History – 16th – 19th Century
FREE History Blogs!
Each History Blog has 10 questions at the bottom
to help you create a lesson plan for FREE!
Is the Three Musketeers a true story or not? Well, you have to decide, and to help we have made Alexandre Dumas’s famous tale “The Three Musketeers” into a rollicking …… | The 1620s European Financial Crisis! Yes, they even had them in Europe in the 17th Century, they called this one “Tipper and See-Saw Time”, that was the name given to ……… | Was Cardinal Richelieu a baddie or was it just a good plot? Now in the books and TV series the Cardinal is made out as the baddie, but was he? When you start looking into the history, I do…… | Anne of Denmark was the unknown Drama Queen of Scotland, who when her husband became James 1st of England, was Queen Anne of England. What didn’t help was that the …. | The money problems of 17th Century monachies against the benefits of Republics. Why, in 1672 did everyone want to invade Holland, what had they done wrong? They were a Republic and therefore was wealthier than the others. |
This 335 years’ war was fought between the Isles of Scilly, yes, those little islands off the end of Cornwall, and the Republic of the Netherlands! It lasted from the 30 March 1651 until 17 April 1986, why? All because …….. | The build up to The Gunpowder Plot, is celebrated every year, but do you know why they felt they had to blow up the parliament? It all goes back to King Henry VIII and 1534 when Henry started …….. | What was the worst When asked this question most people say that the storm in 1953 was the worst peacetime weather disaster. However, the 1703 storm, caused by an extratropical cyclone that spread across the country and wiped out 1/3rd of our Navy! This storm was described as an ….. | Originally lotteries started in China around 200 BC, to fund major projects, such as building the Great Wall of China. To Romans lotteries were a game played at dinner parties. Well, that was until Augustus Caesar, the Roman Emperor, needed money, suddenly, he ……. | Shortly after midnight on Saturday 1st September 1666, a fire went rogue in Thomas Farriner’s bakery in Pudding Lane in the City of London. It spread to nearby houses, nearby lanes, then due to the strong winds, it continued west across the city, creating a most frightening …… |
We’ve heard of the explosion of Vesuvius on 24th August AD79 that wiped out Pompeii, which is just by Naples. Did you know that an even bigger earthquake hit Naples, just next to Pompeii, on 5th December 1456 killing 35,000 people? | “Tulip Mania” 17th century Holland had the world’s highest per capita income. They had a financial system that was the most advanced and sophisticated ever seen in history. It is called the Dutch Golden Age. However, their sophistication in financial matters had its downside, it led to Tulip Mania! Some say this was the first ever recorded speculative bubble …… | The “Great Seal” signifies the force of the will of the Monarch. On December 11th 1688, while fleeing to France, James II threw his Great Seal into the River Thames. His aim to stop ………. | It was called the Price Revolution, blamed on the Spanish and called the Spanish Price Revolution. It was a series of economic events between the second half of the 15th century and the first half of the 17th century. Of course they blamed price rises on the ………. | The siege of Candia The Nights of Malta captured one of the Ottoman Sultan’s ships. They made a mistake; they captured Ottoman Sultan’s harem! They panicked. They immediately dropped them off at the nearest port. They thought they were out of trouble, but unfortunaty, they kicked off the longest siege in military history. You see Crete was ruled by ….. |
Started on 14th September 1812, in fact before Napoleon’s troops entered the city. Just as Russian troops and the residents abandoned the city of Moscow, just ahead of the French Emperor Napoleon’s troops entering the city. The fire all but destroyed the city, which meant ……… | Galileo Galilei was an unknown, north Italian professor of mathematics, a lover of good wines with a razor-sharp wit until 1609, when he got a telescope. It changed his and our lives for ever. He learnt the world went round the sun! This led to “The ………. | A letter of marque was given by governments in the 16,17 & 18th Centuries as a licence for a private person to attack and capture ships of a nation with which that government was at war. It legalised piracy. Some governments did more …… | It was the Venetians in the 13th century who produced, what they called reading stones. Made of solid glass that was held in a single frame. These frames were made of horns, bones and of course wood, they were very …….. | Do you know the story Ignatius was born on slave ship crossing the Atlantic Ocean, his mother died not long after in the Spanish colony of New Granada, then his father took his own life rather than live as a slave. His father’s owner bought the two-year-old Ignatius to England, where he gave him to three unmarried sisters in Greenwich. Then he met John Montagu who was ….. |
Was this the Start of British Democracy? The Putney Debates took place in 1647, were a series of discussions on how Parliament would run the country with no King, should they win the civil war. At the Putney …… | Was the Hanseatic League the forerunner to the EU? In the 12th Century a group of Northern European medieval towns decided to trade between themselves. Just like the European Union they decided that there could be a benefit to all of them if they traded together? They formed “The Hanseatic League”, a free trade area some 700 years before the European Union! It started with ……. | The biggest company in the world between 1600 and 1750 The East India Company. It was so powerful that it effected the global balance of trade. By the mid-1700s it seemed to have been involved in half the world’s trade. It was part owned by The British Government and was so big that it had its own ………. | On November 15th 1720 Anne Bonny, Mary Read, and Calico Jack were captured by Capt. Jonathan Barnet and brought to Spanish Town, Jamaica, for trial! Anne Bonny and Mary Read were two amazingly successful women pirates, the amazing thing about them is …….. | Today, we can’t imagine that the River Thames can actually freeze over, but years ago it not only froze over, it froze over so deeply that we could actually hold a fair on it. They put on the posters advertising the fair, each time the Thames froze over. Believe it or not …………… |
Today we dance for fun, but would you believe in the 14th century they thought it was a disease! At the “Dancing Plague”. People suddenly started dancing erratically, then others joined them, however the church …… | On the 8th November 1519, the conquistador, Hernán Cortes, arrived in Tenochtitlan along with 400 Spaniards. He was astounded on seeing the City of Gold, Tenochtitlan, sitting serenely in a beautifully planned and ordered system of canals and causeways. Then things changed……. | |||