British cannon from the Hundred Years' War (now at Mont St. Michel) Not long before 1500 AD, everything medieval soldiers did in wars suddenly changed. First, Europeans learned how to make and use gunpowder from Central [...]
Poppies growing in a field This poem, written by John McCrae in May 1915, was one of the most famous poems of World War I. McCrae himself died in the war [...]
Copernicus, a Renaissance astronomer Starting in the 1200s AD, as Europe got richer, great universities got started there. In the later Middle Ages, West Asia and India suffered from the Mongol invasions. West Asian people were too poor to [...]
A velocipede Early wooden bicycles Bicycles were invented bit by bit in many different countries. They grew out of earlier inventions like wheels (from Central Asia) and wheelbarrows and cranks (from China), but Karl [...]
Gottfried Leibniz, a German mathematician - Enlightenment science What set off the Enlightenment? By 1650 AD, Europeans understood Islamic algebra and trigonometry better. Then they combined that with the exciting invention of the telescope and microscope (thanks to [...]
Early modern science: Tycho Brahe (He looks funny because his nose got cut off in a duel and he wore a false one made of brass.) New observatories in Europe [...]
European boys at school in the 1800s More schools and more scientists In the first half of the 1800s AD, countries in northern Europe like France and Britain forced other countries to give them [...]
A Catholic bishop marries Napoleon and Josephine - modern European religion Freedom of religion Even though by 1802 Napoleon had opened up the Catholic churches again, French people kept their freedom of [...]
Jesuits after 1700 : Jesuit teachers in Brazil Jesuits become very powerful By the 1700s AD, the Jesuits owned a lot of farms and mines in countries all over the world. The governments [...]
History of the Jesuits: Ignatius of Loyola, who started the Jesuits Ignatius of Loyola In the early 1500s AD, the Protestants were the new thing in Europe. Protestants were getting more and more popular. [...]
