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.

Hugh Alexander, portrayed by Matthew Goode in "The Imitation Game," was a British chess champion who was recruited to be a code breaker at Bletchely P...

After the USS Indianapolis delivered the component parts of the atomic bomb which was dropped on Hiroshima, she was torpedoed by I-58, a Japanese subm...

This image depicts a page from the Illuminated Chronicle, also known as Manuscript (Cod. Lat. 404).  A national treasure for the country of Hunga...

A massive earthquake occurred off the coast of Sumatra on the 26th of December, 2004. This map image depicts the lay of the land.

What happened in Ukraine, during 1932-33, which caused people to describe a famine in that country as Holodomor ("death by starvation)?

After his city of Warsaw had been bombed into ruin, a 9-year old boy becomes the breadwinner of his family.

Image of a lithograph called "Louis XVI and his Family in the Chateau du Temple," by Edgar Melville Ward.

As Henry VIII's troops continued to terrorize the Scots - after the Scottish Parliament refused to approve the Treaty of Greenwich whereby Mary, Queen...

70 years later, people still feel the impact of partitioning India into two countries (India and Pakistan) based on religion.

Indonesians have cut-down native trees and replaced them with palm oil trees. This has led to environmental damage.

When Stalin was leader of the Soviet Union, he implemented an industrialization program which transformed the USSR.

John McCrae's poem, "In Flanders Field," is often recited on Veterans' Day. Learn the story behind the poem. It is one of the most-quoted war poems in...

Show tooltips