husband, Geoffrey, focused on conquering Normandy. Matilda's forces captured Stephen at the Battle of Lincoln in 1141, but her attempt to be crowned at Westminster Abbey collapsed in the face of bitter opposition from the London crowds. As a result of this retreat, Matilda was never formally declared Queen of England, and was instead titled "Lady of the English" (Latin: domina Anglorum). Robert was captured following the Rout of Winchester in 1141, and Matilda agreed to exchange Stephen for him. Matilda was besieged at Oxford Castle by Stephen's forces that winter, but escaped at night across the frozen River Isis (Thames) to Abingdon. The war degenerated into a stalemate, with Matilda controlling much of the south-west of England, and Stephen the south-east and the Midlands. Large parts of the rest of the country were in the hands of local, independent barons. Matilda returned to Normandy, now in the hands of her husband, in 1148, leaving their eldest son, Henry, to continue the campaign in England; he was eventually declared Stephen's heir after the signing of the Treaty of Wallingford and succeeded to the throne in 1154, forming the Angevin Empire. Matilda settled her court near Rouen and for the rest of her life concerned herself with the administration of Normandy, acting on her son's behalf when necessary. Particularly in the early years of her son's reign, she provided political advice and attempted to mediate during the Becket controversy. She worked extensively with the Church, founding Cistercian monasteries, and was known for her piety. She was buried under the high altar at Bec Abbey after her death in 1167, until much later when her tomb was moved to Rouen Cathedral.

Charles IV (German: Karl IV.; Czech: Karel IV.; Latin: Carolus IV; also known as Charles of Luxembourg German: Karl von Luxemburg; Czech: Karel Lucemburský; Latin: Carolus Luxemburgensis; Luxembourgish: Karel vu Lëtzebuerg; born Wenceslaus German: Wenzel; Czech: Václav; 14 May 1316 – 29 November 1378) was Holy Roman Emperor from 1355 until his death in 1378. He was elected King of Germany (King of the Romans) in 1346 and became King of Bohemia (as Charles I) that same year. He was a member of the House of Luxembourg from his father's side and the Bohemian House of Přemysl from his mother's side; he emphasized the latter due to his lifelong affinity for the Bohemian side of his inheritance, and also because his direct ancestors in the Přemyslid line included two saints. He was the eldest son and heir of John of Bohemia, King of Bohemia and Count of Luxembourg, who died at the Battle of Crécy on 26 August 1346. His mother, Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, was the sister of Wenceslaus III, King of Bohemia and Poland, the last of the male Přemyslid rulers of Bohemia. Charles inherited the County of Luxembourg from his father and was elected king of the Kingdom of Bohemia. On 2 September 1347, Charles was crowned King of Bohemia. On 11 July 1346, the prince-electors chose him as King of the Romans (rex Romanorum) in opposition to Louis IV, Holy Roman Emperor of the House of Wittelsbach. Charles was crowned on 26 November 1346 in Bonn. After his opponent died, he was re-elected in 1349 and crowned King of the Romans. In 1355, he was crowned King of Italy and Holy Roman Emperor. With his coronation as King of Burgundy at Arles in 1365, he became the crowned ruler of all the kingdoms of the Holy Roman Empire. Having played a key part in the political and cultural history of the Kingdom of Bohemia, he remains a popular historical figure in the Czech lands. The Golden Bull of 1356 marked a structural change in the politics of the Holy Roman Empire. Several aspects of his legacy remain contentious, however. The image of Charles as a wise, pious, peace-loving king (partly constructed by Charles himself) has proved influential until this day, supported by several artistic or scholarly projects produced during Charles's reign or afterwards.

Amadeus VIII, nicknamed the Peaceful, was Count of Savoy from 1391 to 1416 and Duke of Savoy from 1416 to 1440. He was the first to hold the ducal title, granted by Emperor Sigismund. Known for his diplomatic temperament and administrative reforms, he strengthened the state's institutions and fostered internal peace.

Ferdinand Magellan (c. 1480 – 27 April 1521) was a Portuguese explorer best known for planning and leading the 1519–1522 Spanish expedition to the East Indies. During this expedition, he became the first European to encounter the Strait of Magellan, performed the first European crossing of the Pacific Ocean, and made the first known European contact with the Philippines. Magellan was killed in battle in the Philippines in 1521, but his crew, commanded by Spanish navigator Juan Sebastián Elcano, completed the return trip to Spain in 1522, achieving the first circumnavigation of Earth in history. Born around 1480 into a family of minor Portuguese nobility, Magellan became a skilled sailor and naval officer in the service of the Portuguese Crown in Asia. However, King Manuel I refused to support Magellan's plan to reach the Moluccas, or Spice Islands, by sailing westwards around the American continent. Magellan then proposed the same plan to King Charles I of Spain, who approved it. In Seville, he married, fathered two children, and organized the expedition. In 1518, for his allegiance to the Hispanic monarchy, Magellan was appointed an admiral of the Spanish fleet and given command of the expedition—the five-ship "Armada of Molucca". He also was made a Commander of the Order of Santiago, one of the highest military ranks of the Spanish Empire. Granted special powers and privileges by the king, he led the Armada from Sanlúcar de Barrameda southwest across the Atlantic Ocean, to the eastern coast of South America, and south to Patagonia. Despite a series of storms and mutinies, the expedition successfully passed through the Strait of Magellan into the Mar del Sur, which Magellan renamed the Mar Pacifico, or Pacific Ocean. The expedition landed at Guam after an arduous crossing of the Pacific, then reached the Philippines. There, on 27 April 1521, Magellan died in the Battle of Mactan after being shot in the neck with a poison arrow. Under the command of Captain Juan Sebastián Elcano, the expedition finally reached the Spice Islands. The fleet's two remaining ships then parted ways, one attempting, unsuccessfully, to reach New Spain by sailing east across the Pacific. The other ship, commanded by Elcano, sailed west across the Indian Ocean and north along the Atlantic coast of Africa, finally returning to Spain in September 1522. While in the Kingdom of Portugal's service, Magellan had already reached the Malay Archipelago in Southeast Asia on previous voyages traveling east (from 1505 to 1511–1512). By visiting this area again but now traveling west, Magellan achieved a nearly complete personal circumnavigation of the globe for the first time in history.

Francis Xavier (born Francisco de Jasso y Azpilicueta; formerly de Jasso y de Xabier; 7 April 1506 – 3 December 1552), venerated as Saint Francis Xavier, was a Navarrese cleric and missionary. He co-founded the Society of Jesus and, as a representative of the Portuguese Empire, led the first Christian mission to Japan. Born in the town of Xavier, Kingdom of Navarre, he was a companion of Ignatius of Loyola and one of the first seven Jesuits who took vows of poverty and chastity at Montmartre, Paris in 1534. He led extensive missionary work across Asia, primarily within the Portuguese Empire in the East, and played a significant role in the evangelization of early modern India, particularly through his activities in Portuguese India. In 1546, Francis Xavier wrote to King John III of Portugal proposing measures to strengthen the Christian faith in Goa. Some historians interpret this letter as a request for the establishment of the Goan Inquisition, while others contend that he instead called for the appointment of a special minister dedicated solely to promoting Christianity in Goa. As a representative of the King of Portugal, he was the first major Christian missionary to venture into Borneo, the Maluku Islands, Japan, and other areas. In those areas, struggling to learn the local languages and in the face of opposition, he had less success than he had enjoyed in India. Xavier also extended his mission to Ming China, where he died on Shangchuan Island. He was beatified by Pope Paul V on 25 October 1619 and canonized by Pope Gregory XV on 12 March 1622. In 1624, he was made co-patron of Navarre. Known as the "Apostle of the Indies", "Apostle of the Far East", "Apostle of China" and "Apostle of Japan", he is considered to be one of the greatest missionaries since Paul the Apostle. In 1927, Pope Pius XI published the decree Apostolicorum in Missionibus naming Francis Xavier, along with Thérèse of Lisieux, co-patron of all foreign missions. He is now co-patron saint of Navarre, along with Saint Fermin. The "Day of Navarre" marks the anniversary of Francis Xavier's death, on 3 December.

The structure of the St John Passion (German: Johannes-Passion), BWV 245, a sacred oratorio by Johann Sebastian Bach first performed in Leipzig on Good Friday 1724, is "carefully designed with a great deal of musico-theological intent". Some main aspects of the structure are shown in tables below. The original Latin title Passio secundum Joannem translates to "Passion according to John". Bach's large choral composition in two parts on German text, written to be performed in a Lutheran service on Good Friday, is based on the Passion, as told in two chapters from the Gospel of John (John 18 and John 19) in the translation by Martin Luther, with two short interpolations from the Gospel of Matthew (in the earliest version, one is from the Gospel of Matthew and one from the Gospel of Mark). During the vespers service, the two parts of the work were performed before and after the sermon. Part I covers the events until Peter's denial of Jesus, Part II concludes with the burial of Jesus. The Bible text is reflected in contemporary poetry and in chorales that often end a "scene" of the narration, similar to the way a chorale ends most Bach cantatas. An anonymous poet supplied a few texts himself, quoted from other Passion texts and inserted various stanzas of chorales by nine hymn writers. Bach led the first performance on 7 April 1724 in Leipzig's Nikolaikirche. He repeated it several times between 1724 and 1749, experimenting with different movements and changing others, which resulted in four versions (with a fifth one not performed in Bach's lifetime, but representing the standard version). The Passion, close to Bach's heart, has an "immediate dramatic quality".

The Burmese–Siamese War of 1765–1767, also known as the War of the Second Fall of Ayutthaya (Thai: สงครามคราวเสียกรุงศรีอยุธยาครั้งที่สอง) was the second military conflict between Burma under the Konbaung dynasty and Ayutthaya Kingdom under the Siamese Ban Phlu Luang dynasty that lasted from 1765 until 1767; the war ended the 417-year-old Ayutthaya Kingdom. Burma under the new Konbaung dynasty emerged powerful in the mid-18th century. King Alaungpaya, the dynastic founder, led his Burmese forces of 40,000 men, and with his son Prince of Myedu as vanguard commander, invaded Siam in late 1759 to early 1760. The Burmese reached and attacked Ayutthaya in April 1760 but the arrival of rainy season and sudden illness of Alaungpaya prompted the Burmese to retreat. The traditional Siamese strategy of passive stand in the Ayutthaya citadel against Burmese besiegers worked for one last time, postponing the eventual fall of Ayutthaya for seven years. Alaungpaya died in May 1760 on his way from Siam back to Burma. Burmese invasion of Siam in 1760, in which the Burmese, particularly Prince Myedu, had an opportunity to learn about Siamese geography, strategy and tactics and to reflect about their own flaws in the campaign, served as the foundation of the next Burmese invasion in 1765–1767. Prince Myedu ascended the Burmese throne as King Hsinbyushin in late 1763. Hsinbyushin inherited military energy and prowess from his father Alaungpaya and was determined to accomplish his father's unfinished mission of conquering Ayutthaya. Burma sent forces to successfully conquer Lanna Chiang Mai in 1762–1763. In 1764, new Burmese king Hsinbyushin sent Ne Myo Thihapate with Burmese forces of 20,000 men to subjugate petty rebellions in Lanna and to proceed to invade Ayutthaya. Hsinbyushin also sent another 20,000 men under Maha Nawrahta to attack Siam from Tavoy in another direction, inflicting two-pronged pincer attack onto Ayutthaya. Siam, centered on the royal capital of Ayutthaya, was relatively defenseless against the militaristic Burmese. Due to long absence of external threats, the Siamese defense system had been largely in disuse since the late seventeenth century. Chronic manpower shortage also crippled Siamese defense. Nemyo Thihapate conquered Lao kingdoms of Luang Prabang and Vientiane in March 1765. With the Burmese conquests of Lanna and Laos, the Burmese took control and outflanked Siam's northern frontiers and also had access to vast manpower and other resources. In early 1765, Maha Nawrahta, from his base at Tavoy, sent his vanguard forces to invade and conquer Western Siamese provincial towns. Nemyo Thihapate, with his Burmese-Lanna contingents, descended onto Northern Siam in August 1765. Ayutthaya adopted hyper-centralized defensive strategy by calling provincial forces to defend Ayutthaya, focusing on protecting the royal city itself, leaving peripheral provincial cities less defended and at the mercy of Burmese invaders. Within the conquered Siamese provincial cities, Burmese commanders recruited local Siamese men to join their ranks. In October 1765, Maha Nawrahta, with his main Tavoy column, invaded Siamese Chao Phraya heartland. William Powney the British merchant, at the request of Ayutthayan court, engaged with Maha Nawrahta's Burmese forces in the Battle of Nonthaburi in December 1765 but the Burmese prevailed. Maha Nawrahta, with his Tavoy column coming from the west and Nemyo Thihapate with his Lanna column coming from the north, converged on Ayutthaya in January to February 1766, setting foot on the outskirts of Ayutthaya. Maha Nawrahta took position at Siguk to the west of Ayutthaya, while Nemyo Thihapate encamped at Paknam Prasop to the north of Ayutthaya. Siamese king Ekkathat sent Siamese defense forces in attempts to dislodge Burmese invaders from those places but failed. Siamese resistance group known as Bang Rachan emerged in February 1766 and ended in June, though not significantly impacting the course of the war but showcasing a side story of Siamese patriotic deeds that was later emphasized and celebrated by modern nationalistic Thai historiography of later centuries. For fourteen months, from February 1766 to April 1767, Ayutthaya endured the Burmese siege. Ayutthaya invoked the traditional strategy of passive stand inside of the Ayutthaya citadel, relying on two main defenses; the supposedly impregnable city wall fortified by French architects during the reign of King Narai and the arrival of wet rainy season. The Ayutthayans initially fared well as the foods and provisions were plentiful and the Siamese simply waited for the Burmese to leave but the Burmese besiegers did not intend to retreat. Learning from the previous invasion of 1760, King Hsinbyushin innovated and devised new strategy to overcome Siamese defenses. The Burmese would not leave during rainy season but would stand their grounds and endured wet swamps in order to pressure Ayutthaya into surrender. Burmese besiegers closed in and approached Ayutthaya in September 1766, with Nemyo Thihapate coming closer at Phosamton and Maha Nawrahta at Wat Phukhaothong temple. By late 1766, the situation became dire and desperate for Ayutthayan inhabitants as they ran out of food and resources, many simply surrendering themselves to the Burmese. Desperate, a Siamese military man of Teochew Chinese descent known as Phraya Tak gathered his Chinese–Siamese forces to break through the Burmese line to Eastern Siam in early January 1767, seeking for new position. Developing simultaneously was the Sino-Burmese War. Conflicts between Burma and Qing China over the frontier Shan States led to Yang Yingju the viceroy of Yungui sending Chinese Green Banner forces to directly invade Burma in October 1766. This prompted Burmese king Hsinbyushin, in January 1767, to command the Burmese besiegers in Ayutthaya to finish up the conquest of Ayutthaya in order to divert their forces to the Chinese front. Maha Nawrahta then escalated the siege by constructing twenty-seven forts surrounding Ayutthaya. In February to March 1767, Ayutthaya sent out volunteer Chinese and Portuguese Catholic fighters as the last line of defense, who were also defeated. Maha Nawrahta died from illness in March 1767, leaving his colleague Nemyo Thihapate to assume commands over the whole Burmese besieging forces. Nemyo Thihapate came up with a tactic to circumvent the Ayutthayan wall by digging underground tunnels into Ayutthaya. In early April 1767, the Burmese, through the tunnels, set fire to the roots of the wall, causing the northeastern portion of Ayutthayan wall to collapse, allowing the Burmese to eventually enter Ayutthaya. Ayutthaya, Siamese royal capital for four centuries, fell to the Burmese on 7 April 1767. What followed were violent scenes of the Burmese massacring of the inhabitants, burning of Siamese royal palaces, temples and vernacular structures and looting for treasures. Ekkathat, the last king of Ayutthaya, was either killed by a random gunshot or by starvation. 30,000 Siamese people, along with members of the fallen dynasty, craftsmen and cultural artifacts were all taken back to Burma. Nemyo Thihapate occupied the ruins of Ayutthaya for two months until his departure in June 1767, leaving only a small contingent under the Mon official Thugyi at Phosamton to oversee the short-lived Burmese occupation of Lower Central Siam, while the other part of the kingdom fragmented into a number of competing regional regimes. Burma diverted most of Ayutthaya occupation forces to the Chinese front, giving Siam a golden opportunity to resurge. Phraya Tak, the Siamese leader of Teochew Chinese heritage, who had earlier taken position in Eastern Siam, raised troops there to expel the Burmese and reconquered Ayutthaya-Thonburi area in November 1767. Ayutthaya was too ruinous and untenable to serve as Siam's capital so Phraya Tak, newly enthroned as King Taksin in December 1767, moved the Siamese royal seat to Thonburi south of Ayutthaya. Ayutthaya continued to exist as a second-class provincial towns, with its structural bricks dismantled for construction of Bangkok and its wealth looted by treasure hunters. After finishing the Chinese war in 1769, Hsinbyushin resumed the campaign to attack Siamese Thonburi kingdom in 1775–1776. However, Siam under the new regime was more resilient and competent at defense against Burmese invasions. Burmese invasion of Siam in 1785–1786 would be the last major large-scale Burmese invasion of Siam in history. Siam lost Tenaserim to Burma for perpetuity in 1765, becoming modern Tanintharyi region (Siam attempted to regain Tenasserim in 1792–1794 but failed.), in exchange for taking control of Lanna or modern Northern Thailand from Burma in 1775.

This is a list of early settlers of Marietta, Ohio, the first permanent settlement created by United States citizens after the establishment of the Northwest Territory in 1787. The settlers included soldiers of the American Revolutionary War and members of the Ohio Company of Associates.

The Russo-Turkish War of 1787–1792 involved an unsuccessful attempt by the Ottoman Empire to regain lands lost to the Russian Empire in the course of the previous Russo-Turkish War (1768–1774). It took place concomitantly with the Austro-Turkish War (1788–1791), the Russo-Swedish War (1788–1790), and the Theatre War. During the Russian-Turkish War of 1787–1792, on 25 September 1789, a detachment of the Imperial Russian Army under Alexander Suvorov and Ivan Gudovich took Khadjibey and Yeni Dünya for the Russian Empire. In 1794, Odesa replaced Khadjibey by a decree of the Russian Empress Catherine the Great. Russia formally gained possession of the Sanjak of Özi (Ochakiv Oblast) in 1792 and it became a part of Yekaterinoslav Viceroyalty. The Russian Empire retained full control of Crimea, as well as the land between the Southern Bug and the Dniester.

In the history of France, the French Republic, retroactively referred to as the First Republic and sometimes referred to in historiography as Revolutionary France, was founded on 21 September 1792 during the French Revolution. The First Republic lasted until the declaration of the First Empire on 18 May 1804 under Napoléon Bonaparte, although the form of government changed several times.

The Territory of Mississippi was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that was created under an organic act passed by the Congress of the United States. It was approved and signed into law by President John Adams on April 7, 1798. The Territory was dissolved after 19 years on December 10, 1817, when the western half of the Territory was admitted to the Union as the new State of Mississippi. The eastern half was redesignated by Congress and then 5th President James Monroe as the new Alabama Territory for the next two years, sandwiched between the new state of Mississippi in the west, Georgia to the east, Tennessee on the north, and to the south with a narrow strip of land to the Mobile Bay and Gulf of Mexico coast and further to the southeast of the western panhandle of the Royal Spanish colony of Spanish Florida in the Florida peninsula (future Florida Territory after 1819, and later state of Florida by 1845). The Territory of Alabama was admitted to the Union as the State of Alabama on December 14, 1819. The Chattahoochee River played a significant role in the definition of the Territory's borders during its brief two years of existence, 1817–1819. The population greatly increased in the southeast United States with movement and immigration from the East Coast along the Atlantic Ocean as it grew in the early 1800s from settlement, and American westward and southwestward expansion from the original Thirteen States, with cotton being an important cash crop.

The Lewis and Clark Expedition, also known as the Corps of Discovery Expedition, was the United States expedition to cross the newly acquired western portion of the country after the Louisiana Purchase. The Corps of Discovery was a select group of U.S. Army and civilian volunteers under the command of Captain Meriwether Lewis and his close friend Second Lieutenant William Clark. Clark, along with 30 others, set out from Camp Dubois (Camp Wood), Illinois, on May 14, 1804, met Lewis and ten other members of the group in St. Charles, Missouri, then went up the Missouri River. The expedition crossed the Continental Divide of the Americas near the Lemhi Pass, eventually coming to the Columbia River, and the Pacific Ocean in 1805. The return voyage began on March 23, 1806, at Fort Clatsop, Oregon, ending six months later on September 23. President Thomas Jefferson commissioned the expedition, shortly after the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, to explore and detail as much of the new territory as possible. Furthermore, he wished to find a practical travel route across the western half of the continent—directly avoiding the hot and desolate desert southwest—and to establish an American presence in the new lands before European powers attempted to establish claims of their own. The campaign's secondary objectives were scientific, economical and humanitarian, i.e., to document the West's biodiversity, topography and geography and to establish positive trade relations with (potentially unknown) Native American tribes. The expedition returned to St. Louis to report their findings to President Jefferson via maps, sketches, and various journals.

Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 1770 – 26 March 1827) was a German composer, conductor, and pianist. Regarded as one of the greatest composers in the history of Western music, he was mentored during the Classical period, and his musical style was a key driver of the transition to Romantic music, and the expansion of instrumental forms such as the symphony, the piano sonata and the string quartet. His compositions have attracted extraordinary casual and scholarly interest, and remain among the most performed in the world. Born in Bonn, Beethoven was a musical prodigy. He was initially taught intensively by his father, Johann van Beethoven, and later by Christian Gottlob Neefe. He found relief from a dysfunctional home life with the family of Helene von Breuning, whose children he loved, befriended, and taught piano. At age 21, he moved to Vienna, which became his base, and studied composition with Joseph Haydn. Beethoven gained a reputation as a virtuoso pianist, and was soon patronized by Karl Alois, Prince Lichnowsky for compositions, which resulted in his three Piano Trios, Op. 1, the earliest works to which he accorded an opus number, in 1795. His Pathétique Sonata was composed in 1798. Around this time, Beethoven began experiencing symptoms of hearing loss. His career is divided into three periods. In the first, he composed in the classical style of Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Beethoven's First Symphony premiered in 1800, and his first set of string quartets was published in 1801. The Moonlight Sonata, dedicated to his pupil Julie Guicciardi, is one of his most popular works. In the middle period (1802–1812), he developed a distinctive style. His Third (Eroica) and Fifth Symphonies premiered in 1805 and 1808, respectively. The former was unprecedented in scale and scope. His opera, Fidelio, premiered in 1805, and was later revised. His Violin Concerto appeared in 1806. His Razumovsky quartets were published in 1808. Other middle works include the Waldstein and Appassionata sonatas for piano, the Kreutzer sonata for violin and his Seventh Symphony. His Emperor piano concerto premiered in 1811, without the composer as soloist. His late period (1812–1827) included some of his most innovative works. His Missa solemnis and his final symphony, the Ninth, premiered in 1824. The latter was the first major example of a choral symphony. His Diabelli Variations and late piano sonatas, particularly the Hammerklavier, are summits of the keyboard literature. His late string quartets, including the Große Fuge, of 1825–1826, are considered pinnacles of the genre. After several months of illness, which left him bedridden, Beethoven died on 26 March 1827 at the age of 56.

Mechanics' institutes, also known as mechanics' institutions, sometimes simply known as institutes, and also called schools of arts (especially in the Australian colonies), were educational establishments originally formed to provide adult education, particularly in technical subjects, to working men in Victorian-era Britain and its colonies. They were often funded by local industrialists on the grounds that they would ultimately benefit from having more knowledgeable and skilled employees. The mechanics' institutes often included libraries for the adult working class, and were said to provide them with an alternative pastime to gambling and drinking in pubs. Many of the original institutes included lending libraries, and the buildings of some continue to be used as libraries. Others have evolved into parts of universities, adult education facilities, theatres, cinemas, museums, recreational facilities, or community halls. Few are still referred to as mechanics' institutes, but some retain the name and focus as centre of intellectual and cultural advancement. A 21st-century movement, originating in Victoria, Australia, has organised a series of conferences known as Mechanics' Institutes Worldwide Conferences, at which information and ideas for the future of mechanics' institutes are discussed.

Dom Pedro II (Pedro de Alcântara João Carlos Leopoldo Salvador Bibiano Francisco Xavier de Paula Leocádio Miguel Gabriel Rafael Gonzaga; 2 December 1825 – 5 December 1891), known as "the Magnanimous" (Portuguese: O Magnânimo), was the second and final emperor of the Empire of Brazil. He reigned from 1831 until his deposition in the military coup of 1889, presiding over the longest and most stable reign in Brazilian history. Born in Rio de Janeiro, Pedro II was the seventh child of Emperor Pedro I and Empress Maria Leopoldina. His father's abdication and departure for Europe in 1831 left the five-year-old prince as emperor, ushering in a regency period marked by political instability and shaping a childhood dominated by rigorous education and preparation for rule. These formative years profoundly influenced his character, instilling a strong sense of duty, intellectual curiosity, and devotion to public service, alongside a growing personal ambivalence toward monarchy. During his long reign, Pedro II transformed Brazil from a fragile post-colonial state into a consolidated and internationally respected power. His government was characterized by political stability, freedom of speech, respect for civil rights, economic growth, and the functioning of a constitutional parliamentary system. Brazil achieved military success in conflicts such as the Platine War, the Uruguayan War, and the Paraguayan War, while also resolving numerous internal revolts and diplomatic disputes. Despite resistance from powerful interests, Pedro II ultimately supported and enabled the abolition of slavery in Brazil, a defining achievement of his reign. A patron of education, culture, and science, Pedro II gained international recognition as a learned and enlightened ruler. Nevertheless, in 1889 he was overthrown in a coup d'état with limited popular backing, led primarily by military elites favoring a republican regime. Disillusioned and unwilling to provoke civil conflict, he accepted exile without resistance. Pedro II spent his final years in Europe, living modestly and largely alone. Though deposed at the height of his personal popularity, the monarchy itself was actively delegitimized by the succeeding republican government. In the decades that followed, as Brazil's republics proved turbulent and often authoritarian, historians reassessed the imperial era more favorably — repatriating his remains to Brazil with national honors and consistently ranking him among the greatest statesmen in Brazilian history, with many considering him the greatest Brazilian ruler.

The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), which was formed in 1861 by states that had seceded from the Union to preserve slavery in the United States. The South saw slavery as threatened because of the election of Abraham Lincoln and the growing abolitionist movement in the North. The war ended with Union victory, the dissolution of the Confederacy and the abolition of slavery, freeing four million African Americans. Decades of controversy over slavery came to a head when Abraham Lincoln, a Republican who opposed slavery's expansion, won the 1860 presidential election. Seven slave states in the South responded to Lincoln's victory by seceding from the United States and forming the Confederate States of America. The Confederacy seized US forts and other federal assets in the South. The war began on April 12, 1861, when the Confederacy bombarded Fort Sumter in South Carolina. A wave of enthusiasm for war swept over the North and South, as military recruitment soared. Four more Southern states seceded after the war began and, led by its president, Jefferson Davis, the Confederacy comprised eleven states, containing a third of the US population. Four years of intense combat, mostly in the South, ensued. During 1861–1862 in the western theater, the Union made permanent gains, though in the eastern theater the conflict was inconclusive. The abolition of slavery became a Union war goal on January 1, 1863, when Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared all slaves in rebel states to be free, applying to more than 3.5 million of the 4 million enslaved people in the country. To the west, the Union first destroyed the Confederacy's river navy by the summer of 1862, then much of its western armies, and seized New Orleans. The successful 1863 Union siege of Vicksburg split the Confederacy in two at the Mississippi River, while Confederate general Robert E. Lee's incursion north failed at the Battle of Gettysburg. General Ulysses S. Grant's western successes led Lincoln to promote him to command of all Union armies in 1864. Inflicting an ever-tightening naval blockade of Confederate ports, the Union marshaled resources and manpower to attack the Confederacy from all directions. This led to the fall of Atlanta in 1864 to Union general William Tecumseh Sherman, followed by his March to the Sea, which culminated in his taking Savannah. The last significant battles raged around the ten-month siege of Petersburg, gateway to the Confederate capital of Richmond. The Confederates abandoned Richmond, and on April 9, 1865, Lee surrendered to Grant following the Battle of Appomattox Court House, setting in motion the end of the war. Lincoln lived to see this victory but was shot by an assassin on April 14, dying the next day. By the end of the war, much of the South's infrastructure had been destroyed. The Confederacy collapsed, the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery, and four million enslaved black people were freed. The war-torn nation then entered the Reconstruction era in an attempt to rebuild the country, bring the former Confederate states back into the United States, and grant civil rights to freed slaves. The war is one of the most extensively studied and written about episodes in the history of the United States. It remains the subject of cultural and historiographical debate. Of continuing interest is the myth of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy. The war was among the first to use industrial warfare. Railroads, the electrical telegraph, steamships, the ironclad warship, and mass-produced weapons were widely used. The war left an estimated 700,000 soldiers dead, along with an undetermined number of civilian deaths, making it the deadliest in American history. The technology and brutality of the Civil War foreshadowed the coming world wars.

Thomas D'Arcy McGee (13 April 1825 – 7 April 1868) was an Irish-Canadian politician, Catholic spokesman, journalist, poet, and a Father of Canadian Confederation. The young McGee was an Irish Catholic who opposed British rule in Ireland, and was part of the Young Ireland attempts to overthrow British rule and create an independent Irish Republic. He escaped arrest and fled to the United States in 1848, after which some of his political positions reversed. He remained ardently Catholic, but his Irish nationalism moderated. He became disgusted with American republicanism, Anti-Catholicism, and classical liberalism. McGee became intensely monarchistic in his political beliefs and in his religious support for the embattled Pope Pius IX. He moved to the Province of Canada in 1857 and worked hard to convince fellow Irish Canadians to cooperate with Canadian Protestants in forming a self-governing Canada within the British Empire. His passion for Confederation garnered him the title: 'Canada's first nationalist'. McGee also vocally denounced the activities of the Fenian Brotherhood, a paramilitary secret society of exiled Irish Republicans who resembled his younger self politically, in Ireland, Canada, and the United States. McGee succeeded in helping achieve Confederation in 1867. He was assassinated in 1868. Patrick J. Whelan, a member of the Fenian Brotherhood from Montreal, was convicted of McGee's murder and executed.

Mount Vesuvius ( və-SOO-vee-əs) is a somma–stratovolcano located on the Gulf of Naples in Campania, Italy, about 9 km (5.6 mi) east of Naples and a short distance from the shore. It is one of several volcanoes forming the Campanian volcanic arc. Vesuvius consists of a large cone partially encircled by the steep rim of a summit caldera, resulting from the collapse of an earlier, much higher structure. The eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD destroyed the Roman cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum, Oplontis, Stabiae and other settlements. The eruption ejected a cloud of stones, ash and volcanic gases to a height of 33 km (21 mi), erupting molten rock and pulverised pumice at the rate of 6×105 cubic metres (7.8×105 yd3) per second. More than 1,000 people are thought to have died in the eruption, though the exact toll is unknown. The only surviving witness account consists of two letters by Pliny the Younger to the historian Tacitus. Vesuvius has erupted many times since. It is the only volcano on Europe's mainland to have erupted in the last hundred years. It is regarded as one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world, marked as one of the Decade Volcanoes, because 3,000,000 people live near enough to be affected by an eruption, with at least 600,000 in the danger zone. Eruptions tend to be violent and explosive; these are known as Plinian eruptions.

The Algeciras Conference of 1906 took place in Algeciras, Spain, and lasted from 16 January to 7 April. The purpose of the conference was to find a solution to the First Moroccan Crisis of 1905 between France and Germany, which arose as Germany responded to France's effort to establish a protectorate over the independent state of Morocco. Germany was not trying to stop French expansion. Its goal was to enhance its own international prestige, and it failed badly. The result was a much closer relationship between France and Britain that strengthened the Entente Cordiale since both London and Paris were increasingly suspicious and distrustful of Berlin. The Algeciras Conference was one of the crucial events that led to World War One, with momentous consequences such as the heightened sense of frustration and readiness for war in Germany, that spread beyond the political elite to much of the press and most of the political parties except for the Liberals and Social Democrats on the left. The Pan-German element grew in strength, denounced the government's retreat as treason and stepped up chauvinistic support for war.

The Teapot Dome scandal was a political corruption scandal in the United States during the 1920s involving the administration of President Warren G. Harding. It centered on Albert B. Fall, the Secretary of the Interior, who accepted bribes from private oil companies to lease government-owned petroleum reserves that had been set aside by President William Howard Taft to create the Naval Petroleum Reserves. This was a critical new initiative of the Federal government to ensure that a navy transitioning from coal to oil propulsion would have sufficient stocks of fuel in times of war. Fall was given control over reserves at Teapot Dome in Wyoming, as well as two locations in California, upon the recommendation of Secretary of the Navy Edwin Denby. The leases were the subject of a congressional investigation led by Senator Thomas J. Walsh. Convicted of accepting bribes from the oil companies, Fall became the first presidential cabinet member to go to prison, but no one was convicted of paying the bribes. Before the Watergate scandal, Teapot Dome was regarded as the "greatest and most sensational scandal in the history of American politics". In response to the scandal, Congress subsequently passed permanent legislation granting itself subpoena power over tax records of any U.S. citizen, regardless of position. These laws are also considered to have empowered Congress generally.

Violet Albina Gibson (31 August 1876 – 2 May 1956) was an Irish woman who attempted to assassinate Benito Mussolini in 1926. She was released without charge but spent the rest of her life in a psychiatric hospital in England. She was the daughter of Lord Ashbourne, Lord Chancellor of Ireland.

The Prohibition era was the period from 1920 to 1933 when the United States prohibited the production, importation, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages. The alcohol industry was curtailed by a succession of state legislatures, and Prohibition was formally introduced nationwide under the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified on January 16, 1919. Prohibition ended with the ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment, which repealed the Eighteenth Amendment on December 5, 1933. A wide coalition composed of mostly Protestants, prohibitionists first attempted to end the trade in alcoholic drinks during the 19th century. They aimed to heal what they saw as an ill society beset by alcohol-related problems such as alcoholism, domestic violence, and saloon-based political corruption. Many communities introduced alcohol bans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and enforcement of these new prohibition laws became a topic of debate. Prohibition supporters, called "drys", presented it as a battle for public morals and health. The movement was taken up by progressives in the Prohibition, Democratic, and Republican parties, and gained a national grassroots base through the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. After 1900, it was coordinated by the Anti-Saloon League. Opposition from the beer industry mobilized "wet" supporters from the wealthy Catholic and German Lutheran communities, but the influence of these groups receded from 1917 following the entry of the U.S. into the First World War against Germany. The Eighteenth Amendment passed in 1919 "with a 68 percent supermajority in the House of Representatives and 76 percent support in the Senate" and was ratified by 46 out of 48 states. Enabling legislation, known as the Volstead Act, set down the rules for enforcing the federal ban and defined the types of alcoholic beverages that were prohibited. Not all alcohol was banned; for example, religious use of wine was permitted. Private ownership and consumption of alcohol were not made illegal under federal law, but local laws were stricter in many areas, and some states banned possession outright. By the late 1920s, a new opposition to Prohibition emerged nationwide. At a critical time in the country's economic history, before and at the beginning of the Great Depression, it was claimed that the policy had lowered tax revenues. Religiously, "rural" Protestant values were being imposed on "urban" America. The Twenty-first Amendment ended Prohibition, though it continued in some states. To date, this is the only time in American history in which a constitutional amendment was passed for the purpose of repealing another. The overall effects of Prohibition on society are disputed and hard to pin down. Some research indicates that alcohol consumption declined substantially due to Prohibition, while other research indicates that Prohibition did not reduce alcohol consumption in the long term. Americans who wanted to continue drinking alcohol found loopholes in Prohibition laws or used illegal methods to obtain alcohol, resulting in the emergence of black markets and crime syndicates dedicated to distributing alcohol. By contrast, rates of liver cirrhosis, alcoholic psychosis, and infant mortality declined during Prohibition. Because of the lack of uniform national statistics gathered about crime prior to 1930, it is difficult to draw conclusions about Prohibition's effect on crime at the national level. Support for Prohibition diminished steadily throughout its duration, including among former supporters of Prohibition.

Nazi Germany, officially the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a totalitarian dictatorship. The Third Reich, meaning "Third Realm" or "Third Empire", was the Nazi claim that Nazi Germany was the successor to the Holy Roman Empire (800–1806) and the German Empire (1871–1918); the Nazis called it the Thousand-Year Reich, but it ended just 12 years later in May 1945, when the Allies defeated Germany and entered Berlin, ending World War II in Europe. After Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany in 1933, the Nazi Party began to eliminate political opposition and consolidate power. A 1934 referendum confirmed Hitler as sole Führer (leader). Power was centralised in Hitler's person, and his word became the highest law. The government was not a coordinated, cooperating body, but rather a collection of factions struggling to amass power. To address the Great Depression, the Nazis used heavy military spending, extensive public works projects, including the Autobahnen (motorways), and a massive secret rearmament programme, forming the Wehrmacht (armed forces), all financed by deficit spending. The return to economic stability and end of mass unemployment boosted the regime's popularity. Hitler made increasingly aggressive territorial demands, seizing Austria in the Anschluss of 1938 and the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia. Germany signed a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union and invaded Poland in 1939, launching World War II in Europe. In alliance with Fascist Italy and other Axis powers, Germany conquered most of Europe by 1940, but failed to subdue Britain. Racism, Nazi eugenics, anti-Slavism, and especially antisemitism were central ideological features of the regime. The Nazis considered Germanic peoples to be the "master race", the purest branch of the Aryan race. Jews, Slavs, Romani people, homosexuals, liberals, socialists, communists, other political opponents, Jehovah's Witnesses, Freemasons, those who refused to work and other "undesirables" were imprisoned, deported or murdered. Christian churches and citizens that opposed Hitler's rule were oppressed and opposition leaders were imprisoned. Education focused on racial biology, population policy and fitness for military service. Career and educational opportunities for women were curtailed. The Nazi Propaganda Ministry disseminated films and antisemitic canards, and organised mass rallies, fostering a pervasive cult of personality around Hitler to influence public opinion. The government controlled artistic expression, promoting specific art forms and banning or discouraging others. Genocide, mass murder and large-scale forced labour became hallmarks of the regime; the implementation of its racial policies culminated in the Holocaust. After invading the Soviet Union in 1941, Nazi Germany implemented the Generalplan Ost and Hunger Plan, as part of its war of extermination in Eastern Europe. The Soviet resurgence and entry of the United States into the war meant Germany lost the initiative in 1943, and by late 1944, had been pushed back to the 1939 border. Large-scale aerial bombing of Germany escalated, and the Axis powers were driven back in Eastern and Southern Europe. Germany was conquered by the Soviet Union from the east and the other allies from the west, and capitulated in 1945. Hitler's refusal to admit defeat led to massive destruction of German infrastructure and additional war-related deaths in the closing months of the war. The Allies subsequently initiated a policy of denazification and put many of the surviving Nazi leadership on trial for war crimes at the Nuremberg trials.

Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini (29 July 1883 – 28 April 1945) was an Italian politician, journalist, and dictator who led the Kingdom of Italy as a fascist dictatorship from 1922 until his overthrow in 1943. Known under his rule as Il Duce, he founded fascism in 1919 with the creation of the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento, which became the National Fascist Party (PNF) in 1921. Mussolini was appointed Prime Minister of Italy after the March on Rome in 1922, establishing a totalitarian fascist dictatorship. He oversaw Italy's participation in World War II as a prominent member of the Axis Powers, and was executed by the Italian resistance near the end of the war in 1945. Mussolini was originally a radical socialist journalist at Avanti!. In 1912, he became a member of the National Directorate of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), but was expelled for advocating military intervention in World War I. In 1914, Mussolini founded a newspaper, Il Popolo d'Italia, and served in the Royal Italian Army until he was wounded and discharged in 1917. He eventually denounced the PSI, his views pivoting to focus on Italian nationalism, and founded the fascist movement, which opposed egalitarianism, and class conflict, and instead advocated "revolutionary nationalism" transcending class lines. In 1922, following the March on Rome, he was appointed prime minister by King Victor Emmanuel III. After removing opposition through his secret police and outlawing labour strikes, Mussolini consolidated power through laws, and illegal means, that transformed the nation into a one-party dictatorship. He ordered the Pacification of Libya, which is often considered a genocide. In 1929, he signed the Lateran Treaty to establish the Vatican City. Mussolini, especially after the Great Depression, espoused policies of autarky and corporatism. Mussolini's foreign policy shifted from cautious pragmatism to aggressive expansion and close alignment with Nazi Germany in the mid-1930s. Initially, he sought to expand Italy's influence without risking a major conflict with France or Britain, aligning with them during tensions over Austria. However, his invasion of Ethiopia resulted in condemnations from the League of Nations, which isolated Italy diplomatically. This pushed Mussolini toward Adolf Hitler, leading to a rapprochement and the formation of the Rome–Berlin Axis in 1936. Mussolini began militarily supporting Francisco Franco's forces during the Spanish Civil War. Although he acted as a mediator at the Munich Conference in 1938, his ambitions for territorial expansion and growing distrust of the Western powers led him to strengthen ties with Germany, resulting in the creation of the Pact of Steel in 1939. The wars of the 1930s cost Italy enormous resources, leaving it unprepared for the World War II; Mussolini initially declared Italy's non-belligerence. However, in June 1940, believing that German victory was imminent, he joined the war on Germany's side to share the spoils. Following defeats at the hands of the Allies and the landing in Sicily, the Grand Council of Fascism voted on the Grandi motion, which effectively ended Mussolini's leadership and restored powers to King Victor Emmanuel III who then immediately dismissed Mussolini as head of government and placed him in custody in July 1943. After the king agreed to an armistice with the Allies in September 1943, Mussolini was rescued by the Germans during the Gran Sasso raid. Hitler made Mussolini the figurehead of a puppet state in German-occupied north Italy, the Italian Social Republic, which served as a collaborationist regime of Germany. With Allied victory imminent, Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci attempted to flee to Switzerland, but were captured by communist partisans and summarily executed on 28 April 1945.

The Italian invasion of Albania was a brief military campaign which was launched by Italy against Albania in 1939. The conflict was a result of the imperialistic policies of the Italian prime minister and dictator Benito Mussolini. Albania was rapidly occupied, its ruler King Zog I went into exile in the neighboring Kingdom of Greece, and the country was made a part of the Italian Empire as a protectorate in personal union with the Italian Crown.

Booker Taliaferro Washington (April 5, 1856 – November 14, 1915) was an American educator, author, and orator. Between 1890 and 1915, Washington was the primary leader in the African-American community and of the contemporary Black elite. Born into slavery on April 5, 1856, in Hale's Ford, Virginia, Washington was freed when U.S. troops reached the area during the Civil War. As a young man, he worked his way through Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute and attended college at Wayland Seminary. In 1881, he was named as the first leader of the new Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, an institute for black higher education. He expanded the college, enlisting students in construction of buildings. Work at the college was considered fundamental to students' larger education. He attained national prominence for his Atlanta Address of 1895, which attracted the attention of politicians and the public. Washington played a dominant role in black politics, winning wide support in the black community of the South and among more liberal whites. Washington wrote an autobiography, Up from Slavery, in 1901, which became a major text. In that year, he dined with Theodore Roosevelt at the White House, which was the first time a black person publicly met the president on equal terms. After an illness, he died in Tuskegee, Alabama on November 14, 1915. Washington was a key proponent of African-American businesses and one of the founders of the National Negro Business League. Washington mobilized a nationwide coalition of middle-class Black people, church leaders, and white philanthropists and politicians, with the goal of building the community's economic strength and pride by focusing on self-help and education. Washington had the ear of the powerful in the United States of his day, including presidents. He used the nineteenth-century American political system to manipulate the media, raise money, develop strategy, network, distribute funds, and reward a cadre of supporters. Because of his influential leadership, the timespan of his activity, from 1880 to 1915, has been called the Age of Booker T. Washington. Washington called for Black progress through education and entrepreneurship, rather than trying to challenge directly the Jim Crow segregation and the disenfranchisement of Black voters in the South. Furthermore, he supported racial uplift, but secretly also supported court challenges to segregation and to restrictions on voter registration. Black activists in the North, led by W. E. B. Du Bois, disagreed with him and opted to set up the NAACP to work for political change. After his death in 1915, he came under heavy criticism for accommodating white supremacy, despite his claims that his long-term goal was to end the disenfranchisement of African Americans, the vast majority of whom still lived in the South. Decades after Washington's death in 1915, the civil rights movement of the 1950s took a more active and progressive approach, which was also based on new grassroots organizations based in the South. Washington's legacy has been controversial in the civil rights community. However, in the late twentieth century, more nuanced perspectives about his actions by scholars and historians interpreted him more positively.

The Holocaust saw the systematic mass murder of Jews in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine, the General Government, the Crimean General Government and some areas which were located to the east of Reichskommissariat Ukraine (all of those areas were under the military control of Nazi Germany), in the Transnistria Governorate and Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina and the Hertsa region (all of those areas were then part of Romania, with the latter three areas being re-annexed) and Carpathian Ruthenia (then part of Hungary) during World War II. The listed areas are currently parts of Ukraine (except modern-day Transnistria). Between 1941 and 1945, between 850,000 and 1,600,000 Jews were killed in Ukraine, which included assistance of local collaborators. Another estimate of this figure from Yitzhak Arad is 1,452,000 to 1,518,000 total murdered Ukrainian Jews in the Holocaust. If one looks only at the territories that were a part of the Ukrainian SSR in 1938 (so, excluding Eastern Galicia, Volhynia, northern Bukovina, the Bujak, and Subcarpathian Ruthenia), then between 667,000 and 693,000 Ukrainian Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, also according to Yizhak Arad's data. According to University of Toronto historian Timothy D. Snyder, "the Holocaust is integrally and organically connected to the Vernichtungskrieg, the war in 1941, and it is organically and integrally connected to the attempt to conquer Ukraine … Had Hitler not had the colonial idea to fight a war in Eastern Europe to control Ukraine, had there not been that idea, there could not have been a Holocaust." According to Wendy Lower, the genocide of the Ukrainian Jews was closely linked to German plans to exploit and colonize Ukraine.

Ioannis Rallis (Greek: Ιωάννης Δ. Ράλλης; 1878 – 26 October 1946) was the third and last collaborationist prime minister of Greece during the Axis occupation of Greece during World War II, holding office from 7 April 1943 to 12 October 1944, succeeding Konstantinos Logothetopoulos in the Nazi-controlled Greek puppet government in Athens.

The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league in the United States. Composed of 32 teams, it is divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada and the highest professional level of American football in the world. Each NFL season begins annually with a three-week preseason in August, followed by an 18-week regular season, which runs from early September to early January, with each team playing 17 games and having one bye week. Seven teams from each conference, including the four division winners and three wild card teams, then advance to the playoffs, a single-elimination tournament, which culminates in the Super Bowl, played in early February between the winners of the AFC and NFC championship games. The NFL is headquartered in New York City.

The Fragheto massacre was the massacre of 30 Italian civilians and 15 partisans in Fragheto, a frazione of Casteldelci in central-northern Italy, on 7 April 1944, during World War II, by soldiers of the German 356th Infantry Division. After partisans belonging to the Eighth Garibaldi Brigade ambushed troops approaching the hamlet, fourteen soldiers of the Sturmbattaillon OB Sudwest conducted house-to-house searches and summarily killed civilians. Representing 40% of the hamlet's population, many of the victims were elderly people, women, or children. A further seven partisans and one civilian were shot the next day at Ponte Carrattoni, at the confluence of the Senatello and Marecchia.

World War II, or the Second World War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all of the world's countries participated, with many engaging in total war on an unprecedented scale. World War II was the deadliest conflict in history, causing the deaths of 60 to 75 million people, a majority of whom were civilians. Millions died as a result of massacres, starvation, disease, and genocides including the Holocaust. After the Allied victory, Germany, Austria, Japan, and Korea were occupied, and German and Japanese leaders were tried for war crimes.

The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from its formation in 1922 until its dissolution in 1991. It was the world's third-most populous country, the largest by area, and bordered twelve other countries. A diverse multinational state, it was organized as a federal union of national republics, with the largest and most populous being the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (SFSR). The world's flagship communist state, it was governed by the Communist Party under Marxism–Leninism, through soviet councils. The Soviet economy was also centrally planned. Its capital and largest city was Moscow.

The World Health Organization (WHO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) which coordinates responses to international public health issues and emergencies. It is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, and has six regional offices and 150 field offices worldwide. Only sovereign states are eligible to join, and it is the largest intergovernmental health organization at the international level.

Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was the 34th president of the United States, serving from 1953 to 1961. In his previous military career, he commanded the Allied Expeditionary Force during World War II, including in Operation Torch in North Africa and Operation Overlord on D-Day in Normandy. For his distinguished service in the U.S. Army, Eisenhower was honored with the five-star rank of General of the Army.

Francoist Spain, also known as Nationalist Spain, Falangist Spain, the Franco regime, or the Franco dictatorship, officially the Spanish State, was a state established in Nationalist-held territories of Spain ruled by Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War from 1936 to 1939 and then comprising the whole of Spain from 1939 until Franco's death in 1975.

International Business Machines Corporation, doing business as IBM, is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is a publicly traded company and one of the 30 companies in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. IBM is the largest industrial research organization in the world, with 19 research facilities across a dozen countries; for 29 consecutive years, from 1993 to 2021, it held the record for most annual U.S. patents generated by a business.

The National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) is an American Indigenous rights organization. It was founded in 1944 to represent the tribes and resist U.S. federal government pressure for termination of tribal rights and forced assimilation of Native Americans. These were in contradiction of their treaty rights and status as sovereign entities. The organization continues to be an association of federally recognized and state-recognized American Indian and Alaska Native tribes.

Formula One (F1) is the highest class of worldwide racing for open-wheel, single-seater formula racing cars run by the Formula One Group and sanctioned by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA). The FIA Formula One World Championship has been one of the world's premier forms of motorsport since its inaugural running in 1950 and is often considered to be the pinnacle of motorsport. The word formula in the name refers to the set of rules all participant cars must follow. A Formula One season consists of a series of races, known as Grands Prix. Grands Prix take place in multiple countries and continents on either purpose-built circuits or closed roads, as street circuits.

The Internet is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a network of networks that comprises private, public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope, linked by electronic, wireless, and optical networking technologies. The Internet carries a vast range of information services and resources, such as the interlinked hypertext documents and applications of the World Wide Web (WWW), electronic mail, discussion groups, internet telephony, streaming media and file sharing.

The Vietnam War was an armed conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia fought between North Vietnam and South Vietnam and their allies. North Vietnam was supported by the Soviet Union and China, while South Vietnam was supported by the United States and other anti-communist nations. The conflict was the second of the Indochina wars and a proxy war of the Cold War. The Vietnam War was one of the postcolonial wars of national liberation, a theater in the Cold War, and a civil war, with civil warfare a defining feature from the outset. Direct US military involvement escalated from 1965 until US forces were withdrawn in 1973. The fighting spilled into the Laotian and Cambodian civil wars, which ended with all three countries becoming communist in 1975.

The Viet Cong (VC) was an epithet and umbrella term to refer to the communist-led armed movement and united front organization in South Vietnam. In 1960, it was formally organized as the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, and conducted military operations under the name of the Liberation Army of South Vietnam (LASV). The movement fought under the direction of North Vietnam against the South Vietnamese and United States governments during the Vietnam War. The organization had guerrilla and regular army units, as well as a network of cadres who organized and mobilized peasants in the territory the VC controlled. During the war, communist fighters and some anti-war activists claimed that the VC was an insurgency indigenous to the South that represented the legitimate rights of people in South Vietnam, while the U.S. and South Vietnamese governments portrayed the group as a tool of North Vietnam. It was later conceded by the Vietnamese communist leadership that the movement was actually under the North Vietnamese political and military leadership, aiming to unify Vietnam under a communist rule.

John Thomson Stonehouse was a British Labour and Co-operative Party politician, businessman and minister who was a member of the Cabinet under Prime Minister Harold Wilson. He is remembered for his unsuccessful attempt at faking his own death in 1974. It is also alleged that Stonehouse had been an agent for Czechoslovak military intelligence.

Siegfried Buback was the Attorney General of West Germany from 1974 until his murder in 1977.

The Iran hostage crisis began on November 4, 1979, when 66 Americans, including diplomats and other civilian personnel, were taken hostage at the Embassy of the United States in Tehran, with 52 of them being held until January 20, 1981. The incident occurred after the Muslim Student Followers of the Imam's Line stormed and occupied the building in the months following the Iranian Revolution. With support from Ruhollah Khomeini, who had led the Iranian Revolution and would eventually establish the present-day Islamic Republic of Iran, the hostage-takers demanded that the United States extradite Iranian king Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who had been granted asylum by the Carter administration for cancer treatment. Notable among the assailants were Hossein Dehghan, Mohammad Ali Jafari, and Mohammad Bagheri. The hostage crisis contributed to a dramatic decline in Iran–United States relations. After 444 days, it came to an end with the signing of the Algiers Accords between the Iranian and American governments; Pahlavi had died in Cairo, Egypt, on July 27, 1980.

Sadegh Ghotbzadeh was an Iranian politician who served as a close aide of Ayatollah Khomeini during his 1978 exile in France and was foreign minister during the Iran hostage crisis following the Iranian Revolution. In 1982, he was executed for allegedly plotting the assassination of Ayatollah Khomeini and the overthrow of the Islamic Republic.

STS-6 was the sixth NASA Space Shuttle mission and the maiden flight of the Space Shuttle Challenger. Launched from Kennedy Space Center on April 4, 1983, the mission deployed the first Tracking and Data Relay Satellite, TDRS-1, into orbit, before landing at Edwards Air Force Base on April 9, 1983. STS-6 was the first Space Shuttle mission during which a Extravehicular activity was conducted, and hence was the first in which the Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU) was used.

Dmitry Timofeyevich Yazov was a Marshal of the Soviet Union. A veteran of the Great Patriotic War, Yazov served as Minister of Defence from 1987 until he was arrested for his part in the 1991 August coup, four months before the fall of the Soviet Union. Yazov was the last person to be appointed to the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union on 28 April 1990 and the only Marshal born in Siberia. At the time of his death on 25 February 2020, he was the last living Marshal of the Soviet Union.

K-278 Komsomolets was the Project-685 Plavnik, nuclear-powered attack submarine of the Soviet Navy; the only submarine of her design class.

A ferry is a boat or ship that transports passengers, and occasionally vehicles and cargo, across a body of water. A small passenger ferry with multiple stops, like those in Venice, Italy, is sometimes referred to as a water taxi or water bus.

John Marlan Poindexter is a retired United States naval officer and Department of Defense official. He was Deputy National Security Advisor and National Security Advisor during the Reagan administration. He was convicted in April 1990 of multiple felonies as a result of his actions in the Iran–Contra affair, but his convictions were reversed on appeal in 1991. During the George W. Bush administration, he served a brief stint as the director of the DARPA Information Awareness Office. He is the father of NASA astronaut and U.S. Navy Captain Alan G. Poindexter.

The Rwandan genocide, also known as the genocide against Tutsi, occurred from 7 April to 19 July 1994 during the Rwandan Civil War. Over a span of around 100 days, members of the Tutsi ethnic group, as well as some moderate Hutu and Twa, were systematically killed by Hutu militias. While the Rwandan Constitution states that over 1 million people were killed, most scholarly estimates suggest between 500,000 and 662,000 Tutsi died. The genocide was marked by extreme violence, with victims often murdered by neighbours, and widespread sexual violence, with between 250,000 and 500,000 cases of rape.

On April 7, 1994, Federal Express Flight 705, a McDonnell Douglas DC-10 cargo jet carrying electronics equipment across the United States from Memphis, Tennessee, to San Jose, California, was the subject of a hijack attempt by Auburn R. Calloway, a Federal Express employee facing possible dismissal for falsifying his flight hours. Calloway boarded the scheduled flight as a deadhead passenger carrying a guitar case concealing several hammers and a speargun. He planned to crash the aircraft hoping he would appear to be an employee killed in an accident, so his family could collect on a $2.5 million life insurance policy provided by Federal Express. Calloway tried to switch off the aircraft's cockpit voice recorder (CVR) before takeoff, but the flight engineer noticed and turned it back on, believing he had neglected to turn it on. Once airborne, Calloway attempted to kill the crew with hammers so their injuries would appear consistent with an accident rather than a hijacking. Despite severe injuries, the crew fought back, subdued Calloway, and landed the aircraft safely.

The First Chechen War, also referred to as the First Russo-Chechen War, was a conflict between the separatist Chechen Republic of Ichkeria and the Russian Federation from 1994 to 1996. The conflict ended in a peace treaty that saw Russian forces withdraw from the territory only for them to invade again three years later, sparking the Second Chechen War of 1999–2009.

Turkish Airlines Flight 5904 was a Boeing 737-400 on an international repositioning flight from Adana Şakirpaşa Airport in Adana, Turkey, to King Abdulaziz International Airport in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, which crashed on 7 April 1999 in the vicinity of Ceyhan, Adana Province, in southern Turkey, eight minutes after takeoff. The flight was on its way to Saudi Arabia to pick up pilgrims from Jeddah, and as such took off without any passengers on board. All six crew members were killed in the accident.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is an independent agency of the U.S. federal government responsible for the United States' civil space program, as well as research in aeronautics and space. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., NASA operates ten field centers across the US and is organized into three mission directorates: Human Spaceflight, Research and Technology, and Science. Established in 1958 amid the Space Race, NASA succeeded the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) to give the US space program a distinct civilian orientation focused on peaceful applications. Since then, it has led most American spaceflight programs, including Project Mercury, Project Gemini, the Apollo program, Skylab, the Space Shuttle, the International Space Station (ISS), and the ongoing multinational Artemis program.

The Iraq War, also referred to as the Second Gulf War, was a protracted armed conflict in Iraq from 2003 to 2011. It began with the invasion by a United States–led coalition, which resulted in the overthrow of the Ba'athist government of Saddam Hussein. During the US occupation of Iraq, the conflict persisted as an insurgency that arose against coalition forces and the newly established Iraqi government. US forces were officially withdrawn in 2011. In 2014, the US became re-engaged in Iraq, leading a new coalition under Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve, as the conflict evolved into the ongoing Islamic State insurgency.

Jean-Bertrand Aristide is a Haitian former Salesian priest and politician who served as president of Haiti in 1991, from 1994 to 1996, and from 2001 to 2004. He lived in exile between the 1991 military coup and 1994, and again between the 2004 coup and 2011. Aristide was a member of the Lavalas Political Organization before he founded the party Fanmi Lavalas in 1996.

Git is a distributed version control software system that is capable of managing versions of source code or data. It is often used to control source code by programmers who are developing software collaboratively. It was originally created by Linus Torvalds for version control in the development of the Linux kernel.

Peru, officially the Republic of Peru, is a country in western South America. It is bordered to the north by Ecuador and Colombia, to the east by Brazil, to the southeast by Bolivia, to the south by Chile, and to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean. Peru is a megadiverse country, with habitats ranging from the arid plains of the Pacific coastal region in the west, to the peaks of the Andes mountains extending from the north to the southeast of the country, to the tropical Amazon basin rainforest in the east with the Amazon River. Peru has a population of over 32 million, and its capital and largest city is Lima. At 1,285,216 km2 (496,225 sq mi), Peru is the 19th largest country in the world, and the third largest in South America.

Protests against the April 2009 Moldovan parliamentary election results began on 6 April 2009 in major cities of Moldova before the final official results were announced. The demonstrators claimed that the election, which saw the governing Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova (PCRM) win a majority of seats, were fraudulent, and alternatively demanded a recount, a new election, or resignation of the government. Similar demonstrations took place in other major Moldovan cities, including the country's second largest, Bălți, where over 1,000 people protested.

On the morning of 7 April 2011, a school shooting occurred at the Tasso da Silveira Municipal School, an elementary school in Realengo, a western neighbourhood of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Twelve students were killed, and 22 others seriously wounded by 23-year-old Wellington Menezes de Oliveira, a former student who committed the attack with two revolvers. Oliveira was intercepted by the police but committed suicide before being arrested. It was the first reported mass shooting at a school to not be tied to gang violence in Brazil. It remains tied along with the 2016 Campinas massacre as the second-deadliest mass shooting by a lone gunman in Brazilian history, both surpassed only by the 1997 Santo Antônio do Potengi massacre.

On 7 April 2017, a vehicle-ramming terrorist attack took place in central Stockholm, the capital of Sweden. A hijacked truck was deliberately driven into crowds along Drottninggatan before being crashed into an Åhléns department store. Five people were killed and 14 others were seriously injured.

Donald John Trump is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who is the 47th president of the United States. A member of the Republican Party, he served as the 45th president from 2017 to 2021.

Brazilians are citizens and people associated with Brazil. This connection can be historic, cultural or legal. For most Brazilians several of these connections exist and are all sources of their Brazilian identity, sharing a common culture, language and in many cases history and/or ancestry. Brazil is a multiethnic society, which means that it is home to people of many ethnic origins.

The global COVID-19 pandemic, caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an outbreak in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. It spread to other parts of Asia and then worldwide in early 2020. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) on 30 January 2020 and assessed it as having become a pandemic on 11 March. The WHO declared that the public health emergency caused by COVID-19 had ended in May 2023, while noting that COVID-19 continued to be a global health threat.

Thomas B. Modly is an American businessman and former government official who served as acting United States Secretary of the Navy from November 24, 2019, to April 7, 2020.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is the national public health agency of the United States. It is a United States federal agency under the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia.

Ketanji Onyika Brown Jackson is an American lawyer and jurist who is an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Jackson was nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court by President Joe Biden on February 25, 2022, and confirmed by the United States Senate and sworn into office that same year. She is the first Black woman, the first former federal public defender, and the sixth woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.