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The events people ask about most, each told as what happened, why it happened and what it changed, with where historians still disagree. Follow the links to see how one turning point led to the next.
21 notes from Graphite. Free to read, with no account. Nothing here is for sale.
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The note that answers the topic’s biggest question, then the two it leads to most directly.
Start here
History is the study of the human past from the evidence it left behind. How historians weigh that evidence, how objects are dated, and the main eras on one timeline.
Graphite7 min read
Then
Cleopatra VII was the last ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt, a Greek-speaking queen who allied with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony and lost Egypt to Rome in 30 BC.
Graphite6 min read
And then
World War II grew from the bitter peace after World War I, the Great Depression, and aggressive regimes in Germany, Italy and Japan that others failed to stop in time.
Graphite7 min read
Every note
The three above, then the rest. Each answers one question and links to the notes it leads to.
On 11 September 2001, 19 al-Qaeda hijackers seized four US airliners and crashed them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field, killing 2,977 people.
Graphite7 min read
Hitler came to power legally, appointed chancellor in January 1933 after Nazi election gains, then destroyed Germany's democracy from inside in about 18 months.
Graphite6 min read
World War I began with the murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in June 1914, but rival alliances, arms races and nationalism turned a Balkan crisis into a world war in five weeks.
Graphite6 min read
On 26 April 1986, a botched safety test blew apart reactor 4 at Chernobyl in Soviet Ukraine, the worst nuclear accident in history. What went wrong, and what it cost.
Graphite7 min read
The Holocaust was Nazi Germany's systematic murder of six million European Jews, 1933 to 1945. How persecution became genocide, step by step, and how we know.
Graphite6 min read
The Vietnam War was a fight over who would rule a united Vietnam, from 1955 to 1975, in which the United States backed the South and lost. Why it began, how it went, and its toll.
Graphite7 min read
The Soviet Union was a one-party communist state of 15 republics, ruled from Moscow from 1922 until it broke apart in December 1991. How it rose, how it worked, and why it fell.
Graphite6 min read
The Ottoman Empire was a Turkish Muslim dynasty's state that ruled much of southeast Europe, the Middle East and North Africa from about 1299 until 1922. How it rose, ruled and fell.
Graphite6 min read
Troy was a real city, at Hisarlik in Turkey, and it was attacked and burned around 1200 BC. A war like Homer's is legend; a real conflict behind it is possible but unproved.
Graphite6 min read
Slavery caused the Civil War: above all, whether it could spread into the western territories. The seceding states said so in their own declarations, and the road ran from 1850 to Fort Sumter.
Graphite6 min read
The US dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 to force Japan's quick surrender without an invasion. Whether they were needed is still argued.
Graphite6 min read
The Titanic sank because it hit an iceberg at high speed, which opened six forward compartments when it could survive four flooded. Too few lifeboats turned the wreck into a disaster.
Graphite6 min read
The Roman Empire was the state ruled by emperors from Rome, and later Constantinople, from 27 BC. Its western half fell in AD 476; its eastern half lasted until 1453.
Graphite6 min read
Japan attacked Pearl Harbor to cripple the US Pacific Fleet so it could seize the oil and resources of Southeast Asia after a US embargo, rather than give up its war in China.
Graphite6 min read
Juneteenth marks 19 June 1865, when a Union general told enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, they were free. It became a US federal holiday in 2021.
Graphite6 min read
The Black Death was a plague pandemic that swept Europe from 1347 to 1351, killing perhaps a third to a half of its people. It was caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis.
Graphite7 min read
Daylight saving time began as a World War I plan to save coal by moving an hour of daylight into the evening. Farmers opposed it, and the energy savings turned out small.
Graphite7 min read
The Cold War was the rivalry between the US-led West and the Soviet-led East from about 1947 to 1991, fought with nuclear threats, proxy wars and propaganda, never direct battle.
Graphite7 min read
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