History's Greatest Hits: Famous Events We Should All Know More About

361 Pages·2013·2.67 MB·English

by  Joseph Cummins

To Mimi, who is quite historical
Contents

Cover
Half Title page
Title page
Dedication

Introduction

The Ancient World, 250 BC–500 AD
218 BC: Hannibal Crosses the Alps
44 BC: The Assassination of Julius Caesar
476 AD: The Fall of the Roman Empire

The Middle Ages and Renaissance, 1000–1500
1066: The Battle of Hastings
1095–1291: The Crusades
1215: Magna Carta
1347–1349: The Black Death
1415: The Battle of Agincourt
1431: The Execution of Joan of Arc
1478–1530: The Spanish Inquisition
1492: Columbus Arrives in the Americas

The Early Modern Era, 1500–1900
1588: The Defeat of the Spanish Armada
1666: The Great Fire of London
1759: The Battle of Quebec
1776: Washington Crosses the Delaware
1789: The Storming of the Bastille
1815: The Battle of Waterloo
1845–1849: The Irish Potato Famine
1854: The Charge of the Light Brigade
1863: The Gettysburg Address
1876: Custer’s Last Stand

A World at War, 1900—1950
1915: The Battle of Gallipoli
1916: The Battle of the Somme
1917: The October Revolution
1929: The Wall Street Crash
1940: The Battle of Britain
1941: The Attack on Pearl Harbor
1944: D-Day
1944: The Battle of the Bulge
1945: The Bombing of Hiroshima

The Cold War and Beyond, 1950–2001
1962: The Cuban Missile Crisis
1963: The Assassination of President Kennedy
1967: The Six-day War
1968: The Tet Offensive
1969: The First Moon Landing
1989: The Fall of the Berlin Wall
2001: 9/11

Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Photography credits
Index
Copyright
Introduction
F EVENTS ARE FAMOUS, YOU MAY say to yourself, gazing at the subtitle of this
I
book, why in the world should we know more about them? They’re
famous, after all. And famous means well known, renowned, eminent,
illustrious, celebrated. But, really, how much do you know about Hannibal’s
crossing of the Alps with a herd of elephants? It’s famous, of course. But did
you know that almost all the elephants died? And that one reason why the
location of Hannibal’s high and treacherous path across the mountains
remained hidden for so many centuries is that it became a fiercely protected
smuggler’s route?
In many ways, being famous obscures the actual event, in the same way
that fame blinds us to the human reality of a movie star or other celebrity. So
what I’ve tried to do here is bring what really happened to life and place it
within a historical context, to help the reader understand its significance. The
Crusades, for example, are the subject of uncountable romantic legends,
poems, novels and films, and as myth-ridden as any famous event in history;
but since these holy wars of the eleventh to thirteenth centuries still have a
bearing on the religious conflicts of today, it’s important to know the reality
behind them.
Not all of History’s Greatest Hits have had a major impact on subsequent
history, of course, and many are famous for other reasons. Some are simply
notorious. The Charge of the Light Brigade didn’t change history, but reading
about the brigade’s commanding officer, James Thomas Brudenell, the
Seventh Earl of Cardigan – a man one historian has called “unusually stupid”
– reminds one in a salutary way about the inadvisability of putting idiots in
charge. George Armstrong Custer was not quite as big an idiot as Brudenel,
but led his men to their Last Stand just as recklessly – and here, of course, part
of why we remember the event is that not one soldier of Custer’s command
survived: we are haunted by the ghosts of his Seventh Cavalry, and the ghosts
of what might have been.
Many of the events described in this book have had a major impact on our
cultural history, and in some cases have become part of our language. We all
have our “last stands,” meet our own “Waterloos,” and mutter “Et tu, Brutus”
when betrayed by a friend (alothough Caesar didn’t actually say that as the
knives struck home). Understanding these events enriches our general
knowledge and enhances our appreciation of this shared history.
Drawing on in-depth studies of the protagonists of these events by other
historians, I have also tried to impart at least a little of what was going on in
the minds of certain great leaders – from Queen Elizabeth I and Christopher
Columbus to George Washington and Winston Churchill. This, in turn, helps
make these famous events more comprehensible.
Finally, I hope I have been able to tell a good story or two here. For many
people, the last time they will have read about the Battle of Agincourt or the
Great Fire of London or the Wall Street Crash was in some dry and mustry
schoolbook, but these events and others recounted here are absolutely
fascinating (if sometimes horrible) and we shouldn’t be able to tear our mind’s
eye from them if they are retold effectively. History in ancient times was an
oral tradition – stories told and reenacted in front of an appreciative audience
– and History’s Greatest Hits aims to impart some of that spoken feel and bring
these episodes to life once more.
The Ancient World
250 –500
BC AD
218 BC
Hannibal Crosses the Alps
How One of History’s Most Determined Leaders Drove an Entire Army —
and a Herd of Elephants — over Western Europe’s Highest Mountains
N THE THIRD CENTURY BC, the ancient North African kingdom of
I
Carthage fought the up-and-coming power Rome for control of the
Mediterranean basin. This lengthy and bloody conflict took three wars —
known as the Punic Wars — and one hundred years to resolve. In the end,
Rome was the victor, Carthage, famously, the loser, the once-grand old city
burned literally to ashes, its people sold into slavery, its very earth sown with
salt, so that nothing could ever grow there again. After this victory, Rome was
well on its way to establishing its thousand-year empire, while Carthage
became merely an echoing and distant memory. Except, that is, for one man:
Hannibal Barca, whose extraordinary feat of crossing the Alps with a large
army — and a herd of battle elephants — has captured human imaginations for
2,500 years.
It’s doubtful whether we would know anything about Hannibal were it not
for a dogged Greek-born historian named Polybius, who, writing fifty years
after the event in his History of the Roman Republic, even tried to trace
Hannibal’s route and talk to descendants of those who had fought with the
legendary Carthaginian. What a word picture Polybius paints. He reports that,
as Hannibal stood in the foothills of the Alps, with mountains of indescribable
height looming behind him — mountains no army had ever crossed — he
addressed his nervous troops in this way: “What do you think the Alps are?
They are nothing more than high mountains … No height is insurmountable
to men of determination.”