Group items tagged

This brings us to the final and starkest example of Western socialism: the delivery of water. What people tend to forget in the age of electricity and automobiles is that the West is mostly a huge desert, some of it harsh in the extreme. Private and even state-level efforts to develop water resources sufficient to support Western agriculture and mass settlement repeatedly failed all throughout the Gilded Age, leading to the passage of the Reclamation Act in 1902. It would end with the government building, owning, and operating key economic institutions throughout the West.

Government water projects through the 1920s were largely a mess, as inexperienced bureaucrats ran headlong into the difficult realities of Western country. But the Great Depression marked a turning point. The West found in the New Deal a political movement ambitious enough to attempt the most promising water projects, which were truly massive, and momentum was further stoked by World War II's vast appetite for electricity to smelt aluminum. Practically overnight the Bureau of Reclamation was building some of the biggest structures ever attempted — Hoover, Grand Coulee, Shasta, and Bonneville dams, plus a slew of smaller

projects — at the same time. These projects were generally completed under budget and ahead of schedule, and made reasonable policy sense. To this day Grand Coulee is the largest single electricity source in the entire country.

the heir to the throne fighting alongside his father during the early years of a brutal civil war that tore the nation apart

Charles’ chief protector Lord Wilmot

the Penderel family, who risked their lives when the penalty for concealing the king was death

The Spanish Inquisition is commonly associated with torture, cruelty and oppression

The concept of inquisitions to root out religious heretics was not novel when, in 1478, Pope Sixtus IV authorised the creation of a Spanish inquisition

These newly united kingdoms, under joint monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella, decided to set up such a body

He was the son and successor of Joan of France, queen of Navarre, and Philip, count of Évreux. Married in 1352 to Joan, daughter of John II of France

When Charles continued plotting with the English, John had him arrested at Rouen (April 1356). Soon afterward the English captured John at Poitiers.

Then John of France died (1364) and Charles V by military action forced Charles to renounce almost all his major claims in France.

Catherine II served as empress of Russia for more than three decades in the late 18th century after overthrowing her husband, Peter III

was born in Prussia in 1729 and married into the Russian royal family in 1745

Catherine orchestrated a coup to become empress of Russia in 1762

Prince Philip, Queen Elizabeth II's husband and the Duke of Edinburgh, died Friday at age 99,