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Part 1:

Write answers to each of the following short-form questions:

Who you think was the greatest explorer in history? List three reasons for your choice.

Do you think there are any situations today where you could become the victim of the plague or any other contagious disease killing people? Explain your answer.

Why do you think Leonardo dissected human bodies even though he wasn’t a doctor?

How do you personally feel about Cortes: was he a hero or a villain?  Explain why you think so.

1. Why do you think Elizabeth I didn’t get married? Do you think it was a good idea that she didn’t marry? Explain your answer.
2. What was the most important discovery made on Captain Cook’s voyages? Explain your answer.
3. What do you think was Issac Newton’s greatest discovery or invention? Explain your choice.
4. Why do you think the people succeeded in the 1790s in overthrowing the entire system of the French government and the dominance of the nobles when the system had existed for hundreds of years?  Explain your answer.
5. Why did some Germans hate the Jews? Explain your answer.
6. Summarize what happened on “Crystal Night” and describe why it happened.
7. Which Impressionist artist appeals most to you? Explain why they appeal to you.
8. Hot air balloons were used by armies in several countries including France, and in the U.S. by the Union army during the Civil War. What military advantage might the use of hot air balloons have for an army?
9. Part 2:
10. Write an essay on the write an essay on the designs, inventions, or sculptures that most impress you from Leonardo da Vinci.  Explain your choices.
11. Minimum Word Count: 800 words.
12. Part 3:

Under the title “Geography of the Holocaust”, write an essay about which countries were involved and describe what role each of these countries played in the Holocaust.

World History

The Travels Of Marco Polo

In 1271, Niccolò and Maffeo Polo decided to return to China accompanied by Niccolò’s 17-year-old son, Marco. The two experienced traders saw that Marco was strong and eager to make the journey to the court of Kublai Khan where the brothers had already spent one year. The journey through Asia took more than three and one-half years and was filled with danger. They traveled through the Caucasus Mountains, across Persia and Armenia, through passes in the Pamir Mountains, and across the Gobi Desert.

Marco kept careful journals of all the wonders he saw and the stories he heard. Some of the stories he heard from traders and natives may have been entirely or mostly fiction, but his observations have generally been proven correct. Oil does seep from the earth in some parts of Asia, and people had learned to use it to treat the mange, a skin disease in animals, and for lighting lamps. The hard, black burning stones he saw were coal.

The stories he told of China’s wonders and the palaces of Kublai Khan were largely true, although he might have exaggerated some to stress the great wealth and importance if Chin They did have paper money, a pony express system for sending messages, and the Chinese did bathe frequently, an idea that seemed strange to Europeans who rarely bathed. Marco described animals that had never been known in Europe before, such as the crocodile and the rhinoceros.

Marco Polo worked as a governor of a province and an observer for Kublai Khan, who trusted him and admired his observations and judgments. The emperor did not want the Polos to leave China, and they stayed for 17 years before he allowed them to go as ambassadors for him, delivering a princess as a bride for a Persian king.

The Polos weren’t even recognized in Venice or their own home when they returned. They held a party for their friends and tore their clothes into which they had sewn jewels and gold. Two years after his return, Marco Polo was captured during a naval battle and imprisoned. He met the writer Rustichello in prison where he told his stories to him and other fellow prisoners. The Travels of Marco Polo was published after his release from prison in 1299.

Map of Marco Polo’s Travels [Image By SY, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. (modified)]

Death In Paris – Bubonic Plague

Bubonic plague erupted I the Gobi Desert in the late 1320s and quickly spread to China by 1331 where it killed two-thirds of the entire population over the next twenty years. It then spread westward through India, the Arab lands, and into Europe through the trading cities of Italy in 1347. The epidemic spread almost immediately to Paris and the other cities and villages of France. In less than a year, it swept through England, Scotland, and on to Germany and other northern countries in Europe. It eventually returned to the high plains of Asia where it ended about 1352.

THE BLACK DEATH

This pandemic quickly became known as the Black Death in Europe where it killed more than one-third of the population and massively changed European life. This disease was carried by ticks that lived on rats and infected them. Rats flourished on all ships and were carried from port to port. The ticks infected sailors, rats living on the wharves, and people who came into contact with them.

Nobody knew the causes of the plague until modern times, but people did know that the contagion could be spread by contact with those who were infected. They did not realize that the filthy conditions of European cities, the lack of any adequate sanitation, drinking water polluted by human and animal waste, and the fact that people rarely bathed or washed their hands helped spread the contagion.

So many people died that no provisions could be made for the dead. Many doctors, religious leaders, and public officials stayed in cities and tried to help. Others fled to rural areas hoping to avoid the contagion. The depopulation of Europe led to massive shortages of food, labor problems, and to the first cracks in the system of serfdom which had placed the peasants under the absolute control of local landowners and nobles. It took many years for Europe to recover from the plague, and the disease returned several times over the centuries, but not as many people died in these later outbreaks. The disease still exists, and people are still infected every year in many countries. It can be treated today with antibiotics.

Spread of the Black Death in Europe 1346 to 1353 (Image Flappiefh [CC BY-SA 4.0, from Wikimedia Commons)

The Italian Renaissance

The Renaissance, the rebirth of learning, art, and science, began in the 1400s in Italy and gradually spread to other European countries. Italian city-states were like small nations where the wealth of powerful dukes who became rich in trade financed an amazing flowering of painting, sculpture, architecture, and engineering achievements.

Renaissance thinkers studied the works of ancient Greek scholars and used them as a basis for new ideas in the arts, mathematics, medicine, and science. The invention of the printing press in 1440 was a powerful agent for spreading learning throughout Europe.

ARTISTS AND THINKERS

One of the artists of the Renaissance was Michelangelo, famed for his sculptures like David and his painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Botticelli, Donatello, Titian, and Raphael were extraordinary artists who influenced the style of art for centuries afterward. Mathematicians such as Luca Pacioli, astronomers such as Nicolas Copernicus, and political writers such as Niccolo Machiavelli, opened the doors to many modern ideas about man and the universe he inhabits.

LEONARDO DA VINCI

Leonardo da Vinci was the complete Renaissance man. He was interested in every aspect of life. His painting and sculpture demonstrated new concepts of harmony, proportion, and style. Da Vinci had a fascination with human and animal anatomy. He sought to find mathematical perfection in human design and correct proportion in all forms of life. He had very modern ideas about sanitation for cities and was considered finicky about cleanliness, even though he was also willing to cut through rotting flesh to dissect the corpses of dead people.

Leonardo studied the principles of flight, the movement of water, the behavior of air currents, the nature of geometry, and a host of other scientific topics. He kept journals and papers of all his studies written left-handed and in mirror writing. He was disorganized, easily irritated, and vain about his looks and his intellect. Leonardo tended to leave many paintings and projects unfinished, including the Mona LisMost of his designs could not be turned into working models because the technology did not exist to create models.

The Mona Lisa. One of Leonardo da Vinci’s most famous works.

The Conquistadors

The discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus led to a major effort by the Spanish government to find gold and other forms of wealth in the new lands. The Spanish settlements in Cuba became a staging ground for exploration of the Yucatan PeninsulMany of the soldiers who made up these expeditions were adventurers from Spain like Hernando Cortes to whom the New World offered opportunities for wealth and adventure.

HERNANDO CORTES

Hernando Cortes was sent to study law by his parents, but he tired of the study and decided to travel to the new world. A friend in Hispaniola helped him get an estate worked by slaves. Cortes became involved in several expeditions and a half-hearted marriage. Cortes quickly became wealthy and got the approval of Governor Velasquez to finance his own expedition to the Yucatan Peninsula to discover new lands in an area that rumor said was filled with gold.

THE CONQUEST

Cortes became immediately involved in a conflict with local natives after he landed in the area he called Vera Cruz. He quickly demonstrated his shrewd military ability by defeating a much larger force of Tabascans. He found that the natives had never seen either horses or cannons and that they believed both might be gods. In the peace negotiations, Cortes was given a slave named Malinche helped explain the cultural beliefs of the Aztecs and other tribes he encountered, including the Aztec belief that a white god would return to Mexico and destroy them in the very year of Cortes arrival. She also bore him a son.

Montezuma, the Aztec king, tried to buy Cortes off with gifts of gold and treasure; but the gifts only made him greedy. Cortes made alliances with other tribes who were angry at the Aztecs later drove the Spanish from the city. Cortes combined his army with native troops and destroyed the capital in a three-month siege in 1521. The wealth of this Aztec empire made Spain and Cortes very rich.

Portrait of Hernando Cortés (Museo del Prado)

Elizabethan Age – Queen Elizabeth I

Elizabeth I is considered by many to be the most successful and powerful monarch in British history. She came to be the throne at the age of 25, the last living child of Henry VIII. She had been a brilliant student. Elizabeth was proficient in French, Italian, Spanish, and Flemish, among the modern languages, and mastered the ancient languages of Greek and Latin. She learned history, mathematics, geography, astronomy, and even studied architecture.

Her father spent most of his life trying to find a wife who would bear him a strog son to inherit the British throne. He never realized that, of his three children, Elizabeth was the strongest in both will and physical energy. Her mother was beheaded at her father’s order when she was only two years old. Nonetheless, Elizabeth developed as a perceptive and practical child.

Her brother, Edward, died young and her sister, Mary, died after nearly five years as queen. Elizabeth took the throne as England was suffering from a grat deal of religious conflict between Catholics and Protestants. The country had huge debts and had suffered heavy losses in a war with France.

Elizabeth secretly supported the piracy of John Hawkins and Francis Drake who robbed Spanish ships and sent a portion of the stolen gold to her. She eventually knighted Sir Francis Drake and gave him command of the English fleet. Drake defeated the Spanish Armada in 1588 in one of the most important naval battles in history. The victory made England on of the great powers of the world.

Elizabeth flirted with marriage to several kings of Europe and English dukes, but it was clear to most advisors that she really had no intention of having her powers compromised by any male. She was in charge of England, and she never lost track of her intention to rule. She very reluctantly executed her cousin Mary, Queen of Scots, because Mary had conspired against her.

Creative arts, especially drama and writing, flourished in England under her reign. She favored William Shakespeare and other British writers with her support. Elizabeth was generally admired and loved by most of her subjects who called her “Good Queen Bess,” a name that suggested a gentler and softer person than she ever was.

Portait of Elizabeth I depicting defeat of Spanish Armada. Her hand resting on the globe symbolises her international power.

Newton’s Apple – Sir Isaac Newton & Natural Philosophers

An English poet wrote: “Nature and nature’s laws lay hid in night: God said, Let Newton be!’ And all was light!” It was not simple, but Isaac Newton added immeasurably to the new scientific ideas in physics, astronomy, math, and other sciences which had sprung from the works of Galileo Galilei, Nicolas Copernicus, Rene Descartes, and other natural philosophers, the name was given to scientists in the Age of Reason. These ideas about plants, physical laws, light, and many other features of the natural world would provide the scientific basis for many invention and discoveries of the Enlightenment Age in the 1700s.

ISAAC NEWTON

Isaac Newton was born on Christmas Day in 1642 after his father’s death. His mother soon married a wealthy neighbor, but left Isaac in the care of his grandparents. He grew up feeling rejected and unloved. Isaac became a good student at the local grammar school mostly to spite a bully who picked on him. In his youth, Newton made many ingenious devices and toys. He was fascinated by the chemicals used by the druggist with whom he lived. He did not make friends with the druggist’s daughter, Catherine. His mother soon decided Isaac would make a poor farmer, and he went to Cambridge University at his uncle’s suggestion.

Newton was a friendless student who paid for part of his expenses by serving wealthier students. He did demonstrate remarkable skill in mathematics. He did demonstrate remarkable skill in mathematics. His greatest discoveries were made at home during the plague years when he worked out the universal law of gravitation and the inverse square law expressing the force of gravitation. He also codified the three laws of motion and did remarkable experiments with light. He worked out the principles of calculus that he called “fluxions.”

Newton returned to Cambridge and was made a mathematics professor at the age of 26. He always had problems making and keeping friends and often quarreled with other scientists over credit for discoveries. He wrote one of the greatest science books ever written, Mathematics Principles of Natural Philosophy, in the 1680s. He did further studies in astronomy, wrote a book on light, invented the reflecting telescope, and tried to convert cheap metal into gold. Newton never married. He died at the age of 84 in 1727.

Engraving portait of Sir Isaac Newton

Three Times Around The World – Captain James Cook

CAPTAIN JAMES COOK

Captain James Cook was a British officer from a poor family who rose to importance because of his dedication and skill as a sailor. He led three voyages around the world on missions to discover unknown lands and chart water routes through the Pacific Ocean. Cook was a highly skilled navigator and an excellent leader of men. His long voyages added immensely to the store of knowledge about the Pacific Ocean, South Pacific islands, Australia, New Zealand, and the seas near Antarctica. The Polynesian peoples he met and interacted with had been little known before his voyages.

THE THREE VOYAGES

The first voyage from 1768 to 1771 was officially intended to achieve two purposes. The astronomers on board were to observe the passage of Venus across the face of the sun on June 3, 1769, from the island of Tahiti. Unfortunately, atmospheric conditions prevented clear viewing of Venus. The other objective was to find the Southern Continent that was believed to be a land in the Southern Hemisphere similar to Europe. In his ship, the Endeavour, Cook explored the coasts of New Zealand and Australi In the seas near Antarctica, he encountered massive icebergs and an endless expanse of ice His ships were battered by violent storms, and his men suffered from the terrible cold.

The second voyage was intended to find the Southern Continent. Cook had two ships, the Resolution, and the Adventure. This voyage from 1772 to 1775 included a layover in Tahiti and the discovery of the Tongan Islands. He rediscovered the Marquesa Islands and Easter Island. Cook crossed the Antarctic Circle twice looking for the continent. Cook’s carefully kept logs proved that it could not exist. He sailed over 70,000 miles of ocean in three years.

The third voyage from 1776 to 1780 was aimed at finding the Northwest Passage, a long-sought-after route from the Atlantic Ocean through North America to the Pacific Ocean. With his teo ships, the Resolution and Discovery, he revisited some of the Pacific Islands and discovered the Hawaiian Islands. He explored the Aleutian Islands, the coasts of Alaska and Russia, and the Bering Strait. Captain Cook was killed in the Hawaiian Islands after a dispute with the natives.

Map showing routes of Cook’s three voyages. (Image Jon Platek. Blank map by en:User:Reisio. [CC BY-SA 3.0, from Wikimedia Commons)

The French Revolution – Death Of A King

During the 1780s France was considered one of the great world powers. France had flexed its military muscle against its rival, Great Britain, by helping Britain’s American colonies achieve their independence. However, beneath the surface, France had extremely serious problems. The government was bankrupt. To pay its bills, taxes were raised on the poorest people while the nobility paid no taxes. Harvests were poor, and the price of food skyrocketed.

In 1789, rioting spread across the nation. The French army, largely made up of peasants with officers from the nobility, could not be counted upon to end the rioting and enforce the king’s orders. The king was forced to call a meeting of the Estates General- representatives from the three classes who made up French society- the nobility, clergy who owned land, and the peasants. In June 1798, when the king refused to respond to the list of peasant grievances, the peasant representatives called themselves the National Assembly, which threatened the power of the king. Gradually, the revolution against the king and nobility spread across France.

The Bastille, a fortress prison where many of the king’s enemies were jailed, was stormed by a mob in July 1789. Guns and ammunition were taken, and the prisoners were released. The National Assembly issued a “Declaration of Rights of Man and of the Citizen.” In October 1789, a mob of starving market women marched on the king’s palace in Versailles and forced the royal family back to Paris. In Jun 179, the king and his family tried to flee from Paris. They were caught and returned to Paris.

In August 1792, a mob invaded the castle where the king was living and all the soldiers of the Swiss Guard, a hired foreign army that was guarding him, and dragged the king and his family to a prison called the Temple. In September 1792, a mob invaded a prison and massacred nobles and other accused enemies of the state. In January 1793, the king was executed on the guillotine, a machine for beheading. The queen was executed in the fall of 1793. The revolution became more violent and radical creating a year-long Reign of Terror fed by more than 18,000 executions. In 1799, the French army under the command of Napoleon Bonaparte took control of the government.

Impression, Sunrise, Claude Monet.

The Great Balloon Ride

EYES ON THE SKIES

Many efforts have been made by men across the centuries to fly. Early Greek myths, such as the tale of Icarus, envisioned men flapping feathery wings and sailing across the skies. In the late Middle Ages other efforts to create bird-like flying machines were made. Leonardo da Vinci designed several flying vehicles, including the parachute and the helicopter.

THE MONTGOLFIER BROTHER

The Montgolfier Brothers were born into a family of paper manufacturers in France in the 1740s. There were 16 children in the family, and the father’s paper making business was very successful. Of the two brothers, Etienne, the businessman, brought in the latest innovations from France and Holland and made it a very flourishing business. Joseph was the more scientific of the two and had the imaginative and creative mind of an inventor. He observed the effect of embers in a fire rising with smoke, and that drying laundry over a fireplace caused the material to rise. He came to believe that there must be a kind of gas which he called “Mongolfier Gas” that caused the paper and cloth to rise.

The two brothers built several contraptions using fire, light wood, and cloth which flew up several feet. These experiments were conducted in 1782. In 1783, they created a balloon that flew in front of a group of dignitaries in the community of Annonay where they lived. They later went to Paris where they built a much larger balloon. They launched this balloon in September with a crew consisting of a duck, a chicken, a sheep. The untethered balloon flight lasted about eight minutes, traveling about ten miles and reached a height of 1,500 feet.

SUCCESS – MANNED, UNTETHERED BALLOON FLIGHT

The first untethered balloon flight with people onboard occurred on November 21, 1783, with two adventurers abroad. Pilatre de Rozier was a physicist, and Francois Laurent was an army officer and a high-ranking nobleman called a marquis. The two men volunteered to fly the balloon, and after initial opposition from King Louis XVI, the inventors and adventurers convinced him that the honor of France and of the king required them to make the flight. The flight was quite successful. They went more than a half mile high and traveled about five miles in 25 minutes. Part of the balloon caught fire during the land the landing, but the fire was extinguished using sponges and de Rozier’s coat. Pilatre de Rozier became the first man in history to die in a manned flight when he unsuccessfully tried to cross the English Channel two years later. Ben Franklin, who was ambassador to France from the United States, witnessed the flight and commented that he, too, hoped to fly in a balloon.

A 1786 depiction of the Montgolfier brothers’ historic balloon with engineering data.

A Lasting Impression – Impressionist Art Movement

Impressionism is a style of art that developed in the 1870s in France. The Impressionist painters rejected many of the restrictions of earlier styles of art. They were especially concerned with revealing the impression of what the eye actually sees at a glance. Impressionist artists were concerned with the effect of light on a subject and how it looked to the eye when it is reflected from an object. They used bright colors rather then the duller tones and hues of earlier artists.

Impressionist painters were also influenced by the new interest in Japanese styles of art and by the way the newly invented camera composed a picture. As a result, many of their compositions cut off a part of a subject or showed only a part of a person or object. Impressionists often painted several views of the same subject and often worked outdoors at the site of the subject rather than n studio. The Impressionist were rarely accepted in the salon exhibitions of traditional painters, so they held eight of their own exhibitions between 1874 and 1886.

IMPORTANT IMPRESSIONISTS

The name for this style of painting came from an art critics’ negative reaction to a painting by Claude Monet called Impression: Sunrise. Monet often painted a series of paintings with the same subject. He did thirty views of the cathedral of Rouen and many of his garden.

Edgar Degas was fond of painting circus performers, ballet dancers, theatre performances, and racehorses. He was very influential with several of his Impressionist, but he did not consider himself an Impressionist. Vincent Van Gogh learned from the Impressionist but developed a unique style. He was very unsuccessful in selling his paintings, but they became very popular after his death.

Other major artists of the Impressionist movement were Pierre-Auguste, Camille Pissarro, Eduard Manet, Gustave Caillebotte, Georges Seurat, Paul Gauguin, and Berthe Morisot, an important women artist. Mary Cassatt was an American Impressionist who lived in Paris.

Impression, sunrise. Claude Monet.

The Cossack Winked – The Russian Revolution

The Russian Revolution was one of the most important events in world history. It changed Russia forever in terms of its form of government, industrial power, and international relationships. The revolution was really a movement with several parts.

THE MARCH REVOLUTION OF 1917

The revolution from March 8th to the 12th began as a protest by women textile workers against the shortages of food and the high cost of bread. The protest quickly swelled with more workers, students, and soldiers. The crowds grew so large by the third day that virtually all shops, factories, offices, and services were closed. An unpopular and losing war effort, incompetent and ruthless rule by the monarchy, and food shortages fed the rebellion.

The police were overrun by the protesters. Many policemen shed their uniforms and vanished. Police stations were burned, and weapons were taken. Soldiers ordered to put down the rebellion joined their fellow soldiers in the streets. In desperation, the government ordered Cossacks to reestablish order. These professional cavalrymen from Russia had been the monarch’s enforcers and personal army for hundreds of years. This time, however, the Cossacks did not attack the people. One workman reported that a Cossack has winked at him. This news spread rapidly among the marchers. The Cossacks were with the people this time

AN UNFINISHED REVOLUTION

On March 15, 1917, just a week after the marches started, Tsar Nicholas II abdicated his throne and a group of labor leaders, Social Revolutionaries, and Communists established a provisional government under the leadership of Alexander Kerensky. This government was unsuccessful in solving Russia’s problems. In November of 1917, a revolution by the Bolsheviks, Communists led by Lenin, took control of the government. The Bolsheviks became involved in a five-year-long civil war and a war against other nations to retrain control of the nation. By 1922, the Bolsheviks defeated their enemies.

Under Stalin, they established a very autocratic Communist government that was as ruthless in its treatment of its citizens as the old Russian monarchy had been. Russia would go on to become a world power, control many of its neighbors, and eventually have another revolution in the 1990s that brought in some dramatic reforms.

Armed soldiers carry a banner reading ‘Communism’. Moscow, October 1917