Page 6 - Citing Primary News Today

This photograph from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park, New York, shows American soldiers landing in Normandy, France, on the morning of June 6, 1944, the beginning of the long-awaited invasion to liberate continental Europe from the grip of Nazi Germany. Most of the troops that came ashore were from the United States, Great Britain, and Canada, with smaller contingents from France, Poland, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, and the Netherlands. The invading forces confronted formidab...

Mao Gong Ding, the bronze tripod cauldron, was excavated at the end of the Daoguang period (1821-50) in Qishan County, Shaanxi. Dings were used widely as ritual vessels and became hierarchical symbols during the Zhou dynasty (circa 1046-256 BC). This is the most famous ding, originally belonging to Mao Gong. There are 497 characters on the inside of the vessel, the longest bronze inscription known to this day. The inscription records the history of the late Western Zhou (circa 1046-771 BC), spec...

This sacramentary was written for Henry II (973--1024) before he was crowned Holy Roman Emperor in 1014. It was executed by a workshop in Ratisbon (present-day Regensburg). There the influence of the Carolingian model of the Codex aureus, a ninth-century gospel written for Emperor Charles the Bald and preserved in the monastery of Saint Emmeram, was a crucial stimulus for the Ottonian school of illumination 100 years later. The picture of the emperor closely resembles that of the earlier exempla...

George Nathaniel Curzon (1859-1925) was a British politician, traveler, and writer who served as viceroy of India from 1899 to 1905 and foreign secretary from 1919 to 1924. As a young man he traveled extensively and wrote several travel books, or books that drew extensively on his travels. Presented here is his Russia in Central Asia in 1889, and the Anglo-Russian Question. Published in London in 1889, the book was intended as an update to the political situation in Central Asia up to that year....

The Kyiv-Mohyla Academy traces its origins to 1615, when the noblewoman Galshka Gulevicheva donated land and money to build the Brotherhood Monastery School in Kiev. When Metropolitan of Kyiv Petro Mohyla (circa 1597--1647) arrived in Kiev and decided to open a school at Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, the Brotherhood Monastery School appealed to Mohyla not to open a new school but to use the existing institution as the base for a new academy. Mohyla agreed, and in 1632 the Brotherhood Monastery School bec...

The manuscript presented here is a two-page fragment of a commentary on the Commedia by the great Florentine poet Dante Alighieri (1265-1321). The text, written in Italian by an unknown scribe, was produced in Italy the second half of the 14th century, only a few decades after the poet's death. This was also about the time that the poet Giovanni Boccaccio (1313--75) first applied the epithet "divine" to Dante's poem, which Dante himself had simply called Comedia. This fragment ...

John Cary (circa 1754-1835) was a leading London engraver, map-, chart- and print-seller, and globe maker, active between 1787 and 1834. This map of 1804 shows the Arabian Peninsula and neighboring parts of Africa and the Middle East. Important caravan routes are marked, including the "route of the grand caravan of Sudan from the Niger to Cairo," "route of the caravan from Batsora [Basra] to Aleppo," "caravan of Darfowar [Darfur] to Mecca by Dongola," "caravan ...

This map of the Arabian Peninsula shows international borders, caravan routes, and important cities and towns. British possessions, including the port of Aden and the island of Socotra (ʻAdan and Suquṭrā, both part of present-day Yemen), are indicated by the pink coloring. The old Qatari cities of El Bedaa and Zabara (present-day Al Bida and Al Zabara) are shown. The map appeared as plate 48 in The Imperial Atlas of Modern Geography, published by the Glasgow firm of Blackie & Son in 185...

Gerard Mercator (1512--94) was born in Rupelmonde in Flanders (Belgium). His given name was Gerard de Kremer or Cremer. "Mercator," meaning "merchant," is a Latinized version of his Flemish last name. He studied philosophy and theology at the University of Leuven, and developed an interest in astronomy and mathematics. He produced his first map, of Palestine, in 1537. He went on to create numerous maps and globes in the course of his long career and is best known for his inve...

In 1874-75, the Russian government sent a research and trading mission to China to seek out new overland routes to the Chinese market, report on prospects for increased commerce and locations for consulates and factories, and gather information about the Dungan Revolt then raging in parts of western China. Led by Lieutenant Colonel Iulian A. Sosnovskii of the army General Staff, the nine-man mission included a topographer, Captain Matusovskii; a scientific officer, Dr. Pavel Iakovlevich Piasetsk...