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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.

Egypt probably gave rise to the first great civilizations, which continue to fascinate modern societies across the globe nearly 5,000 years later. From the Library and Lighthouse of Alexandria to the Great Pyramid at Giza, the ancient Egyptians produced several wonders of the world, revolutionized architecture and construction, created some of the world's first systems of mathematics and medicine, and established language and art that spread across the known world.

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.

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.

The history of the border between Mexico and the United States extends alongside 200 years and 2,000 miles - the tortuous epic of a man-made line that has not only hardened and become more solid over time, but has changed meanings too. In the beginning, it was an idea - the approximate and inhospitable edge of the vast Spanish Empire and the beginning of no man's land. Then, it was a line on paper - a porous boundary with no physical barriers.

Standing in history like a milestone marking the boundary between one era and the next, the Potsdam Conference brought together the leaders of the three major Allied powers - the United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom - for the last time at the end of World War II and at the threshold of the Cold War. A follow up to the Yalta Conference just five months earlier, Potsdam attempted to work out the contours of the postwar world.

Bethlehem is amongst the oldest cities in the world, one that has been conquered and ruled by Caananites, Jews, Romans, Arabs, Crusaders, the Mamluks of Egypt, and the Ottomans. In the last century alone, it has been controlled by various different parties. The British took Bethlehem during World War I and controlled the city from 1920-1948, and in the wake of the 1948 war between Israel and its neighbors, Jordan annexed Bethlehem and controlled it until the Six Day War in 1967.

From the Trail of Tears to Wounded Knee and Little Bighorn, the narrative of American history is incomplete without the inclusion of the Native Americans that lived on the continent before European settlers arrived in the 16th and 17th centuries. Since the first contact between natives and settlers, tribes like the Sioux, Cherokee, and Navajo have both fascinated and perplexed outsiders with their history, language, and culture.

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.

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.

To get a sense of the kind of prestige that Claude Monet's reputation has within the art world, one need only learn that his Le Bassin Aux Nympheás (1919) - from his series of paintings featuring water lilies - sold for the equivalent of more than $70 million. This is an incredibly staggering price, especially considering that early in his life, Monet had been so poor and debt-ridden that some of his paintings were taken from him by creditors.

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.

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.

Early in 1968 a massive coordinated Viet Cong operation - the Tet Offensive - briefly paralyzed American and South Vietnamese forces across the country, threatening even the American embassy compound in Saigon. With this the smiling mask slipped even further, inflaming the burgeoning antiwar movement. Although American soldiers didn't lose a battle strategically during the campaign, the Tet Offensive made President Johnson noncredible and historically unpopular, to the extent that he did not run for reelection in 1968.

Call of the Whippoorwill takes a detailed look at the Eastern Whippoorwill. In this book, you will learn all about the bird, its habitat, ecology, feeding and mating habits, egg incubation, care of its young, and possible explanations behind the decreasing numbers of the species in the eastern United States. The book also explores the prominence of the whippoorwill in legends and popular culture.

For centuries, beautifully illustrated fairy-tale volumes have rested innocently on kids' night tables around the world, long ago relegated to the dubious honor of being branded as "children's literature". But every story is a file packed with information, and Cinderella, Snow White, Puss in Boots, and Bluebeard have always intimated that perhaps they have more to tell besides "beautiful" stories, the same ones that animated the minds of several generations of children.

Americans have long been fascinated by the Civil War, marveling at the size of the battles, the leadership of the generals, and the courage of the soldiers. Since the war's start over 150 years ago, the battles have been subjected to endless debate among historians and the generals themselves. The Civil War was the deadliest conflict in American history, and had the two sides realized it would take four years and inflict over a million casualties, it might not have been fought.

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No other artwork in the world is comparable to the Virgin of Guadalupe. What makes this painting unique - located in the Basilica of Guadalupe, north of Mexico City - is not precisely its artistic quality, as is the case with the Mona Lisa by Leonardo or The Kiss by Gustav Klimt, nor its place in the evolution of painting.

Of all the empires and kingdoms in the ancient world, few could compare with the Lydians in terms of wealth and opulence. From the early seventh century BCE until the middle of the sixth century BCE, the Lydians played an important role in the history of the eastern Mediterranean region as they took on the role of middleman between the empires of the Near East and the emerging Hellenic civilization in Greece.