Author: Dr. Zar

Dr. Zar

Dr. Zar graduated with a B.A. in French and history, a Master’s in History, and a Ph.D. in History. He currently teaches history in Ohio.

A Brief History On June 24, 1398, the Hongwu Emperor of China died.  Soon after this emperor’s death, one of his sons, Zhu Di (1360-1424), began an ultimately successful rebellion to seize the throne from the Hongwu Emperor’s teenage successor, a nephew of Zhu Di.  By 1402, Zhu Di’s nephew was dead and Zhu Di, now known as the Yongle Emperor, began a reign that has gone down in history as one of the most famous and significant in all of Chinese history.  During his reign of over twenty years, the Yongle Emperor’s famed eunuch admiral Zheng He (1371-1433) conducted…

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A Brief History On this date, September 29, 1825, American soldier, revolutionary, and farmer Daniel Shays (c.1747–1825) died at age 78 in Sparta, New York.  In those storied 78 years, Shays became most famous for being one of the leaders of Shays’ Rebellion, a populist uprising against controversial debt collection and tax policies in Massachusetts in 1786 and 1787.  The seeds of that rebellion were planted nearly a decade earlier amidst a revolution… Digging Deeper In a bitter struggle against the most powerful industrializing nation on earth, the thirteen colonies that would later be called the United States of America (U.S.)…

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A Brief History Legendary fighters Ken Shamrock (age 51) and Kimbo Slice (age 41) will battle inside the Bellator cage on Friday, June 19, 2015 in a historic match-up! Digging Deeper In one corner, we have Ken Shamrock, who, despite his age,  looks like an action figure.  A member of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) Hall of Fame, Shamrock was the first ever UFC Superfight Champion.  He also had the longest fight in UFC history at 36 minutes.  In professional wrestling, he became the World Wrestling Federation’s Intercontinental Champion.  Of course most of his accomplishments are from the 1990s and…

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A Brief History On May 23, 2006, Chooseco published an updated version of The Abominable Snowman as the first of their reissues of the Choose Your Own Adventure gamebooks from the early 1980s so dear to this author’s heart. Digging Deeper Bantam Books published the original series from 1979 (the year of this author’s birth) to 1998.  As such, I grew up reading these books and still have most of them on shelves in my personal library.  If you have children aged 10 to 14, I strongly encourage you to share these volumes with them as a way of getting them…

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A Brief History I would like to take this opportunity to explain a little bit about this site!  This site features history-related and sometimes bizarre articles and lists and current and otherwise entertaining headlines and topics for your amusement and education. Digging Deeper The site began in 2013 as a spin-off of TopTenz with Dr. Zar working as the site’s main writer.  Eventually, Dr. Zar’s dad (Major Dan) replaced Dr. Zar as the site’s main writer and the site’s original owner transferred ownership of the site to Dr. Zar. The site now exists for the benefit of Dr. Zar’s students. …

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