History's Great Untold Stories: Obscure Events of Lasting Importance

Front Cover
Allen & Unwin, 2006 - 367 pages
'History's Great Untold Stories' opens readers' eyes to important places, events and peoples that have been ignored, yet directly affected our history.

From inside the book

Contents

Introduction
8
The Most Controversial Trial in History
10
The Leper King of Jerusalem
20
Genghis Khans Greatest Strategist
32
The Marco Polo of the East
46
The Treasure Fleet
58
The Shot That Echoed Through the Centuries
71
The Shimabara Uprising and the Disappearance of Japan
84
John Wesley Powell and the Shaping of the American West
206
How the World Was Changed by Bird Droppings
220
The Fighting Women of Dahomey
230
The Story of John Devoy
242
Queen Min and the Battle to Save Korea
256
The First Modern Genocide
270
The San Francisco Plague
282
Blessed Assassin of the Armenian Nation
296

Father of American Civil Liberties
94
The Battle of Poltava and the Fall of the Swedish Empire
106
Vitus Bering and the Russian Discovery of Alaska
118
Francisco Dagohoy and the Rebels of Bohol
132
The British Abolition Movement
140
North Americas Greatest Geographer
152
The Great Conciliator of Van Diemens Land
164
American President of Nicaragua
180
The SecondWorst Conflict in History
194
Explorers of the Deep
308
The Search for the Origins of the Aryan Race
322
A Lesson Not Learnt
334
The Death of the Mexican Counterculture
346
Bibliography
358
Acknowledgments
360
Index
361
Copyright

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Page 215 - Whenever any citizen of the United States discovers a deposit of guano on any island, rock, or key, not within the lawful jurisdiction of any other government, and not occupied by the citizens of any other government, and takes peaceable possession thereof, and occupies the same, such island, rock, or key may, at the discretion of the President, be considered as appertaining to the United States.
Page 101 - Three days and nights my business forced me to lodge and mix with the bloody Pequod ambassadors, whose hands and arms, methought, reeked with the blood of my countrymen, murdered and massacred by them on Connecticut river, and from whom I could not but nightly look for their bloody knives at my own throat also.
Page 204 - We have an unknown distance yet to run; an unknown river yet to explore. What falls there are, we know not ; what rocks beset the channel, we know not ; what walls rise over the river, we know not. Ah, well! we may conjecture many things. The men talk as cheerfully as ever; jests are bandied about freely this morning; but to me the cheer is somber and the jests are ghastly.
Page 142 - Mill, in Hertfordshire, I sat down disconsolate on the turf by the road-side, and held my horse. Here a thought came into my mind, that if the contents of the Essay were true, it was time some person should see these calamities to their end.
Page 215 - ... acquired by the United States by consent of the legislature of the State in which the same shall be, for the erection of a fort, magazine, arsenal, dockyard, or other needful building. (4) Any island, rock, or key containing deposits of guano, which may, at the discretion of the President, be considered as appertaining to the United States.
Page 183 - They are but drivellers who speak of establishing fixed relations between the pure white American race, as it exists in the United States, and the mixed Hispano-Indian race, as it exists in Mexico and Central America, without the employment of force. The history of the world presents...
Page 104 - It is the will and command of God that (since the coming of his Son the Lord Jesus) a permission of the most Paganish, Jewish, Turkish, or anti-christian consciences and worships be granted to all men in all nations and countries...
Page 183 - His head was surmounted by a huge white fur hat, whose long nap waved with the breeze, which, together with a very ill-made short-waisted blue coat, with gilt buttons, and a pair of grey, strapless pantaloons, made up the ensemble of as unprepossessing-looking a person as one would meet in a day's walk.

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