The Green Mountain Boys had their origins in a dispute over land in America. In 1749 Governor Benning of New Hampshire began to grant lands west of the Connecticut River (which today is Vermont), even though New York put in a strong claim. In 1770 the New York Supreme Court held that all Hampshire west of the Green Mountains were …

The first real explorers of the Ancient World were the Phoenicians. They were a people who had settled on a costal strip of land at the eastern end of the Mediterranean, now known as the Lebanon, who had many colonies, the most important being Tyre and Sidon. Phoenician wealth originally came from a dye made from a small shellfish found …

During the twelfth or thirteenth centuries the third had greatest of the Mexican civilizations arose – the Aztecs. They were a warlike race which gradually grew in power, becoming the strongest nation in Mexico. Their capital, Tenochtitlan, was built on islands in a marshy area where Mexico City stands today. They worshiped a blood-thirsty pantheon of gods, led by Huitzilopochtli, …

Alfred, Lord Tennyson immortalized these six hundred British soldiers in his famous poem ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’. This commemorated the Battle of Balaclava during the Crimean War (1864-66), in which Russia, Turkey, Britain and France were involved. The Light Brigade (the six hundred) was told, in a confusion of orders, to charge strong Russian batteries. They suffered heavy …

The story of man’s attempt to rival the birds is as old as the human race. From Greek mythology we have the story of Icarus who had wings of feathers sewn on with threads and fastened with wax. He flew too near the sun, and the wax melted. Icarus fell into the sea and was drowned. Oliver of Malmesbury, an …

According to Roman legend Romulus and Remus were grandsons of Numitor, King of Alba, who was deposed by his brother, Amulius. Numitor’s daughter was forced to become a Vestal Virgin, but Mars, the god of war, fell in love with her and she gave birth to twin sons. Amulius commanded that the infants be drowned and they were thrown into …

William Morris was an eminent Victorian, born in 1834. He had a many-sided career as poet, artist, manufacturer and socialist. At Oxford he began a life-long friendship with Edward Burne-Jones, the painter and designer, who subsequently introduced him to Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the poet and painter, and a leader of the Pre-Raphaelites. At one time Morris intended to enter the …

Mary Mallon (September 23, 1869 – November 11, 1938), also known as Typhoid Mary, was the first person in the US to be identified as a healthy carrier of typhoid fever. She worked as a cook in New York City. She was an Irish girl who’d migrated to the US for a better life. She infected nearly 53 people, three …

Marie Curie, a French physicist, was the first woman to achieve great fame in science. She was born in Poland in 1867 and married the French scientist, Pierre Curie, in 1895. Her main interest was radioactively in uranium ore, Marie Curie identified radium in 1898. Four years later, she managed to prepare the element itself, having extracted less than a …

In 1822, Hugh Clapperton, a young naval lieutenant, agreed to go with Walter Oudney and Dixon Denham to try and discover the source of the River Niger in North Africa. They journeyed south cross the Sahara from Tripoli to Lake Chad, the first white men to visit the region. Oudney died at Murner, and the other two separated, Clapperton going …