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The Farmer’s Law
Anonymous
The Farmer’s Law cannot be dated with certainty, nor is its exact authorship known. But internal evidence points to a date in the seventh or eighth century, probably right around 700. This ...
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Flagellants attempt to ward off the Black Death in Germany and in England
Robert of Avesbury
Although flagellation (beating oneself with a whip) had been practiced as a means of spiritual discipline by monks long before, it did not emerge as a public group activity until the ...
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The Gold Mines of Nubia
Agatharcides of Cnidus
The societies and trade networks that flourished along the Red Sea (or “Erythraean Sea” as the Greeks called it) in antiquity were well documented by writers of many different cultures. ...
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The Irish Crisis
Sir Charles Trevelyan
Sir Charles Trevelyan (1807–1886) spent fifteen years as a British colonial officer in India, where he pursued reform of living conditions; when he was recalled to England, he worked to ...
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Of Lice and Men
William J. Burroughs
William J. Burroughs, a scientist who specializes in physics and climate ponders the unwelcome relationship between people and lice, and what that reveals about evolution and migration of ...
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“On Extinct Quadrupeds,” Principles of Geology
Charles Lyell
Sir Charles Lyell (1797–1875), a friend of Charles Darwin, was a Scottish geologist who was so notable that to this day, in his honor, a crater on the moon and a type of armored fish both ...
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“On Sociability,” The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, 1871
Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin (1809–1882), a British naturalist, propounded the theory of evolution in his famous work On the Origin of Species (1859). With this theory, Darwin launched a massive debate ...
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The Origin of Species
Charles Darwin
The name of Charles Darwin (1809–1882) is inextricably linked to the earth-shattering and (even today) controversial theory he proposed in 1859. However, it is also important to remember ...
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“Peculiarities of a Prodigal Century”
J.R. McNeill
J. R. McNeill is an environmental historian at Georgetown University. In Something New Under the Sun (2000), McNeill provides a broad and comprehensive history of environmental change in ...
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Pedro Cieza de León on Incan roads
Pedro Cieza de León
The Incas created an imperial communications and logistics infrastructure that was unparalleled in the Americas, with two highways extending to the north and south from Cuzco nearly the ...
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Reed Chart from the Marshall Islands, South Pacific
Anonymous
Traditional Micronesian and Polynesian maps of the Pacific, such as this example from the Marshall Islands, from about 1880, show sea lanes across the ocean in the form of reeds that link ...
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The Second Sex
Simone de Beauvoir
Encouraged by the successful strategy and tactics of the civil rights and antiwar movements, a new assertiveness also marked the drive for women’s rights after the conclusion of the Second ...
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Treaty of Versailles
David Lloyd George, Georges Clemenceau, Woodrow Wilson
The Treaty of Versailles concluded the First World War. Signed between the Axis powers and the victorious Allies, it was drafted primarily by the “Big Three,” Britain, France, and the ...
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United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Copenhagen
United Nations Drafting Committee
While there has been considerable debate over the last several decades on the nature and degree of global warming, there is general scientific consensus that greenhouse gases are the main ...
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Upside Down World Map
Anonymous
This “upside down” map is oriented so that south is up, north is down, east is on the left, and west is on the right. The Southern Hemisphere is thus at the top of the map, instead of at ...
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