Yet it never mattered. She couldn’t get enough voters to listen.Why was this?Tiresome to say, but part of it can be chalked up to gender.

We’ve never had a foreign government trying to interfere in our election. We have 17 — 17 intelligence agencies, civilian and military, who have all concluded that these espionage attacks, these cyberattacks, come from the highest levels of the Kremlin and they are designed to influence our election. I find that deeply disturbing.

Here’s the snippet of her listing possible reasons Trump hadn’t released his tax returns (he’s a tax evader, he’s in hock to mysterious creditors, he’s not the bazilionaire we think), all of which turned out to be true;

And if you reread Hillary’s speeches, you can see that her words were really unsparing and precise.

Hillary did warn us. “Step back and think about it,” she wrote in “What Happened.” “The Russians hacked our election systems. They got inside. They tried to delete or alter voter information. This should send a shiver down the spine of every American.”

If Biden is elected — and God willing, he shall be (spit, knock wood, toss salt) — maybe he’ll take her advice. In this way, but also perhaps others.

But Donald Trump has since made no disguise of the fact that he’s willing to win this election at almost any cost. He went so far as to say he needed to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court with a justice who’d break what he assumed would be a 4-to-4 vote, knowing the election could be decided there.

In 1453, Osman’s descendants, now known as the Ottomans, finally brought the Byzantine Empire to its knees when they captured the seemingly unconquerable city of Constantinople.

It would take a world war to end the Ottoman Empire for good.

Now a dynastic empire with Istanbul as its capital, the Ottoman Empire continued to expand across the Balkans, the Middle East, and North Africa.

At its height, the Ottoman Empire was a real player in European politics and was home to more Christians than Muslims.

the arts flourished, technology and architecture reached new heights, and the empire generally enjoyed peace, religious tolerance, and economic and political stability.

The Young Turks who now ruled the Ottoman Empire wanted to strengthen it, spooking its Balkan neighbors. The Balkan Wars that followed resulted in the loss of 33 percent of the empire’s remaining territory and up to 20 percent of its population.

As World War I loomed, the Ottoman Empire entered into a secret alliance with Germany. The war that followed was disastrous. More than two thirds of the Ottoman military became casualties during World War I, and up to 3 million civilians died.

In a show of just how volatile the situation seems to the industry, 120 representatives from 60 retail brands attended a video conference this week hosted by the National Retail Federation, which involved training for store employees on how to de-escalate tensions among customers, including those related to the election.

For the retail industry, 2020 has been filled with bankruptcies, store closures and plummeting sales as tens of millions of Americans struggled with job losses because of the pandemic.

Protests over police violence against Black citizens sent millions of people into the streets, demonstrations that in some cases devolved into the looting and burning of stores in a number of cities. Worries about unrest around the election have been fanned by President Trump, who has declined to say whether he would agree to a peaceful transfer of power if his Democratic challenger, Joseph R. Biden Jr., is victorious.

This year, businesses have already sustained at least $1 billion in insured losses from looting and vandalism largely set off by the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in May, according to one estimate cited by the Insurance Information Institute, an industry group.

It is on target to be the most costly period of civil unrest in history, likely surpassing damages during the 1992 riots in Los Angeles and many of the civil rights protests of the late 1960s

Protecting properties from potential damage is not a simple decision. Retailers can risk alienating their customers by erecting plywood, particularly if the anticipated unrest does not materialize.

Target, with about 1,900 stores, said in a statement, “Like many businesses, we’re taking precautionary steps to ensure safety at our stores, including giving our store leaders guidance on how to take care of their teams.”

Behind the scenes, though, many businesses are making explicit preparations.

Explorers learned more about areas such as Africa and the Americas and brought that knowledge back to Europe.Massive wealth accrued to European colonizers due to trade in goods, spices, and precious metals.Methods of navigation and mapping improved, switching from traditional portolan charts to the world's first nautical maps.New food, plants, and animals were exchanged between the colonies and Europe.Indigenous people were decimated by Europeans, from a combined impact of disease, overwork, and massacres.The workforce needed to support the massive plantations in the New World, led to the trade of enslaved people, which lasted for 300 years and had an enormous impact on Africa.

When the Ottoman Empire took control of Constantinople in 1453, it blocked European access to the area, severely limiting trade. In addition, it also blocked access to North Africa and the Red Sea, two very important trade routes to the Far East.

Portuguese explorers discovered the Madeira Islands in 1419 and the Azores in 1427. Over the coming decades, they would push farther south along the African coast, reaching the coast of present-day Senegal by the 1440s and the Cape of Good Hope by 1490. Less than a decade later, in 1498, Vasco da Gama would follow this route all the way to India.

Christopher Columbus, an Italian working for the Spanish monarchy, made his first journey in 1492. Instead of reaching India, Columbus found the island of San Salvador in what is known today as the Bahamas.

Columbus would lead three more voyages to the Caribbean, exploring parts of Cuba and the Central American coast.

Great Britain and France also began seeking new trade routes and lands across the ocean. In 1497, John Cabot, an Italian explorer working for the English, reached what is believed to be the coast of Newfoundland. A number of French and English explorers followed, including Giovanni da Verrazano, who discovered the entrance to the Hudson River in 1524, and Henry Hudson, who mapped the island of Manhattan first in 1609.

Over the next decades, the French, Dutch, and British would all vie for dominance. England established the first permanent colony in North America at Jamestown, Va., in 1607.

Other important voyages of exploration during this era included Ferdinand Magellan's attempted circumnavigation of the globe, the search for a trade route to Asia through the Northwest Passage, and Captain James Cook's voyages that allowed him to map various areas and travel as far as Alaska.

The Age of Exploration ended in the early 17th century after technological advancements and increased knowledge of the world allowed Europeans to travel easily across the globe by sea. The creation of permanent settlements and colonies created a network of communication and trade, therefore ending the need to search for new routes.

The Age of Exploration had a significant impact on geography. By traveling to different regions around the globe, explorers were able to learn more about areas such as Africa and the Americas and bring that knowledge back to Europe.

As technology advanced and known territory expanded, maps and mapmaking became more and more sophisticated.

The Age of Exploration served as a stepping stone for geographic knowledge. It allowed more people to see and study various areas around the world, which increased geographic study, giving us the basis for much of the knowledge we have today

The essential characteristics of capitalism only become evident with an increase in scale - in two quite separate contexts. One is the formation of joint-stock companies, in which investors pool their resources for a major commercial undertaking. The other, not evident until the Industrial Revolution, is the development of factories in which large numbers of workers are employed in a single private enterprise.  

Speculative trading enterprises in the Middle Ages are undertaken by individual merchants, operating in family groups or partnerships but acting essentially on their own behalf.

In the 16th century, with the expanding energies of the Atlantic kingdoms in a new era of ocean voyages, the situation changes. In long expeditions to distant and dangerous places, both the risk and the potential profit are greatly increased. A new system is called for.

A charter, granted by the crown, gives the merchants in a company the monopoly on trade with a specific region for a given number of years - together with strong legal powers to enforce order in distant places while carrying out its business.  

The first joint-stock enterprise established in Britain is the Muscovy Company, which receives its royal charter in 1555.

Even the Bank of England, when founded in 1694, is organized at first on joint-stock lines. The merchants whose funds provide the bank's initial loan to the government acquire thereby a share in the stock of the new company.

The most immediate way in which the Reformation aids the capitalist is by removing the stigma which the Catholic church has traditionally attached to money-lending - or usury, in the pejorative Biblical term.

Speculation is an intrinsic part of capitalism, since the capitalist must risk money in the hope of making more

The first coffee house in London opens in 1652. Soon much of England's business is being conducted in these congenial establishments where merchants can gather to strike their bargains over a cup of the newly fashionable liquid.

Shares in such companies can be bought and sold at Jonathan's coffee house. The brokers who arrange the deals here call themselves (from 1773) the Stock Exchange.

Many election analysts believe Pennsylvania is the knife’s edge on which the race is balanced, the closest of the three “blue wall” states where Joseph R. Biden Jr., if he sweeps them, has his most likely path to the White House.

The state-run portal intended to track mail ballots was unreliable, Ms. Kuznik said. By using a database available only to election officials, she was able to reassure voters about the status of a ballot — in nearly all cases, it had been received.

With more Republicans expected to vote on Election Day and Democrats favoring mail ballots in Pennsylvania, when to count and report results have become partisan flash points. Mr. Trump has demanded, without a basis in law, that the vote leader on election night be named the winner.

there are wide differences among counties, with some not expecting full results for days.

The state’s largest cities, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, are aiming to report results of mail-in ballots on Tuesday night, according to an aide to a top Democratic official briefed on statewide preparations. But many second-tier counties, including in the Philadelphia suburbs, will be slower. “Erie, Berks, Bucks, Delaware and Lackawanna are real problems,” the aide said. “Their reporting of mail-in votes could go into Wednesday, which will create a lot of election night anxiety.”

“They’ll still be separating envelopes and ballots on Wednesday, probably Thursday,” he said.

reflects the advancements in technology and interest in astronomy of the time, for instance Petrus Apianus’ Astronomicum Caesareum (25.17ArtworkMichael Ostendorfer Astronomicum Caesareum ). This extraordinary Renaissance book contains equatoria supplied with paper volvelles, or rotating dials, that can be used for calculating positions of the planets on any given date as seen from a given terrestrial location. The celestial globe with clockwork (17.190.636) is another magnificent example of an aid for predicting astronomical events, in this case the location of stars as seen from a given place on earth at a given time and date. The globe also illustrates the sun’s apparent movement through the constellations of the zodiac.

Portable devices were also made for determining the time in a specific latitude. During the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the combination of compass and sundial became an aid for travelers.

Mr. Trump has inflicted more damage to the rule of law. He has impugned the integrity of judges who have ruled against him. He has demanded loyalty to himself — not the law or the Constitution — from F.B.I. directors, intelligence officials, military commanders and his attorneys general. He has replaced five inspectors general investigating wrongdoing in his administration, withheld his tax returns, pardoned his political allies convicted of felonies, and normalized lying and inflammatory tweets as modes of presidential communication. And recently he issued an executive order undermining the political neutrality and career protections of thousands of senior civil servants.

But the third pillar of our democracy — the one we have most taken for granted — is most at risk: free and fair elections. The danger emanates from a singular combination of events, the worst pandemic in a century and the most undemocratic president in our history.

ith Democrats accounting for a much larger share of mail-in ballots than Republicans, Mr. Trump has repeatedly challenged the legitimacy of these votes. If he is leading even narrowly on Tuesday night, he could claim victory based only on the votes so far counted —

The integrity of the election is further challenged by the rising pace of voter suppression. In 2013, the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, throwing out the formula requiring nine states (and other localities) with a history of racist voter suppression to obtain federal permission before changing their voting requirements. Since then, these and other Republican-controlled states have imposed legal and administrative changes that have made voting more difficult for Black Americans, Hispanics, young people and city dwellers — all heavily Democratic constituencies.

The very age of American democracy is part of the problem. The United States was the first country to become a democracy, emerging over a vast, dispersed and diverse set of colonies that feared the prospect of the “tyranny of the majority.”

The American system is a mishmash of state and local authorities. Most are staffed by dedicated professionals, but state legislatures and elected secretaries of state can introduce partisanship, casting doubt on its impartiality. No other advanced democracy falls so short of contemporary democratic standards of fairness, neutrality and rationality in its system of administering national elections.

Newer democracies also take measures to depoliticize the constitutional court. No other democracy gives life tenure to such a powerful position as constitutional court justice. They either face term limits (12 years in Germany and South Africa; eight in Taiwan) or age limits (70 years in Australia, Israel and South Korea; 75 in Canada), or both.

Many of these ideas simply didn’t occur to America’s founders, who were framing a modern democracy for the first time, for a largely rural society with more limited levels of education, communication and life expectancy. The result is that American democracy lacks national checks on executive corruption and national guarantees of electoral integrity that have become routine in other democracies around the world. And nominations to our Supreme Court have become far more politicized than in many peer democracies.

Today, we are far closer to a breakdown than most democracy experts, myself included, would have dared anticipate just a few years ago. Even if we are spared the worst, it is long past time to renew the mechanisms of our democracy, learn from other democracies around the world and again make our republic a shining city on a hill.

Constant wars and overspending had significantly lightened imperial coffers, and oppressive taxation and inflation had widened the gap between rich and poor

the Western Empire seated in the city of Milan, and the Eastern Empire in Byzantium, later known as Constantinople. The division made the empire more easily governable in the short term, but over time the two halves drifted apart.

Most importantly, the strength of the Eastern Empire served to divert Barbarian invasions to the West. Emperors like Constantine ensured that the city of Constantinople was fortified and well guarded, but Italy and the city of Rome—which only had symbolic value for many in the East—were left vulnerable.

With such a vast territory to govern, the empire faced an administrative and logistical nightmare. Even with their excellent road systems, the Romans were unable to communicate quickly or effectively enough to manage their holdings.

Rome struggled to marshal enough troops and resources to defend its frontiers from local rebellions and outside attacks, and by the second century the Emperor Hadrian was forced to build his famous wall in Britain just to keep the enemy at bay.

ineffective and inconsistent leadership only served to magnify the problem.

Civil war thrust the empire into chaos, and more than 20 men took the throne in the span of only 75 years, usually after the murder of their predecessor.

The political rot also extended to the Roman Senate, which failed to temper the excesses of the emperors due to its own widespread corruption and incompetence. As the situation worsened, civic pride waned and many Roman citizens lost trust in their leadership.

The Barbarian attacks on Rome partially stemmed from a mass migration caused by the Huns’ invasion of Europe in the late fourth century. When these Eurasian warriors rampaged through northern Europe, they drove many Germanic tribes to the borders of the Roman Empire.

In brutalizing the Goths, the Romans created a dangerous enemy within their own borders. When the oppression became too much to bear, the Goths rose up in revolt and eventually routed a Roman army and killed the Eastern Emperor Valens during the Battle of Adrianople in A.D. 378. T

410, when the Goth King Alaric moved west and sacked Rome.

The decline of Rome dovetailed with the spread of Christianity, and some have argued that the rise of a new faith helped contribute to the empire’s fall.

Christianity displaced the polytheistic Roman religion, which viewed the emperor as having a divine status, and also shifted focus away from the glory of the state and onto a sole deity.

For most of its history, Rome’s military was the envy of the ancient world.

Unable to recruit enough soldiers from the Roman citizenry, emperors like Diocletian and Constantine began hiring foreign mercenaries to prop up their armies. The ranks of the legions eventually swelled with Germanic Goths and other barbarians, so much so that Romans began using the Latin word “barbarus” in place of “soldier.” While these Germanic soldiers of fortune proved to be fierce warriors, they also had little or no loyalty to the empire, and their power-hungry officers often turned against their Roman employers

In Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Wisconsin, Republicans have fought to prevent the counting of all mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day, even if they are postmarked on or before Nov. 3.

This year, in the face of the unprecedented hurdles to voting introduced by the coronavirus pandemic, Republicans are battling from coast to coast to ensure that casting a ballot is as hard as it can be.

But across the country, the group most responsible for making voting harder, if not impossible, for millions of Americans is the Republican Party. Republicans have been saying it themselves for ages. “I don’t want everybody to vote,” Paul Weyrich, a leader of the modern conservative movement, told a gathering of religious leaders in 1980. “As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”

Scholars, researchers and judges have said for years that voting fraud of any kind is vanishingly rare in this country. That hasn’t stopped Republicans from alleging that it happens all the time. They know that accusations of fraud can be enough by themselves to confuse voters and drive down turnout.

The effort has been turbocharged by President Trump, who has spent the past year falsely attacking the integrity of mail-in ballots

That’s why, if either of these laws is going to pass, it will require, at a minimum, voting out Republicans at every level who insist on suppressing the vote. Only then can those who believe in representative democracy for all Americans reset the rules and help ensure that everyone’s vote counts.

He has urged his supporters to enlist in an “Army for Trump,” monitoring polls. “A lot of strange things happening in Philadelphia,” Mr. Trump said during a recent campaign stop in Pennsylvania. “We’re watching you, Philadelphia. We’re watching at the highest level.”

Representative democracy works only when a large majority of people participate in choosing their representatives. That can happen only when those in power agree that voting should be as easy and widely available as possible

A fair election would mean giving all states the necessary funds to implement automatic voter registration and to upgrade old voting machines. It would mean allowing people with criminal records to vote as soon as they have completed the terms of their sentences.

To help ensure that voting is easier for everybody, the federal government needs to take action. Currently, there are two comprehensive voting-rights bills in Congress, the Voting Rights Amendment Act and H.R. 1, also known as the For the People Act. The first bill would update the old map the Supreme Court invalidated in 2013 and would identify the states and localities that are racially discriminating against their voters today, requiring them to seek federal court approval before changing any election laws.The second bill would, among other things, create a national voter-registration program; make it harder for states to purge voting rolls; and take gerrymandering away from self-interested state legislatures, putting the redistricting process in the hands of nonpartisan commissions.

The House of Representatives passed both of these bills in 2019, with all Democrats voting in favor both times. The Voting Rights Amendment Act got the vote of a single House Republican. H.R. 1 got none.

When that tactic fails, Republicans turn to another tried-and-true one: voter intimidation. Frightening people, particularly Black people, away from the ballot box has a long history in the United States.

The feudal system proper became widespread in Western Europe from the 11th century CE onwards, largely thanks to the Normans as their rulers carved up and dished out lands wherever their armies conquered.

Starting from the top of society’s pyramid, the monarch – a good example is William the Conqueror (r. 1066-1087 CE) who considered all the lands of England as his personal property – could give a parcel of land (of no fixed size) to a noble who, in return, would be that monarch’s vassal,

The most common and needed service was military service,

The system was often weighted in favour of the sovereign as when a noble died without an heir, his estate went back to the monarch to either keep for themselves or to redistribute to another noble.

The arrangement which created a vassal was known as ‘homage’ as they often knelt before their particular lord and swore an oath of loyalty, for which, in return, they not only received the land but also their lord’s protection if and when required.

The feudal system perpetuated itself as a status quo because the control of land required the ability to perform military service and, because of the costs involved (of weapons, armour and horses), land was required to fund military service. Thus there was a perpetual divide between the landed aristocracy (monarchs, lords, and some tenants) and those who worked the land for them who could be free or unfree labourers.

Unfree labourers were serfs,

who were at the bottom of the social pyramid and who made up the vast majority of the population

The nobles who had received land, often called suzerain vassals, could have much more than they either needed or could manage themselves and so they often sub-let parts of it to tenant vassals.

In addition, the system could create serious unrest. Sometimes a monarch might insist on active military service because of a war but nobles might also refuse, as happened to King John of England in 1215 CE and the Barons' Revolt which led to the signing of the Magna Carta.  In 1215 CE, and in subsequent revolts in the 13th century CE, the barons were acting collectively for their own interests which was a direct threat to the entire system of feudalism, based as it was upon single lords and vassals working out their own private arrangements.

The feudal system was essentially based on the relationship of reciprocal aid between lord and vassal but as that system became more complex over time, so this relationship weakened. Lords came to own multiple estates and vassals could be tenants of various parcels of land so that loyalties became confused and even conflicting with people choosing to honour the relationship that suited their own needs best.

Another blow to the system came from sudden population declines caused by wars and plagues, particularly the Black Death (which peaked between 1347-1352 CE), and by peasant revolts (most famously in England in 1381 CE)

Such crises caused a chronic shortage of labour and the abandonment of estates because there was no one to work them. The growth of large towns and cities also saw labour leave the countryside to find a better future and the new jobs available there.

By the 13th century CE, the increase in commerce and the greater use of coinage changed the way the feudal system worked. Money allowed lords to pay their sovereign instead of performing military service; the monarch’s use of mercenaries then meant military service, and thus the barons themselves became less important to the defence of the realm. Conversely, a monarch could now distribute money instead of land in his system of rewards

They compared the 18 counties where Mr. Trump held rallies with as many as 200 counties with similar demographics and similar trajectories of confirmed Covid-19 cases before the rally date.

Based on their models, the researchers concluded that on average, the 18 events produced increases in confirmed cases of more than 250 per 100,000 residents.

Public health officials in states and counties where Mr. Trump has held rallies said in interviews this week that it was impossible to tie particular infections or outbreaks to the gatherings for several reasons: Caseloads are rising over all, rally attendees often travel from other locations, contact tracing is not always complete, and contact tracers do not always know where infected people have been.

A little more than two weeks after the event, Tulsa recorded 206 new confirmed coronavirus cases in a single day, a record high at the time

Around the country, state and local public health officials have also wrestled with the question of whether Mr. Trump’s rallies have become so-called superspreader events. With thousands of people gathered together in close quarters, many not wearing masks, the gatherings provide a fertile environment for the virus to spread.

In Minnesota, for example, state officials traced 16 coronavirus infections and two hospitalizations to a Trump rally on Sept. 18 in the city of Bemidji, in Beltrami County.

Assessing the risk of campaign rallies is “a noisy process,”

Professor Bernheim said, and focusing on a single event is misleading.

Everyone in the ancient world, except for Jews, was “pagan”—that is, they believed in many gods. T

hese gods

were active in the world, involved with humans on every level.

But the key point is that the gods were principally active—for good or ill—in the present life, to worshippers in the here and now. Almost no one in the Roman world practiced religion in order to escape eternal punishment or receive an eternal reward—that is, until the Christians came along.

Unlike pagans, Christians claimed there was only one God and that he should be worshiped not by sacrifice but by proper belief.

Christians created a need for salvation that no one knew they had. They then argued that they alone could meet the need. And they succeeded massively.

Everyone in the ancient world knew that divinity was all about power.

Christians declared that their God was more powerful than any other god—in fact, more powerful than all the supposed other gods combined. God alone was God, and he alone could provide what people need.

His disciples also did miracles—amazing miracles—all recorded for posterity in writings widely available.

And the miracles continued to the present day.

People became convinced by these stories.

Christianity did not initially succeed by taking its message to the great and the powerful, the mighty Roman elite. It succeeded at first as a grassroots movement.

The original followers of Jesus told those close to them what they believed: that the great miracle worker Jesus had been raised from the dead, and that his wonders continued to be performed among those who believed in him. They convinced others.

The key was to reach people one at a time. It grows from the bottom up, not the top down. The top will eventually convert. But you start below, at the base, where most people actually live.

Christianity succeeded in large measure because it required potential converts to make a decision that was exclusive and final.

If they chose to join the church, they had to abandon all previous religious commitments and associations. For the Christian faith, it was all or nothing, so as it fed its own growth, it devoured the competition.

The pagan religions didn’t operate like that at all. Since pagans all worshiped many gods, there was no sense that any one God demanded exclusive attention. Quite the opposite. Within pagan circles, if you chose to worship a new god—say, Apollo—that didn’t mean you gave up the worship of another, such as Zeus. No, you worshiped both

n the long run, this meant that every adherent Christians gained was completely lost to paganism. No other religion demanded such exclusivity. For that reason, as Christianity grew, it destroyed all competition in its wake. And it went on like that for millennia, as Christians forged into new territories, toppling Celtic gods, Norse gods and many others.

its first three centuries it recognized fully the importance of converting influential supporters. At the beginning, this simply meant converting an adult male who was head of his household—the paterfamilias.

If you converted him, you got his wife, children and slaves in the package.

A different plague strain enters Europe through Genoa, brought by another Caffan ship that docks there. The Genoans attack the ship and drive it away, but they are still infected. Italy faces this second strain while already battling the previous one.

Y. pestis also heads east from Sicily into the Persian Empire and through Greece, Bulgaria, Romania and Poland, and south to Egypt, as well as Cyprus, which is also hit with destruction from an earthquake and deadly tidal wave at the same time.

The plague also moves through Austria and Switzerland, where a fury of anti-Semitic massacres follow it along the Rhine after a rumor spreads that Jews had caused the plague by poisoning wells

The plague awakes an anti-Semitic rage around Europe, causing repeated massacres of Jewish communities, with the first one taking place in Provence, where 40 Jews were murdered.

the plague kills 60 percent of the Venetian population.

A group of religious zealots known as the Flagellants first begin to appear in Germany. These groups of anywhere from 50 to 500 hooded and half-naked men march, sing and thrash themselves with lashes until swollen and bloody. Originally the practice of 11th-century Italian monks during an epidemic, they spread out through Europe. Also known for their violent anti-Semitism,

The plague enters England through the port of Melcombe Regis, in Dorset. As it spreads through the town, some escape by fleeing inland, inadvertently spreading it further.

An English ship brings the Black Death to Norway when it runs aground in Bergen

While waiting on the border to begin the attack, troops became infected, with 5,000 dying. Choosing to retreat, the soldiers bring the disease back to their families and a third of Scotland perishes.

The plague’s spread significantly begins to peter out, possibly thanks to quarantine efforts, after causing the deaths of anywhere between 25 to 50 million people, and leading to the massacres of 210 Jewish communities. All total, Europe has lost about 50 percent of its population.

With the Black Death considered safely behind them, the people of Europe face a changed society

It becomes easier to get work for better wages and the average standard of living rises.

Until the 1930's, Antioch's remains were almost entirely literary; its physical glories had been obliterated by earthquakes, floods and invasions from the east.

Since then, however, as the study of history has focused as much on ordinary citizens as on their leaders, attention has shifted from throne rooms to dining rooms. Only 10 percent of Antioch's population was rich, according to the fourth-century pagan philosopher Libanios, and only 10 percent was poor. The remaining 80 percent lived remarkably well, and at its height, Antioch's population numbered more than 400,000 citizens and freedmen, not counting women, children and slaves.

The exhibition focuses on their dining rooms, or triclinia, in order to recreate the city's great middle-class era, and for middle-class America at the beginning of the third millennium, those ancient houses reveal a familiar ostentation.

Antioch: The Lost Ancient City'' reunites many of the artifacts and objects excavated by the expedition, including some of the most beautiful mosaics. During the five years of preparations for this show, scholars examined for the first time in decades some of the material from the excavations that had been in storage, and the show's catalog presents much of their new research.

Antioch marked the crossroads of trade routes between Persia and the Far East, Egypt and Rome.

During the centuries of the Roman peace, Antioch flourished; its baths and wide arcaded streets were theaters where strangers -- Romans, Syrians, Jews, Christians, Persians, Greeks -- mingled and learned from one another. Its dining rooms set a more intimate stage upon which to continue the dialogue.

The city's pivotal geography proved the source of both its vitality and its vulnerability. Persian emperors of the Sasanian dynasty coveted Antioch, sacked it twice -- in A.D. 256 and 540 -- and incorporated the phrase ''better than Antioch'' into the names of the cities they built closer to home. Sasanian stylized art, using birds and animals in patterned design -- a mosaic border of ram's heads, for instance -- found its way into Antioch's houses.

Probably they discussed religion. The Pax Romana, of course, has found its modern parallel in the Pax Americana, in the worldwide exportation of American culture. Ideas, art, politics and religions circulate, blend and clash. The yearning for a spiritual haven was perhaps even more urgent in Roman Antioch than it is today.

The expeditions of the 1930's dug up no pagan temples or synagogues, but they did uncover in Antioch's port remnants of a church whose ambulatory was paved with a mosaic of animals and birds. Elephants, flamingos, zebras, gazelles, peacocks, a lioness and her cubs: all creation circled the church in a docile parade.

In this floor, pagan entertainment translated into a vision from Genesis: the bloody staged hunt has been converted to a peaceable kingdom.

Throughout Lincoln’s rise in 1860, the South watched in horror as this unlikely candidate grew in stature. He gave no serious speeches after his nomination, but he did not need to, as the Buchanan administration began to collapse under the weight of its incompetence and greed. It was not simply that a rising number of Americans were tired of propping up slavery, as the Democratic Party had been doing for decades.

Lincoln rejected that pay-to-play culture. He lived abstemiously and spoke modestly, rarely using the first person. He opposed the expansion of slavery and disapproved of plans to seize Cuba and Northern Mexico to groom pro-Southern states. He was sympathetic to immigrants and to the idea that America should stand for a set of principles, as a kind of beacon in an amoral world. He admired the Declaration of Independence, with its promise of equal rights for all.

For all of these reasons, Lincoln posed a lethal threat to the status quo.

That all would change if Lincoln were elected, as Southern leaders understood. Accordingly, they devoted their considerable resources to gaming the system, through a campaign of false personal attacks, physical intimidation and ballot manipulation

It still took some doing to launch the Lincoln administration, and the president-elect had to survive a serious assassination conspiracy on his way to Washington.

As the campaign wore on, the South realized that other means of persuasion were required. In Baltimore and Washington, mobs broke up Republican offices, shot off guns and desecrated images of Lincoln. His name was not even permitted on the ballot in 10 Southern states — a fact that was held against him, as if he were a “sectional” candidate. In border states, as well, voters were intimidated: In the state of his birth, Kentucky, Lincoln received only 1,364 votes.

But violence was no laughing matter, and Lincoln’s life was in danger from the moment he was nominated. A Virginia congressman, Roger Pryor, was quoted in The New York Herald as saying that “if Lincoln is elected we will go to Washington and assassinate him before his inauguration.”

Many were beginning to understand that the South’s ideas about democracy were as peculiar as its institutions. South Carolina still did not allow its citizens to vote for president, and in 1864 Jefferson Davis confirmed in an interview in this newspaper, “We seceded to rid ourselves of the rule of the majority.”

On Nov. 6, Lincoln was duly elected. But his percentage of the popular vote was very small (39.8 percent)

That led to a new kind of challenge, to build legitimacy, as Washington seethed over the result and pro-slavery thugs promised to prevent Lincoln’s arrival. Some threatened to turn the Capitol into “a heap of ashes.” In Southern cities, gun-toting militias quickly formed, some parading under the Gadsden Flag and its motto, “Don’t Tread on Me.”

Racial innuendo was a constant in these ugly attacks. Readers were breathlessly informed that Lincoln and his running mate, Hannibal Hamlin, were secretly mulatto, and The New York Herald promised that if Lincoln won, “hundreds of thousands” of slaves would invade the North, to consummate “African amalgamation with the fair daughters of the Anglo-Saxon, Celtic and Teutonic races.”

Lincoln will remain our greatest president, for his own reasons — the bold actions and the calming words. But he also sits atop our pantheon because this champion of democracy came along at the exact moment when it was most endangered and reminded Americans that a higher standard was possible.

But as cases skyrocket again in many states, many health officials have conceded that interviewing patients and dutifully calling each contact will not be enough to slow the outbreak. “Contact tracing is not going to save us,” said Dr. Ogechika Alozie, chief medical officer at Del Sol Medical Center in El Paso, where hospitalizations in the county have soared by more than 400 percent and officials issued a new order for residents to stay at home.

Uncovering the path of transmission from person to person, known as contact tracing, is seen as a key tool for containing the spread of the coronavirus.

Infections are rising in 41 states, the country is recording an average of more than 79,000 new cases each day, and more Americans say they feel left to do their own lonely detective work.

The problem, of course, is that failing to fully track the virus makes it much harder to get a sense of where the virus is flourishing, and how to get ahead of new outbreaks.

In some places, overwhelmed health officials have abandoned any pretense of keeping up.

Now, though, any sense of control has vanished. Active cases of Covid-19 have quadrupled since the beginning of October to 912 in Grand Forks County, and about half the people contacted by the health department say they are not sure how they became infected.

In earlier, quieter periods of the pandemic, the virus spread with some degree of certainty. In all but the hardest-hit cities, people could ask a common question — “Where did you get it?” — and often find tangible answers.

A popular college bar in East Lansing, Mich., Harper’s Restaurant and Brewpub, became a hot spot this summer after dozens of people piled into the bar, drinking, dancing and crowding close together. At least 192 people — 146 people at the bar and 46 people with ties to those at the bar — were infected. Afterward, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer shut down indoor dining in bars in parts of the state.

Heidi Stevens is among the newly infected who considers her case a mystery. As a columnist at The Chicago Tribune, Ms. Stevens works from home. Her children attend school online. She wears a mask when she goes for a run, and she has not had a haircut since January.So when she got a precautionary test a few weeks ago, with the hopes of inviting friends over to have cake for her daughter’s 15th birthday, Ms. Stevens was shocked to learn she was positive.

The Islamic Prophet Muhammad started preaching a monotheistic faith called Islam in his hometown of Mecca from 610 CE onwards.

Equality, egalitarianism, equal rights for women (who had been hitherto considered “property” by the Meccans), and the prospect of heaven attracted many towards Islam.

Despite putting forth strict persecution of the new religion and its preacher, Meccans failed to contain the Muslim community.

Medina offered Prophet Muhammad sovereignty over the city, making him the first ruler and king (r. 622-632 CE) of what was later to become the Islamic or Muslim Empire. The city-state of Medina soon came into conflict with Mecca, and the latter was conquered, after years of warfare, in 629/630 CE.

At the morrow of Prophet Muhammad’s death, the Islamic Empire slid to the brink of disintegration, as many advocated pre-Islamic home-rule system. This threat, however, was averted when Abu Bakr (r. 632-634 CE) proclaimed himself the Caliph of the Prophet and the first supreme ruler of the Islamic realm.

Abu Bakr now sought to expand his realm beyond the Arabian Peninsula. The Muslim Empire bordered two superpowers: the Byzantine Empire (330-1453 CE) and Sassanian Empire (224-651 CE) to the north-west and north-east respectively. These two colossal powers often clashed violently in prolonged wars, had exhausted their resources, and severely repressed Arabian tribes living in the Middle East in the course of pursuing ultimate power. For Abu Bakr, this was an opportune moment, although he may not have known that.

Never content with wasting an opportunity, the Caliph sent Khalid, who had now distinguished himself as a war hero, to raid Iraq (633 CE). The duo stuck to the western side of the Euphrates, where they enjoyed much success, employed eager locals in their ranks, and countered Sassanian advances towards the conquered territory.

Abu Bakr died in 634 CE, and his successor Umar ibn al-Khattab (r. 634-644 CE) took charge as the second caliph of the Islamic Empire and the "commander of the faithful". Caliph Umar reinforced the Iraqi front with fresh troops under the command of a reputable companion of the Prophet: Sa’d ibn Abi Waqqas (l. 595-674 CE).

With this defeat, Sassanian control over Iraq was shattered, the Rashidun troops soon swept over the land and even took Ctesiphon – the Persian capital, ironically located far off from their power base in Khorasan, the eastern province – located in modern-day Iran.

Umar’s successor Uthman (r. 644-656 CE) continued the military expansion undertaken by his predecessors. Yazdegerd III, who had escaped to the eastern parts of his kingdom, was murdered by a local at Merv in 651 CE.

Abu Bakr sent four divisions under Shurahbil ibn Hasana (l. 583-639 CE), Yazid ibn Abi Sufyan (d. 640 CE), Amr ibn al-As (l. c. 573-664 CE), and Abu Ubaidah (l. 583-639 CE) to raid Syria and the Levant.

The Rashidun forces continued to advance northwards in the Levant and Syria. They took Damascus in 634 CE, either through an assault or treason, defeated the Palestinian imperial division in the Battle of Fahl (Pella; 635 CE).

Honed for their shipbuilding skills, the Syrians were employed to create a formidable Rashidun fleet to challenge Byzantine authority in the Mediterranean. After defeating the Byzantine fleet attempting to retake Alexandria (646 CE), the Muslims went on the offensive. Cyprus fell in 649 CE, followed by Rhodes in 654 CE, and in 655 CE, the Byzantine naval authority was crushed with a victory at the Battle of the Masts. Muslims held uncontested control over the Mediterranean and sent raiding parties as far as Crete and Sicily.

At its peak, the realm of the Rashidun Caliphate spread from parts of North Africa in the west to parts of modern-day Pakistan in the east; several islands of the Mediterranean had also come under their sway.

The Byzantines and Sassanians were superpowers of their time but years of warfare had weakened the two colossal titans

Moreover, Arabs were never expected to pose any threat to them, these disunited desert dwellers did not have the numbers or the will to face an empire. This, however, changed as the Arabian Peninsula was united under the banner of Islam by 633 CE. Freed from the infighting that had plagued them for centuries, the Arabs directed their potential towards their neighbors. They considered a just war as a holy struggle and if death was to embrace them, they would be immortalized as martyrs.

Such a strong resolve, however, was lacking in their foes. Both empires employed mercenaries, and these men did not feel similar passion for their client state as the Arabs did for the Caliphate. Moreover, a multiethnic army lacked the coherence imparted by a single faith and unified national sentiment, but perhaps the most destructive penalty that these empires faced was because of how they treated their people in their provinces.

The Eastern Empire flourished while the Western Empire struggled and finally fell c. 476 CE.

it became the foundation of the Holy Roman Empire (962-1806 CE) - seen as a revival of the values and order of the Roman Empire at its height - first under the reign of Charlemagne

The Holy Roman Empire steadily lost cohesion and authority as an outmoded institution incapable of governing in a modern age, becoming increasingly corrupt and ineffectual, until it was finally dissolved in 1806 CE.

The Roman Empire was founded by the first emperor Augustus (r. 27 BCE-14 CE) and steadily grew in power through the reigns of the Five Good Emperors

After Commodus was assassinated, Rome experienced a year of confusion (known as The Year of the Five Emperors) during which five different men took power and were deposed until Septimius Severus (r. 193-211 CE) founded the Severan Dynasty and restored order.

In 235 CE, the emperor Alexander Severus (r. 222-235 CE) was assassinated by his own troops who felt he was not acting in their best interests. This plunged Rome into the era known as the Crisis of the Third Century (also the Imperial Crisis, 235-284 CE) during which 20 emperors would come and go in almost 50 years,

Charlemagne became the preeminent Christian champion of his time, extending his empire while at the same time launching crusades against the Muslim Saracens as he had previously done against the pagan Saxons (through the Saxon Wars of 772-804 CE).

When Diocletian came to power, he restored order and divided the empire’s rule between himself in the east and Maximian in the west.

Under the reign of Constantine the Great (324-337 CE), the empire as a whole flourished but it was never as cohesive as it had been under the Five Good Emperors. The Eastern Empire established lucrative trade and prospered while the Western Empire struggled and, since the two sections tended to view the other as competition, they worked as separate entities who shared a common bond but served their own interests.

At the Battle of Adrianople in 378 CE, the Eastern Emperor Valens (r. 364-378 CE) was defeated by Fritigern (d. c. 380 CE) of the Goths and many historians agree that this marks the beginning of the end of the Roman Empire.

This is not at all to claim that Theodosius I’s reign led to the end of the Western Roman Empire. There is no single cause for the decline and fall of Rome. A steady deterioration in power and prestige had been ongoing prior to the Roman defeat at Adrianople and all these challenges and pressures culminated in the deposition of the emperor Romulus Augustulus (r. 475-476 CE) by the Germanic king Odoacer on 4 September 476 CE, prior to Adrianople.

While c. 476 CE is the traditionally accepted date for the end of the Western Roman Empire, that entity did continue on under the rule of Odoacer

By this time, most Lombards had assimilated with the people of Italy and the neighboring Franks and Charlemagne’s victory simply accelerated this process. Christianity was now the dominant religion of Europe and, since it had been legitimized and spread under Roman rule, there were many Christians who refused to let the concept of the Roman Empire disappear.

Charlemagne of the Franks was proclaimed Western Roman Emperor in 800 CE by Pope Leo III and entrusted with protecting and perpetuating the Christian message.

After the division, Diocletian instituted his tetrarchy – rule of four – whereby the empire was further divided between four men who ruled their own distinct sections.

Charlemagne set the foundation for the new empire but, as with many powerful and effective rulers, his successors could not maintain his same level of efficiency and the realm fell apart. It was reunited by Otto I of Germany who had followed Charlemagne’s example of the path to power through crusades against non-Christians (in this case, the Magyars).

Otto I then continued the policies of maintaining a Christian nation following Charlemagne’s example throughout his reign and set the standard for those who would follow him. The Holy Roman Empire continued to see itself in this role as an entity championing Christian truth through warfare until, in a steady decline involving political intrigue, corruption, almost incessant war, and constant internal strife, it was dissolved in 1806 CE.

The current poverty line for a family of four is $26,200: People with incomes between $10,000 and $30,000 — nearly one-quarter of Americans — are among those scheduled to pay a higher average tax rate in 2021 than in years before the tax “cut” was passed.

The C.B.O. and Joint Committee estimated that those with an income of $20,000 to $30,000 would owe an extra $365 next year — these are people who are struggling just to pay rent and put food on the table.

those on the edge of poverty have been particularly hard hit by the pandemic and the recession its caused, so Trump’s planned tax increases seem especially heartless, and impractical, when you consider that their higher tax payments, while a huge burden for them, will add little to the budget.

At the same time, Trump has given his peers, people with annual incomes in excess of $1 million dollars, or the top 0.3 percent in the country, a huge gift:

saving the average taxpayer in this group over $64,000 — more than the average American family makes in a year.

This analysis makes clear that the vast majority of Americans will be better off with the likely tax reforms that will emerge from a Biden administration than they would be by sticking with Mr. Trump’s ill-conceived tax bill.

Elections matter. Elections gave Republicans the power to enact these tax shenanigans. Neither conscience nor principles stopped them.

The increases, unfairly aimed at the vast majority of Americans who are disproportionately suffering in the pandemic, will cause even more hardship.