1517: A Year in Review

On October 31, 1517, one man with a hammer changed the course of history. Thirty-three-year-old German monk Martin Luther nailed a list of 95 complaints about the practices of the Catholic church to a church door in Wittenberg–the sixteenth century equivalent of pinning them to a community bulletin board. (Or perhaps, as some scholars argue,…

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1917: A Year in Review

In 1917, the War to End All Wars continued to dominate the headlines. On April 6, the United States finally abandoned isolationism and entered the war, after being given a strong shove by Germany in the form of the Zimmerman Telegram.  On the Eastern front, Russia suffered devastating defeats, which contributed directly to the Bolshevik…

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1916: A Year in Review

In 1916, what was then known as the war to end all wars still dominated the headlines. Losses on all sides were heavy and dispiriting. On the western front, French forces repulsed a major German offensive at the Battle of Verdun.* In July, after two years of stalemate in the trenches the British and French…

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