I Used to Know That_ Stuff You Forgot From School - Caroline Taggart [43]
A year later the Southern States seceded from the Union, followed by the American Civil War, where emancipated blacks fought bravely in the Union Army for their own freedom.
Other Important Historical Dates
This small section just didn’t fit anywhere else, but most of us will remember at least something about these notable events:
☞ 1215: MAGNA CARTA, OR THE GREAT CHARTER
Signed by King John at Runnymede, this was the first successful attempt to control the power of the English monarchy.
☞ 1453: FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE
You might not think it was a big deal (after all, cities were falling all over the place all of the time), but this was when the Muslim Ottoman Empire took over the Byzantine, or Christian, capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, and all those scholarly monks fled into Western Europe, taking their books with them. In other words, it marked the start of the Renaissance—which, in its narrowest sense, means a rebirth in interest in classic literature, art, and architecture.
☞ 1605: GUNPOWDER PLOT
A failed attempt by a group of provincial English Catholics to blow up the Protestant king, James I, and the Houses of Parliament. Somebody let it be known, and Guy Fawkes was caught in the cellars under the Palace of Westminster with a load of gunpowder.
☞ 1620: PILGRIM FATHERS
A group of Puritans, persecuted in England because of their religion, set sail from Southampton in the Mayflower and in due course established a colony in Plymouth, Massachusetts.
☞ EARLY 18TH CENTURY ONWARD: AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION
Larger, enclosed fields, inventions such as Jethro Tull’s planting drill, and the concept of crop rotation pioneered by Viscount “Turnip” Townshend improved agricultural methods and increased food yield, which made it possible to feed the increasing numbers of people not working on the land following the Industrial Revolution.
☞ 1750 ONWARD: INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
The invention of Arkwright’s water-powered spinning frame, Hargreaves’s spinning jenny, and Crompton’s mule revolutionized the production of yarn and therefore cloth, leading to the development of factories and mass production.
Explorers
Since this chapter has been talking about fighting over many regions of the world, here is a quick rundown of people who discovered some of them.
Eric the Red and Leif Eriksson (late 10th-11th century, Norwegian): father and son. Eric, brought up in Iceland, was the first European to settle in Greenland; Leif, blown (a long way) off course on his way from Iceland to Greenland, became the first European to reach America. He landed at a place he called Vinland, which may have been modern-day Newfoundland or Nova Scotia.
Bartolomeu Dias (c. 1450-c. 1500, Portuguese): trade routes to India were the big thing after the Turks blocked off the land route. Dias made an attempt at doing it by sea, being the first to round the Cape of Good Hope at the bottom of Africa. But he named it the Cape of Storms, which may suggest why his crew made him turn back before they got farther than Mozambique.
Christopher Columbus (1451-1506, Italian): born in Genoa but had his voyages sponsored by Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. The idea was to reach the East (that is, Asia) by sailing west, thus proving beyond all doubt that the Earth was round. Of course, America got in the way. Columbus never actually reached mainland North America, but he did discover the Bahamas, Hispaniola, Guadeloupe, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico, among others. His ships were the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria.
Amerigo Vespucci (1454-1512, Italian): discovered the mouth of the Amazon and the River Plate, which made him important enough to have a continent or two named after him.
Vasco da Gama (c. 1469-1525, Portuguese): persisted where Dias had failed and made it to Calicut in India.
Francisco Pizarro (c. 1478-1541, Spanish):