World History Story Briefs

Whether it's people, places or events which fuel "the news," the fabric of our lives is impacted by world events. This collection features stories from ancient to modern times.

Portrait of Dr. Guillotin who sought a more-humane method of capital punishment during the French Revolution.

Prince Albert, the Duke of York, is apprehensive about a speech he is to give at Wembley Stadium. It does not go well.

Earthquakes, and resulting tsunami-caused damage, is not just a modern-day phenomenon. Lisbon, Portugal was devastated by such events in 1755.

Just before the Ebola outbreak in Yambuku, in 1976, a similar outbreak occurs in Sudan. Investigators believe this cotton factory is somehow involved....

Eddie Adams, a famous war photographer, received the Pulitzer Prize for this photograph which he took, in Saigon, during 1968.

Edward Coke, a leading 17th-century jurist and expert on Common Law, wrote a series of works about the topic between 1628 and 1644.

An effigy on the tomb of Edward of Woodstock, the first Prince of Wales who was also known as The Black Prince, gives us a glimpse of how he appeared ...

On the 11th of December, 1936, King Edward VIII signs an Instrument of Abdication by which he gives-up the British throne. Then he speaks to his peopl...

When Princess Elizabeth (played in this scene from Elizabeth R by Glenda Jackson) was imprisoned at the Tower of London - implicated in Wyatt's rebell...

In the fall of 1562, Elizabeth I (played by Glenda Jackson in this clip from Elizabeth R) became desperately ill with smallpox.

Helping to unite England, Elizabeth of York marries Henry Tudor.

Emily Hobhouse, a young British woman who witnessed conditions in concentration camps during the Second Anglo-Boer War, included the following passage...

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