Weave together the many narratives of world history with our highly curated and expanding selection of diverse, fascinating resources designed to showcase the breadth and richness of Earth's story, from the earliest traces of human civilization to the dramatic developments of contemporary cultures.
Hours of research by our editors, distilled into minutes of clarity.
This Investopedia article explains how command economies work, which countries have used them, and why even market-based nations like the US sometimes adopt tools such as rationing or price controls during wartime or national emergencies.
Lenin argued that capitalism concentrated power in a small ruling class, and only transferring authority to industrial workers could eliminate exploitation and class hierarchy. This five-minute explainer outlines how he envisioned that revolutionary shift.
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From 1613 to 1917, 18 Romanovs—including Peter and Catherine the Great—governed the vast Russian Empire. Their dynasty ended abruptly in 1917 when Nicholas II abdicated amid wartime shortages and revolutionary unrest, marking the end of imperial Russia.
This timeline from The Washington Post traces the spread of Communism—from revolutions and Cold War flashpoints to movements in China, Cuba, Korea, and Vietnam—using archival photos and key moments to chart the ideology’s dramatic ascent and worldwide decline.
The USSR comprised 15 republics—Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan—all governed from Moscow, the Soviet capital and still Russia’s capital today.
The Indus Valley Civilization was known for its populous and well-organized cities, namely Harappa and Mohenjo Daro in present-day Pakistan. Streets ran parallel and perpendicular to one another in a grid-like pattern, and homes were connected to a centralized draining system. This suggests there must have been some urban planning or zoning body, though historians aren’t quite sure how the government operated. Watch the 9-minute video to learn more about the Bronze Age civilization, including its mysterious decline.
A 2023 study identified that packs of dogs located just 16 kilometers (10 miles) apart within the exclusion zone were more genetically different from one another than from stray dogs hundreds of kilometers away. Rather than radiation, this is likely the result of inbreeding within isolated packs.
Completed in 2016, the "New Safe Confinement" is a €1.5B megastructure—the largest movable structure ever built. It was assembled next to the damaged reactor, then rolled into place along a special track to seal the site for at least 100 years.
The five-episode historical drama earned near-universal acclaim for its historical detail and haunting portrayal of the 1986 disaster, winning 10 Emmys and topping IMDb's all-time TV rankings upon its release.
Americans first heard about the Chernobyl nuclear disaster two days after the event, once abnormal radiation was detected in nearby countries. This forced Soviet officials to acknowledge the catastrophe publicly for the first time a few days after it occurred.
