12 Very Important Historical Accounts, Summarized

There are many historical events, and it is very difficult to choose a few. here we will see several very interesting historical accounts that will allow us to know the story in a little more depth.

What are historical accounts?

The historical accounts are textual narratives that describe passages from the story, analyzing them, explaining them in depth and showing their facts, causes and consequences.

There are several sources from which the information of a historical account can come, such as documents of all kinds, account books, newspapers, letters, memoranda, diaries, figures and even lists of taxes.

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Historical accounts, synthesized

Next we are going to see some historical accounts that every person should know and their most important data and ephemeris.

1. Second World War

World War II was a conflict that began in 1939 and ended in 1945 in which many nations on the planet were involved. These, with the passing of the days of the conflict, formed two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis.

It is the longest war in history, and in which there was a military mobilization of up to 100 million soldiers.

The nations involved made a great effort, both economically and industrially and scientifically, to ensure that they were victors in the conflict, and being necessary to make great sacrifices, even if that implied fewer resources for the civilians.

Millions of people died in the conflict, being the Holocaust and the use of nuclear weapons two of the greatest misfortunes that occurred to humanity. The death toll is between 50 and 70 million..

The event that triggered the great conflict we have in the invasion of the Führer of Germany, Adolf Hitler, on Poland in September 1939. This caused Britain and France to declare war on Germany.

Later, in April 1940, Hitler would choose to invade Norway and Denmark, initiating an expansion plan throughout Europe. In May of that same year Belgium and the Netherlands would be invaded.

France found itself unable to face Germany, which was about to conquer it. This made it easier for Benito Mussolini, dictator of Italy, to sign the Steel Pact with Hitler., and thus both dictators agree to declare and invade France, in addition to its ally, Great Britain.

Although France fell, Great Britain was able to stand, despite the constant German bombing of London. Still, Hitler saw that he could hardly invade the British Isles for the time being, opting to postpone his plans.

So the Germans chose to change direction, directing their invasions towards Eastern Europe. At the beginning of 1941 they would invade Yugoslavia and Greece, as a preparation to attack Hitler's great objective: the Soviet Union. Japan joined the war, attacking the main US base in the Pacific, Pearl Harbor, at the end of 1941., in Hawaii.

This attack was the trigger for the United States not only to decide to counterattack against the country of the rising sun, but also made them fully enter the world war.

This is how the two sides of the conflict are formed, being Germany, Italy and Japan they would unite forming the Axis, while its victims, France, Great Britain and the United States, together with other countries, would form the side ally.

In 1943 the German attacks on Soviet soil ended because of their heavy casualties, the approach of winter and the lack of supplies. That same year, in July, the allies managed to invade Italy and Mussolini's government would fall.

On June 6, 1944, known as D-Day, the Allies landed in Normandy., France, to initiate a massive invasion in Europe, introducing 156,000 Canadian, American and British soldiers into the old continent.

Hitler focused all of his forces on Western Europe, which caused him to lose all of his influence on all territory stolen from the Soviets and other Eastern European nations. Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Romania would be 'liberated' by the Soviets.

Between December 1944 and January 1945, Hitler managed to expel Germany's allies in the Battle of the Bulge, but this victory, which would be the last for the Nazis, was nothing more than a mirage. Soon the regime would fall.

In February 1945, after Germany was bombed by the allies, the German country would see how its strength was fading. On April 30 of that same year, Hitler, seeing his great defeat, would end his life along with his beloved, Eva Braun. The final surrender would arrive on May 8, after seeing how all of Germany was invaded by the Soviet Union.

2. The fall of the Berlin Wall

On August 13, 1961, the communist government of the German Democratic Republic, also called East Germany, began building a wall with barbed wire and concrete between the east and west of Berlin.

At that time Germany was not a single country, there were two, and Berlin was divided into four secotres: American, French, British and Soviet. The first three sectors belonged to West Germany, but were within East Germany.

The objective for which East Germany decided to put up this wall was to prevent the citizens of the capitalist Berlin to get out of it and destroy the socialist state that was the Democratic Republic German.

However, the direction of the migration was not as they feared it would be. Those who fled from one Berlin to another were those who lived in the communist part, given the poverty and underdevelopment that Germany experienced as a puppet of the Soviet Union.

About 5,000 East Germans, including 600 border guards, managed to cross the border. There is a record of 171 people dying passing the fenceBut surely there were many more.

The methods to cross the wall were of the most varied: through sewers, with hot air balloons, risking life passing through mined terrain...

The wall stood until November 9, 1989, when in an interview, the head of the East German Communist Party, he announced that, given the calm that the cold war had acquired at that moment, it was possible to cross the wall whenever one wanted.

Far from this statement being interpreted as an exaggerated comment or taken out of context, thousands of citizens from both sides of the wall went with their hammers to destroy each of the bricks in the wall, no guards preventing it.

The two Germanys did not unite immediately, but little was left for both republics to formalize their reunification, creating the current Germany and transforming it into the great power of Europe.

3. Conquests of Alexander the Great

Alexander the Great has been one of the greatest conquerors in history. He was born in what is now South Macedonia, Greece, in 356 B.C. c. and he became one of the great military strategists, creating a vast empire in Europe, Asia and Africa.

As the son of King Philip II of Macedonia, from a very young age he had to learn military arts. to be able to carry out his task as the future king. He was lucky enough to be educated by one of the great minds of Greece: Aristotle.

In the year 336 a. c. Alexander became the king of Macedonia and began one of his great conquests., attacking the Persian Empire, with an army of 40,000 soldiers.

Later, already being known as Alexander the Great, he would manage to unify the Hellenic peoples into a single nation, and would invade as far away as Egypt, the Near East, and Central Asia, as far as the India.

His great conquests could only be compared several centuries later with that of another great strategist, the Mongolian Genghis Khan.

4. Conquest of Mexico

Hernán Cortés, Spanish conquistador, first touched the lands of present-day Mexico in 1519 and, just two years later, he would gain complete control of the region, incorporating it into the Spanish Empire.

The first thing he conquered were the territories of the Yucatan peninsula and, once it had been his power consolidated, the Spanish dared to go further, attacking the Aztecs in their capital, Tenochtitlan.

The contact was not confrontational at first, there were even acts of diplomacy. King Moctezuma of the Aztecs came to invite Cortés to sleep in one of his most important palaces as an act of kindness and interest in curious foreigners.

But the Spanish were not going there to make allies. They went there to conquer, and either because they faced the Aztecs or because they managed to capture Moctezuma, tension arose between the colonizers and the indigenous people.

After several months of fighting, Moctezuma was finally assassinated, and his corpse was thrown into the river.. This obviously did not sit well with the Aztecs, who were enraged and managed to drive out the Spanish invaders in 1520. But this did not end here.

Only a month after this victory for the Aztecs, the Spanish returned and carried out an even more important siege, with which they managed to suffocate the supply of the Empire. Because of this, starving, the Aztecs finally surrendered.

It is at this time that the Viceroyalty of New Spain begins., the definitive installation of the Spanish in the largest viceroyalty of the empire and the emergence of the current Mexican culture, which combines the Aztec with the European imports of the ibericos

5. Magellan-Elcano Expedition

The first circumnavigation of the world began on November 15, 1519., and its main protagonists were the Portuguese Fernando de Magallanes and the Spanish Juan Sebastián Elcano. Leaving from Sanlúcar de Barrameda and bound for the Moluccas Islands, in Indonesia, they set sail with about 250 men. Very few of them would make it back, only 18.

Magellan believed he had discovered the fastest way to reach Indonesia, as well as definitively demonstrating that the earth was round. The king of his country did not support him, so he he went to ask for help from the king of Spain at the time, Carlos V, who accepted.

Despite the good will and desire, it only took two months after setting sail for the first complications to appear. Magellan had miscalculated the coordinates and it was not possible to get the correct route. In addition, the morale of his men was not very high, there being mutinies every two by three and being the shortage of food, something that does not help on the high seas.

However, they managed to go very far, but unfortunately misfortunes came. Just when they thought they weren't going to see land, they managed to find the Philippine Islands., where they tried to conquer the inhabitants. But the shot backfired on them, being in this place the last one that Magellan would see, since he was murdered by its inhabitants.

So Elcano took command, who managed to reach the Moluccas islands. The two ships loaded their holds with products from the islands and decided to return by two routes: one did so through the Pacific, being captured by the Portuguese, the other did so through the Indian Ocean.

However, later, the one that had evaded the Portuguese was forced to go to territory belonging to Portugal, given the conditions of the ship. There they were captured, but 18 navigators managed to escape.

On September 6, 1522, the ship commanded by Elcano arrived in Spain., thus closing the first circumnavigation of the world and allowing Europe to know how big the globe was, as well as demystifying the existence of mythological creatures that lived on it.

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6. Start and dissolution of Austria-Hungary

In 1867, after the defeat of Austria in the Seven Weeks War of 1866, in which it lost to Prussia and Italy, the Hungarians, who had been subdued by the Austrians, began to revolt, seeing that Austria was not the power that it was.

The Austrian emperor, Franz Joseph I, had no choice but to agree to give the Hungarians some autonomy and, thus, In 1867 the Compromise was reached, also known as 'Ausgleich', a pact in which the empire was divided into two parts. The part to the west of the Leitha River would be part of the Kingdom of Austria, while the east would be the Kingdom of Hungary..

Both parties would have their own government and parliament, with broad autonomy, but having the same monarch, who would be emperor in Austria and king in Hungary, plus a few ministries in common.

It was agreed that the union agreement of the Austro-Hungarian Empire would be reviewed every ten years, and renewed if both parties consider it appropriate.

However, within the union there were not only Austrians and Hungarians. The Czechs, the Croats, the Serbs and other peoples had been incorporated into one of the two halves of the empire, without asking them what they thought or if they wanted their own autonomy.

For this reason, and in anticipation of tensions that could weaken both parties, in 1868 another agreement was reached in which some autonomy was granted to Croatia.

The Empire came to last more than forty years. In 1908 Bosnia and Herzegovina was annexed, causing its rivalry with Russia and nearby countries to grow, especially with Serbia, who wanted to annex that same territory.

This also made the rest of the European territories turn against the Empire, its only ally being Germany. But the beginning of the end came a few years later. In 1914, in the city of Sarajevo, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Countess Sofía Chotek, are assassinated. while visiting Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, who was behind the assassination, and with this event came the start of a series of power alliances at the European level that would end up materializing in the First World War World.

The triple alliance, which until then was made up of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy, was broken because Italy decided to go over to the opposite side. This made the Empire even more dependent on Germany. It allied with other empires, including Türkiye, as well as Bulgaria.

In 1916 Emperor Franz José I died, succeeded by his great-nephew Carlos I. His management did not give good results, preventing the empire from reaching peace and depending, even more, on its neighbor Germany., once an enemy under the name of Prussia.

Military defeat was on the horizon, and soon the union would break apart. Croatia would proclaim independence, doing the same with Slovenia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, forming the Republic of Macedonia and the Kingdoms of Serbia and Montenegro.

Subsequently, a great union would emerge as a product of those newly independent peoples: the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, which in 1929 would be renamed the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Bohemia would become independent, renamed the Czech Republic and, uniting with Slovakia, they would form another great union: the Republic of Czechoslovakia. This territory managed to keep the Sudetenland, a region of German culture.

Italy would get the Dalmatian coast, the maritime part of the Balkans when the Empire still existed. Romania and Poland would also share an important booty after the fall of Austria-Hungary.

Austria declared independence and became a republic and considered joining Germany as one nation. However, the Allies, who had won the World War, prevented this with the Treaty of Saint Germain en Laye in 1919.

In that treaty, in addition to the Peace of Versailles, the union between Germany and Austria was prohibited, as well as any name change that inspired a Germanic motivation in Austria.

Hungary also became independent and a republic, but was later occupied by communist forces, making it a puppet state of the Soviet Union.

The kingdom of Hungary was proclaimed again, but without a king. Carlos I tried twice to occupy the throne, but was unsuccessful. Miklos Horthy became the regent of the country until the end of World War II.

These events were especially traumatic for Austria, given that it went from being a great power, which came to occupy almost half of Europe, to being a weak country that, a few years later, would be invaded by Germany.

7. Bolivar's fall

In 1826, when the congress of the Isthmus of Panama was convened, the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata were disappointed by the fact that Simón Bolívar refused to take part in the war against Brazil. To make matters worse, Venezuela was making its first secessionist attempts, in which Bolívar himself was involved.

The constitution of the recently created Republic of Bolivia proved not to be adequate to the reality of the new nation, being finally discarded when its first president, Marshal Antonio José de Sucre resigned from said position in 1828.

In 1827 the war broke out between Peru and Gran Colombia, motivated by the occupation of the Peruvian troops in Guayaquil. Guayaquil was finally liberated in 1828, but this demonstrated the tension between Peru and Bolívar.

Bolívar's life was in danger, he being attacked in 1928 and miraculously saving himself. Bolívar abolished the vice presidency, and fell out with General Francisco de Paula Santander, to whom he attributed the assassination attempt..

Bolívar resigned from the presidency in 1830, sick with tuberculosis, leaving Vice President Domingo Caycedo as his manager. Bolívar was aware that he was no longer living in his golden years, preparing for voluntary exile in the City of London.

On his trip he visited several places in America, including the Caribbean and Mexico. In Mexico he accepted Captain Agustín de Iturbide, son of the first Emperor of Mexico, as his protector, which made him experience a tense diplomatic episode.

This captain wanted to reacquire the throne of the Mexican nation, therefore, when he was deposed from his position, he ended up being shot by his compatriots. Besides, Mexico focused on Bolívar, who considered that he had helped him in his attempt to return to reign. Venezuela officially became independent, Vice President Caycedo fell when General Rafael Urdaneta managed to depose him from his position, and Bolívar received the letters with tension from the foreign.

Still traveling, arriving in Cartagena de las Indias, Governor General Mariano Montilla urged him to accept power again, but this time as monarch instead of president, of the nation that he himself had built.

Bolívar rejected it, since despite the fact that he wanted to be able to have power over a vast nation, he was a republican. He wanted Latin America to be a great republican federation, not a great monarchical empire.. However, the American continent is too big to be ruled by one man.

Gran Colombia, the nation he had envisioned, collapsed shortly after his death, on December 17, 1830. On January 31, 1831, Gran Colombia formally ceased to exist.

8. The death of Julius Caesar

Julius Caesar did not want to be a great emperor, and in fact, he was not, despite what many believe. There is no doubt that he was a great leader, who emulated the power of Alexander the Great himself.

However, the idea of ​​becoming the king of all the Romans was succulent. Having as a potential wife Cleopatra herself, whom he had acknowledged having a son, the idea of ​​ruling Egypt and Rome as kings was in the air. The possibility of making Alexandria the new capital of the empire was even considered, making Rome a simple provincial capital.

These ideas did not sit well with the Romans, and it was then that the plan to end Julius Caesar began to be orchestrated. 60 men, among whom were friends of Caesar himself, planned the plot.

Casio and Gross had fought against Caesar in Farsalia, but after the defeat they reconciled with him, who was benevolent. Caesar had been like a father to Brutus, in fact there are those who say that he could have been his true progenitor.

The conspiracy was agreed to be carried out in the senate session on the ides of March, the 15th of that month of 44 a. c. César, despite the fact that one of his seers warned him that that day he was bad enough to go to the Senate, he ignored him and went to meet the magistrates there.

He had barely sat up when he felt the cold blade of the first dagger. There were several daggers, but the best known is that of Brutus, to whom Caesar said, surprised, the fateful phrase to see that his adoptive son was a participant in his final: You too, my son? Twenty-three stab wounds were those that ended the life of the greatest of the Roman leaders from the classical period.

The participants in the conspiracy were convinced that, sooner or later, Rome would once again be a splendid Republic, but nothing could be further from the truth. The country was in water and the republican administration was on its last legs.

9. Christopher Columbus

Although little is known of the childhood of Christopher Columbus, and not even today it is known where he was actually born, It is known that his parents taught him the trade of weaving, but since he was little he wanted to be a sailor.

From a very young age he was part of expeditions and his desire to learn about other cultures made him acquire linguistic skills, being able to understand Ptolemy's Greek. Thanks to several Greek writings that he had the opportunity to read, he began to have a reflective and well-documented capacity, which led him to agree with the idea that the Earth was round.

In 1453 the Ottomans began the end of the Byzantine Empire, conquering the city of Constantinople, which had been a fundamental point of trade for Europeans and Arabs to India.

Since the Christians could no longer go through there, because the Turks prevented them, they were forced to opt for other routes to go to Asia, the West being the only maritime option.

Portugal took the first step, laying out a wide sea lane to circle Africa and reach India, China and the furthest part of Asia.

It was then that Columbus, convinced that there must be a more direct route to India, went to speak with the king of Portugal, Juan II, to pay for the trips in that direction, but the monarch denied.

So, as a second option, Columbus went to the Spanish Crown, made up of the kingdoms of Aragon and Castilla, to see if they would give him support.. After a few failed attempts, the Catholic kings, Isabel and Fernando gave it the go-ahead. Thus, in 1492, Christopher Columbus would leave the Port of Palos with three ships: the Pinta, the Niña and the Santa María.

On their journey they believed that they would reach India and, in fact, they always believed that this was the case, but they really discovered a new continent for the Europeans, which would later be named America.

All land trodden by Columbus in which no sovereign was seen was claimed for the Crown of Castile, thus beginning the beginning of what would later be the great Spanish Empire.

But the discovery of new land would not be an all-good thing. Columbus, just as he was a great navigator, was a great abuser. Every indigenous population she came across enslaved her in a very unchristian way. In fact, the kings of Spain themselves were forced to imprison Christopher Columbus several years later when they found out about this.

Despite the fact that Isabel and Fernando were not known for being pious, especially with Muslims and Jews, they gave the explicit order that no inhabitant of the new territories be mistreated.

10. Reform

The reform, which occurred between the years 1517 and 1648, It was one of the great events in European history.. Prior to this event, the Roman Church had complete control over the people and governments of Christendom.

Many people, who possessed knowledge and a critical sense, saw that the Church did not behave as he said that all good believers should behave, being a corrupt organization to the point of foundations.

The objective of the reform was to get the Church to return to its roots, however, this did not mean more than a split between two main Catholic sects: the Catholics and the Protestants.

The Protestants brought the biblical texts into the hands of the believers, making them understand what exactly the Bible said. word of God, instead of relying on the interpretations of priests who barely understood the complicated Latin biblical.

The schism turned into a bloody religious war. Many Protestants fled to the newly discovered American continent, as well as renaissance people who fled anti-scientific persecution by the Catholic Church.

It is thanks to these events that in Europe today we enjoy extensive freedom of religion, especially in the Germanic countries, where everyone's vision of faith is better accepted and tolerated as a intimate aspect.

11. First World War

World War I, also known as the “Great War” It was the first major international conflict that struck the old European continent between 1914 and 1918, mobilizing more than 70 million soldiers and causing more than 16 million human losses.

This war had as its main motivations the imperialist interests of the European powers of the time, who had formed military alliances some years before. strategic: On the one hand, the Triple Entente (formed by the United Kingdom, France, and the Russian Empire) and the Triple Alliance (formed by the German Empire, Austria-Hungary, and Italy).

On July 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife are assassinated by a Serbian nationalist named Gavrilo Princip in Bosnia, fact by which Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, triggering a declaration of war by Russia on the central Austrian and German.

Once the conflict broke out in the heart of the Austro-Hungarian empire between Serbia and Austria, all the European powers belonging to the two great alliances entered into war between them and a war is unleashed in which new technologies never seen before were used and in which rearguard propaganda played a very important role. important.

In this way several war fronts were created throughout the continent. Among the main ones were the eastern front, where Germany and Russia were fighting, the western one between Germany and France, and in the south a new addition, the Ottoman Empire, which fought alongside the Central Powers (Austria and Germany) against the United Kingdom and Russia.

Some of the most important battles of the conflict were the Battle of the Marne (1914), which led to victory for France and the United Kingdom against Germany; the Battle of Verdun (1916), which resulted in the French victory over Germany and the Battle of Somme (1916), one of the bloodiest, which ended with a decisive victory for the Entente over Germany.

The First World War is remembered as the first modern war, that is to say, in which weapons of massive range were used. In addition to that, both for its number of deaths and the large percentage of destruction it left throughout Europe, it is considered the second deadliest conflict in the history of humanity.

12. Discovery of America

On October 12, 1492, one of the most important events in human history took place: the discovery of a New World by the Crown of Castile, a fact that would mean the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Modern Age.

This discovery would forever change the medieval conception of the earth, according to which there was no land beyond the continents. known (Europe, Asia and Africa) and would initiate the first encounter between two civilizations that evolved independently of one other.

The Castilian expedition that arrived for the first time on the American continent had left Puerto de Palos (Huelva) on August 3, 1492, in three armed caravels (Pinta, Niña and Santa María) and a delegation of 90 men that was led by the Genoese navigator Cristóbal Colon.

Columbus's initial intention was to find a new maritime and commercial route to the west, crossing the Ocean. Atlantic to the East Indies and Japan, rather than the classic easterly route through Europe and Asia central.

The Catholic Monarchs of Spain, headed by Isabel de Castilla, decided to finance Columbus's first voyage and sign with him a series of perks that they conferred noble titles of great importance and 10% of all the wealth they could find, these were the so-called Capitulations of Santa Faith.

After a long and eventful voyage across the Atlantic, in which there were even attempts at mutiny by the crew, Columbus arrived with his expedition to the Guanahaní island, a small island located in the Antilles, current archipelago from Bahamas.

After succeeding in his first trip and beginning the conquest of America by the Spanish crown, Columbus made 3 more trips to the south coast of the new continent, where he would find various peoples, landscapes and wonders never seen before by any European.

The discovery of America brought the Spanish crown and other European powers that began the conquest on their own great economic benefits, which translated into centuries of subjugation, slavery and plunder for the Native American population.