In the 20th century the United States of America suffered two oil-related energy crises, both of them taking place in the 1970s; the first one during Richard Nixon Administration and the second under Carter. The 1973 oil crisis arose as a direct result of an oil embargo imposed on America by the Arab countries, who [...]

The Boers were the Dutch colonists and their descendants in South Africa (Cape Colony, the Orange Free State, and the Transvaal). "Boer" is a Dutch word which literally means farmer. The first Dutch settlers began to arrive in South Africa in the second half of the 17th century, when the region was under the control [...]

The French Second Empire was the French empire that was created by president Louis Napoleon in 1852, after approval by the legislature and a national referendum, lasting until 1871. Thus, the president of the French Second Republic was proclaimed Emperor of the French Second Empire, with the name of Napoleon III. Nevertheless, the empire collapsed [...]

The French Third Republic was the French democratic government which originated in 1871, in the wake of the fall of the French Second Empire, at the end of the Franco-Prussian War. It lasted until 1940, when its last president, Albert François Lebrun, was replaced by the Nazi-backed Vichy government right after the Battle of France, [...]

During the Crimean War, the British had established hospitals at Scutari, the beautiful town which looks upon Constantinople from the Asian shore of the Bosphorus. But there were no ambulances to carry the wounded or invalid soldier from camp to port; there were no proper arrangements on board ship for his comfort; and, when he [...]

In Germany the result of the Franco-Prussian War was to give a great impulse towards the unification of all the German states under Prussian headship. The work which the Parliament of Frankfort had failed to carry out in the revolutionary period was easily accomplished at a time when Germans were fighting side by side for [...]