Page 5 - Citing Primary News Today

Erasmus Darwin Keyes (1810--95) was a Union general in the American Civil War. Born in Brimfield, Massachusetts, and raised in Maine, he graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1832. Unlike many generals from both the North and the South, he did not see action in the Mexican War. During the first year of the Civil War, he successfully led a battalion in the First Battle of Bull Run (also called the First Battle of Manassas), was appointed to command a division in the A...

The Nansen passport was a certificate issued by the Nansen International Office for Refugees as an international substitute for a passport, which allowed stateless persons or those deprived of their national passports to enter and transit other countries. The Nansen office was the successor to the first international agency dealing with refugees, the High Commission for Refugees, established in June 1921 by the League of Nations under the direction of the Norwegian explorer and statesman Fridtjo...

The Federal Convention convened in the State House (Independence Hall) in Philadelphia on May 14, 1787, to revise the Articles of Confederation. Because the delegations from only two states were present initially, the members adjourned from one day to the next until a quorum of seven states was obtained on May 25. Through discussion and debate it became clear by mid-June that, rather than amend the existing Articles of Confederation, the convention would draft an entirely new framework for the g...

Une campagne au Tonkin (A campaign in Tonkin) is a first-hand account of the military campaign mounted by France in 1883-86 in order to establish a protectorate over Tonkin (northern Vietnam). The author, Charles-Edouard Hocquard (1853-1911), was a military doctor who sailed with a French battalion from Toulon in January 1884. He arrived in the Gulf of Tonkin the following month and immediately proceeded to Hanoi by way of Haiphong. Hocquard's book recounts important engagements in the campa...

This watercolor by Manuel María Paz (1820-1902) shows four Amerindians in the village of Puracé in Popayán Province (present-day Department of Cauca), in southwest Colombia, an area sandwiched between the western and central cordilleras of the Andes. Puracé is also the name of the local volcano and is a Quechua word meaning "fire mountain." One of the most active volcanoes in Colombia, it is surrounded by other volcanic mountains and the sources of several major rivers. The wat...

This map of the South Sea, or Pacific Ocean, was made in 1622 by the Dutch cartographer Hessel Gerritsz, who was the official cartographer to the Dutch East India Company and a prominent engraver and publisher. It was not intended as a navigational map, but as a luxurious work for the directors of the company. Regions represented include the Asian coast (named Sina and Tartaria) from Canton to the north of Korea; Insulindia to the east of Borneo; the Philippines, Japan, and the Solomon Islands; ...

Presented here is an early translation into Russian of Description d'Ukranie, an influential work first published in French in 1651. The author, Guillaume Le Vasseur de Beauplan, was a French engineer who worked in Poland between 1630 and 1647. He built fortifications in Ukraine, most of which was then under Polish control, took part in battles with the Cossacks and Tatars, and in 1639 traveled by boat down the Dnieper River. Beauplan produced two important early maps of Ukraine that were ba...

Robert Burns (1759-96) is best known for his poems and songs that reflect Scotland's cultural heritage. He was born in Alloway, Ayrshire, Scotland, the first of seven children belonging to William Burnes, a tenant farmer, and his wife Agnes Broun. Burns had little formal education, but he read English literature and absorbed the traditional, largely oral Scots-language folk songs and tales of his rural environment. He began to compose songs in 1774, and published his first book, Poems, Chief...

This watercolor by Manuel María Paz (1820--1902) shows Laguna de Siecha, in the province of Bogotá (present-day Cundinamarca Department) in west-central Colombia. The lake was of religious significance to the indigenous local Chibcha Muisca people, who were believed to have made gold offerings to their deities at the lake. Settlers in search of gold drained the lake in colonial times, but it has since refilled. The watercolor is typical of Paz's work, which captured the diversity of the ...

This watercolor by Manuel María Paz (1820-1902) shows the view from the highlands above the city of Popayán in the Cordillera Central of the Andes, in present-day Cauca Department, southwest Colombia. The view looks across to the little village of Puracé and the Puracé Volcano, barely visible in the distance, which is one of the most active in Colombia. The watercolor is typical of Paz's work, which captured the diversity of the population of Colombia and depicted the daily activitie...