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There is something romantic about traveling on a cruise ship, and even today luxury cruises are considered by many to be the ultimate vacation, featuring days of fun activities in exotic locations and nights of dinner and dancing under the stars. Today even the cheapest cabins are quite luxurious, and people save for years to afford to travel by sea. However, it was not always that way, and there was a time when travelling on even the most luxurious liners could prove dangerous or even deadly.

New England has always had a special place in the national memory. Its rich folklore and colorful history is woven into the national identity, and destinations such as Plymouth Rock, the lighthouses of Maine, and Vermont's autumn leaves are quintessential symbols of the United States. But New England has always had a dark side, a strange side. Monsters and ghosts lurk in its woods and old houses, and strange monuments that may be from a forgotten civilization puzzle local investigators.

Tyranny in ancient Greece was not a phenomenon limited to any particular period. Tyrants could be found in power throughout Greece, ruling poleis from the seventh century BC right through to the second century BC, when Roman domination effectively put an end to this form of government throughout the Hellenistic world.

Failing to secure the capture of any major northern cities, or the recognition of Great Britain or France, or the complete destruction of any northern armies, the Confederacy's last chance to survive the Civil War was the election of 1864. Democrats had been pushing an anti-war stance or at least a stance calling for a negotiated peace for years, so the South hoped that if a Democrat defeated President Lincoln, or if anti-war Democrats could retake the Congress, the North might negotiate peace with the South.

In almost every nativity scene today are shown three kings presenting gifts to the newborn baby Jesus, and though everyone is familiar with the three wise men, they are also some of the most mysterious characters from the Bible. According to scripture, they journeyed from an unnamed land to Bethlehem, bearing gifts for Jesus Christ, and then disappeared. They were the first Christian pilgrims, they later became the patron saints of travelers, and their image is on millions of Christmas cards.

The Civil War is best remembered for the big battles and the legendary generals who fought on both sides, like Robert E. Lee facing off against Ulysses S. Grant in 1864. In kind, the Eastern theater has always drawn more interest and attention than the West. However, while massive armies marched around the country fighting each other, there were other small guerrilla groups that engaged in irregular warfare on the margins, and among these partisan bushwhackers, none are as infamous as William Quantrill.

The early 20th century was a time of sudden growth for the young American automobile industry, and of a military beginning to extend its reach around the world. In what would become largely a jurisdictional dispute over Western natural resources, the unbridled oil industry of the new century collided with the United States military and the Department of the Interior, set against the dominance of a corruption-riddled presidential administration.

Of all the peoples of the ancient Near East, the Phoenicians are among the most recognizable but also perhaps the least understood. The Phoenicians never built an empire like the Egyptians and Assyrians; in fact, the Phoenicians never created a unified Phoenician state but instead existed as independent city-state kingdoms scattered throughout the Mediterranean region.

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In 353 BCE, when King Mausolus of Halicarnassus passed away, his sister and queen Artemisia was inconsolable, but she found a way to honor him through finishing a project that they had started together during his life: the construction of a mausoleum that was so marvelous it would later be considered one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

The Middle Ages remains one of the most defining eras of human civilization. It is an era characterized by illustrious monarchs, valiant knights in shining armor, and magnificent Gothic architecture. It is also an era characterized by fervent friction, brutish barbarism, frequent famines, pestilent plagues, and of course, death. Some say the mortality rate in medieval times was like no other; with about a third of all children dying before the age of five, it was nearly miraculous for one to live past their 40s.

Of all the peoples of the ancient Near East, the Phoenicians are among the most recognizable but also perhaps the least understood. The Phoenicians never built an empire like the Egyptians and Assyrians; in fact, the Phoenicians never created a unified Phoenician state but instead existed as independent city-state kingdoms scattered throughout the Mediterranean region.

Of course, the most important war of all for Texas came in the early 19th century, and the common story heard in America is about rebellion against intolerance, oppression and Mexican cruelty. The Battle of the Alamo in particular, surrounded by legend and testimonies of heroism, is a textbook example of the fight for freedom, comparable to the Jewish defenders during the Roman siege at Masada.

All Americans are familiar with the "day that will live in infamy". On December 7, 1941, the United States was attacked at Pearl Harbor. In less than an hour and a half the Japanese had almost wiped out America's entire naval presence in the Pacific, but one of the aspects of the war most forgotten is that the Japanese simultaneously launched concerted attacks against American targets elsewhere in the Pacific that the same day, including one against the strategically located Wake Island.

There have been no shortage of great warrior societies in history, including the Romans, Mongols, Macedonians, and Vikings, and the list goes on. Yet one humble city in particular, nestled in a valley near the Eurotas River in the Greek region of the Peloponnese and once ridiculed as little more than a cluster of villages inhabited by uncouth shepherds, produced the most famous warrior elite the world has ever known.

After the Battle of Fort Sumter made clear that there would be war between the North and South, support for both the Union and Confederacy rose. Two days after the surrender of the fort, President Abraham Lincoln issued a call-to-arms asking for 75,000 volunteers, a request that would rely on Northern states to organize and train their men.

By the early decades of the 20th century, the fur trade had tapered off some from its heyday in the 19th century, but it still proved profitable enough for hunters to live for months at a time in remote regions of Alaska. Their only contact with the outside world consisted of the company ships that came to buy their furs and bring them supplies. One of these vessels was the steamer Baychimo, a Hudson's Bay Company ship that plied the treacherous waters off Alaska, Arctic Canada, and Siberia for many years.

By the close of 1864, Abraham Lincoln had been reelected, the Union army had taken Nashville from General Hood, and Sherman had concluded his total war, "slash-and-burn" march of destruction to Savannah, Georgia, offering it as a Christmas present to Lincoln. Nevertheless, with everything seemingly falling to pieces, the South still held out hope of some sort of miracle, and Davis even attempted to send a peace delegation to meet with Lincoln in the early months of 1865.

Not everything in Scotland is as it appears. Some Scots say this is a land haunted by spirits, a place of strange disappearances and unexplained phenomena. There is no shortage when it comes to the strange stories Scotland has to offer, and the legends and lore have compelled many to dig a little deeper and even explore this wonderful land for themselves.

Separated by vast gulfs of political, cultural, and philosophical divergence, the three chief Allied nations of World War II - the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain - attempted to formulate a joint policy through a series of three conferences during and immediately after the conflict. The second meeting, named the Yalta Conference after its Black Sea venue, occurred in February 1945 and was both the most well-known and most influential of them all.