Showing results by author "A. Rivers" in All Categories

The British East India Company served as one of the key players in the formation of the British Empire. From its origins as a trading company struggling to keep up with its superior Dutch, Portuguese, and Spanish competitors to its tenure as the ruling authority of the Indian subcontinent to its eventual hubristic downfall, the East India Company serves as a lens through which to explore the much larger economic and social forces that shaped the formation of a global British Empire.

You, too, can manifest a life beyond your wildest dreams, with just a pen and paper, even if you think it’s totally unrealistic now! Script to Manifest will take you on an incredible journey of altering the reality of your world.

When Bogart died in 1957, Bacall was still in her 30s, yet from 1957 onward her name scarcely surfaces in popular culture, as though Bacall was simply wiped away with her late husband.

Hollywood has never lacked leading men who could captivate viewers with dramatic performances that depict them as suave romantics or dashing heroes, especially during the Golden Age of Hollywood when stars like Humphrey Bogart, Clark Gable, and Cary Grant graced screens. But in 1940, the 4th most popular star in the U.S. was a foreign actor from Australia, and unlike other movie stars, he was more notorious for his pursuits off the screen than on it.

While he was one of the most influential men in the ancient world, research on Cyrus the Great is simultaneously fascinating and frustrating. Of course, this reality has deepened the mystique that surrounds Cyrus even to this day, and it has elevated his status from conqueror and king to enlightened humanist monarch and ideal ruler. Whatever the underlying issues, the incredible achievements of Cyrus distinguish him as one of the greatest kings in history, and his life, conquests, reforms, and rule continue to be of great interest over 2,500 years later.

Some historians have called the Seven Years’ War the first true world war, and they make a good point. Ultimately, this globally coordinated war involved five continents and at least 29 states and tribal confederacies, with a casualty toll in the millions and the maps forever altered. As part of the Seven Years’ War, the French and Indian War was the last in a long series of colonial conflicts between the French and British and also changed the map in America. At the end of the war, disputed borders were finally settled, and both empires were left reeling from the costs of war.

Camile is tired of being overlooked because she's shy and plus-size. She's ready to reclaim her life, and she intends to start with a kiss from a legendary MMA playboy. Unfortunately, his grumpy teammate, Leo, has other plans.

In April 1945, the Allies were within sight of the German capital of Berlin. One of the most crucial aspects of the final fighting was that while some Germans gave up and others committed suicide, there were others holding out or trying to escape, and that produced one of the war’s most unusual scenes. The Battle of Castle Itter, an almost completely forgotten sideshow, would find Americans and Germans defending French prisoners against the SS.

The modern history of Africa was until very recently written on behalf of the indigenous races by the white man, who had forcefully entered the continent during a particularly hubristic and dynamic phase of European history.

In 1941, with the dark star of Nazi conquest in the ascendant over Europe, German Fuhrer Adolf Hitler continued seeking fresh ways to expand the Third Reich's domains. Two strategic issues occupied Hitler's immediate attention: dealing with Britain and the Soviet Union. Hitler and Goering disagreed fundamentally on the next steps to be taken, and Hitler's ideas naturally won out over the Reichsmarshal's objections.

The Great Lakes have claimed countless thousands of vessels over the course of history, but its biggest and most famous victim was the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, the largest ship of its day to sail the Great Lakes and still the largest to lie below Lake Superior's murky depths. The giant ore freighter was intentionally built "within a foot of the maximum length allowed for passage through the soon-to-be completed Saint Lawrence Seaway."

When young president Kennedy came to power in 1961, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev was eager to test his mettle from the start. Questioning Kennedy's resolve and attempting to placate the concerns of Cuban leader Fidel Castro following the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, Khrushchev attempted to place medium-range nuclear missiles in Cuba, just 90 miles off the coast of the United States.

In the year 3197 AD, humanity has reached the stars and has terraformed and colonized a small section of the Milky Way. It has been 6 years since the end of the Isolde Revolution, a war that split humanity into two political blocs at the cost of hundreds of millions of lives. The Federation of Human Planets licks its wounds and tries to adapt after a third of its population broke away. The Independent Frontier Systems Alliance, IFSA, desperately rebuilds its devastated worlds with a shaky economy that can't survive another war.

In the wake of taking Constantinople, the Ottoman Empire would spend the next few centuries expanding its size, power, and influence, bumping up against Eastern Europe and becoming one of the world’s most important geopolitical players. It was a rise that would not truly start to wane until the 19th century.

As a doctor who aced her way through medical school, I should be too smart to fall for Gabe Mendoza, a man who's married to his MMA career. For years, I've patched his wounds and cheered him on, but I'm tired of hoping he'll wake up and see what's right in front of him. I'm ready to find someone who will put me first. The last thing I expect is for Gabe to tell me all the dirty things he wants to do to me. He asks for a chance, but with the fight of his life on the horizon, his attention is divided, and I'm scared that when push comes to shove, I'll be left heartbroken.

What would you change if you won the lottery? Lucy Crowne and Tanner Laszlo have low expectations when they stumble upon a lottery ticket and agree to split any winnings, but life quickly turns upside down when the fantasy of riches becomes reality. Lucy used to be an eternal optimist, but she’s been stuck. Stuck in a dead-end job with a misogynistic boss. Stuck with an ex dragging their feet in a divorce. She’s desperate for a change, but how does she make it happen? Tanner doesn’t want to change.

The early history of Earth covers such vast stretches of time that years, centuries, and even millennia become virtually meaningless. Instead, paleontologists and scientists who study geochronology divide time into periods and eras. The current view of science is that Earth is around 4.6 billion years old, but despite all of the scientific advances made in the past few centuries, including an enhanced understanding of Earth’s geological past, relatively little is known about the planet’s early history.

In terms of geopolitics, perhaps the most seminal event of the Middle Ages was the successful Ottoman siege of Constantinople in 1453. The city had been an imperial capital as far back as the fourth century, when Constantine the Great shifted the power center of the Roman Empire there, effectively establishing two almost equally powerful halves of antiquity’s greatest empire. Constantinople would continue to serve as the capital of the Byzantine Empire even after the Western half of the Roman Empire collapsed in the late fifth century.

The man who would become the Father of Organized Crime in the United States was born Salvatore Lucania in Sicily, but he would quickly make a name for himself after his family moved to New York City when he was still a child. By his teenage years, he was running the streets, organizing his own teenage gang, and moving in circles with the likes of Meyer Lansky, who would become key figures in Lucky's rise to power.

The Liberian Civil Wars examines the incredibly deadly conflicts in the West African region, and how they changed the nation. You will learn about the the wars and Liberia's transition like never before....