Eyewitness
A basic, hazardous condition or element that daily industrial factory workers face.
What is pollution? (Or: Unsafe machinery)
The invisible, biological weapon Spanish Conquistadors unknowingly brought that devastated indigenous empires.
What is smallpox? (Or: Disease)
John Locke's core political concept stating that all humans are born with rights to life, liberty, and property.
What are natural rights?
The immediate geopolitical spark for World War I: the June 1914 assassination of this Austrian leader
Who was Archduke Franz Ferdinand
The 16th-century religious upheaval accelerated by the printing press that permanently fractured Western Christianity.
What is the Protestant Reformation?
The physical infestation or muddy ailment soldiers commonly suffered from in WWI trenches.
What is trench foot? (Or: Rats)
The radical machine heavily used by the Third Estate to execute enemies of the French Revolution.
What is the guillotine?
Montesquieu’s structural concept designed to prevent tyranny by dividing government into executive, legislative, and judicial branches.
What is separation of powers?
The severe shortage of this basic food staple that drove the angry Third Estate to riot in Paris.
What is bread? (Or: Food shortage)
The massive population shift from rural, agrarian farms to crowded, industrialized cities.
What is urbanization?
The specific, largest socioeconomic group that made up over 90% of the French Third Estate.
Who are peasants?
The dominant, gridlocked style of combat fought between the Central and Allied powers on the Western Front.
What is trench warfare?
the primary fossil fuel that had to be heavily mined to power James Watt's upgraded Steam Engine.
What is coal?
The navigation device adopted from Islamic empires that allowed European sailors to measure latitude using stars.
What is the astrolabe?
The harsh 1919 peace settlement that economically destroyed Germany and helped spark World War II.
What is the Versailles Treaty?
A major loss of autonomy or physical exploitation experienced daily by colonized people in Africa or Asia
What is forced labor? (Or: Loss of land)
The surprise military strike on December 7, 1941, that forced the United States to fight the Axis powers.
What is Pearl Harbor?
The heavily armored, tracked vehicle introduced in modern warfare to safely cross "No Man's Land."
What is the tank?
The primary economic motive for Western nations taking colonies in Africa and Asia during the Age of Imperialism.
What are raw materials? (Or: Natural resources)
The factory production method where workers repeat one specialized task, popularized by Henry Ford.
What is the assembly line?
The deadly, painful vitamin-deficiency disease frequently contracted by sailors spending months on exploration ships.
What is scurvy?
The historic 1884–1885 European meeting where imperial powers carved up Africa without any African leaders present.
What is the Berlin Conference?
The specific, reusable metal invention developed by Johannes Gutenberg that made the mass production of books possible.
What is movable type? or printing press
The 17th and 18th-century intellectual movement emphasizing reason and individualism that birthed the ideas of Locke and Montesquieu.
What is the Enlightenment?
The massive, permanent global transfer of plants, animals, food, and cultures triggered by European exploration after 1492.
What is the Columbian Exchange?