In his three extraordinary voyages, Captain James Cook made history. He was the first to discover Australia and the Hawaiian Islands and the first to circumnavigate New Zealand. By the 1700s, England, eager to expand its realm of trade, promoted exploration of all the unclaimed regions of the world. The eighteenth century, the age of reason and enlightenment, required a new kind of explorer: not a rover or a plunderer or a seeker of adventure for its own sake, but a master of navigation an...

First published in 1960, this is a gripping account of the decisive sea battle between the forces of Napoleon and the British under Nelson in 1798.The Battle of the Nile (also known as the Battle of Aboukir Bay‎‎) was a major naval battle fought between the British Royal Navy and the Navy of the French Republic at Aboukir Bay on the Mediterranean coast off the Nile Delta of Egypt from 1-3 August 1798. The battle was the climax of a naval campaign that had ranged across the Mediterra...

Horatio Nelson was a hero from the time when his dramatic initiative won the battle of St Vincent in 1797, while his last battle, at Trafalgar, reduced the enemy naval forces so thoroughly that they were no longer able to have any bearing on the outcome of the war. As well as being a brilliant study of those naval battles which played such an important role in Napoleon's defeat, it also makes a close study of the admiral's art which, during the last years of the eighteenth century, develop...

First published in 1959, this is an enthralling account of the Battle of Trafalgar viewed in perspective of Lord Nelson's personal career, and of the struggle for naval supremacy in the Napoleonic Wars.The Battle of Trafalgar of 21 October 1805 was a naval engagement fought by the British Royal Navy against the combined fleets of the French and Spanish Navies, during the War of the Third Coalition (August-December 1805) of the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815).Twenty-seven British ...

First published in 1961, this is a fascinating account of the battle between the fleets of the England's Lord Howe and France's Admiral Villaret-Joyeuse during the French Revolutionary Wars.Known as the Glorious First of June (also known in France as the Bataille du 13 prairial an 2 or Combat de Prairial), the action on 1 June 1794 was the culmination of a campaign that had criss-crossed the Bay of Biscay over the previous month in which both sides had captured numerous merchant shi...

Threatened by advancing Muslim power, Christian Europe struck back in a last Crusade. For four hours, historian Oliver Warner writes in this essay, the mightiest fleets hitherto known were locked in desperate battle, and history reached a turning point. For the Catholic West, it was the beginning of a brilliant new era; for the Ottoman Turks, it was the beginning of the end.

Critics said Ferdinand de Lesseps's ambitious scheme to link the waters of the Mediterranean and Red seas - thus cutting 5,800 miles off the India to Europe ocean voyage - was impractical, unwise, and even foolish. The hostile, empty desert of the Isthmus of Suez posed a seemingly insurmountable geographical challenge to the builder's ingenuity and persistence. During the ten years of its construction, from 1859 to 1869, the Suez Canal was the focus of worldwide attention. Around the globe...

We remember Thomas Alva Edison as the craggy, rumpled inventor of the light bulb and the phonograph - a prodigy, the affable "Wizard of Menlo Park." But he also was a visionary entrepreneur who changed the world. What Edison invented was the modern age. Here is his unforgettable story.

The Mexican-American War established the reputation of Major General Zachary Taylor, resulting in his election as president of the United States. It also gave invaluable experience to young American officers who would play leading parts in the Civil War - among them, Ulysses S. Grant, George H. Thomas, and George G. Meade on the Union side and Robert E. Lee, Albert Sidney Johnston, Joseph E. Johnston, and Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson on the Confederate forces. Here are the battles from th...

When the explorer René Caillié returned to France from Africa in 1828, he published a sketch of the legendary city he had discovered - Timbuctoo. But neither that simple drawing nor his matter-of-fact description gave Caillié's countrymen a sufficiently colorful picture to match their preconceptions of how Africa should look. They turned their backs on the young explorer, ignored his accomplishments, and let him die neglected. Here are the epic adventures of the European explorers who open...

The turbulent events that overtook Russia in 1917 are often called one of history's great turning points. In March of that year, a corrupt, outdated, careworn autocracy - the 300-year-old Romanov dynasty - was overthrown by a spontaneous uprising of Russia's long-oppressed masses. During the next few months, Alexander Kerensky and other liberals in the provisional government attempted to adopt reforms. But the continuing hardships of World War I and the pressure of Vladimir Lenin's Bolshev...

The Tower of London was not simply a fortress: It was at various times a royal palace, a state prison, the home of the Mint, the treasury for the Crown Jewels, a repository for state papers, and an observatory. Since lions were considered a suitable gift for royalty, one tower - the Lion Tower - was a menagerie. Many historic events, stately and ceremonial, pathetic or dreadful - from the murder of King Edward IV's young sons to the beheadings of Henry VIII's queens to the imprisonment of ...