All articles A–Z
519,064 articles
History of life
History of life: the ~3.7-billion-year record of life on Earth, from 3.7 Ga carbon traces and stromatolites, through the Great Oxidation Event, Ediacaran biota, and Cambrian explosion, dated by fossils and molecular clocks.
History of Linux
The history of Linux, also called Linux history, covers the free Unix-like kernel started by Linus Torvalds in 1991 and combined with GNU into complete operating systems.
History of lions in Europe
History of lions in Europe: Pleistocene cave lion (Panthera spelaea, also Panthera leo spelaea) and Holocene modern lion (Panthera leo); cave lion extinction ~14 kya, Holocene lions in the Balkans until ~2,000 years ago, Roman arena trade, medieval symbolism.
History of literature
History of literature: the development of oral and written literary works worldwide, from Latin littera and Enheduanna's hymns to canon formation and the 2022 four-volume Literature: A World History, the first comprehensive English-language global literary history.
History of Lithuania
History of Lithuania: Baltic state first recorded in 1009, Grand Duchy of Lithuania under Mindaugas (crowned 1253) and Vytautas, Union of Lublin 1569, independence 1918, Soviet and Nazi occupations, Holocaust killing about 90% of Jews, and restored independence on 11 March 1990.
History of Liverpool
History of Liverpool: northwest English port city on the Mersey, major Atlantic slave-trading port (1750–1807), 'Second City of the Empire', pioneer of docks and railways, UNESCO-listed 2004 and delisted 2021.
History of logic
The history of logic traces the study of valid reasoning from ancient Greece, India, and China, through its medieval peak, to Frege and modern formal logic.
History of London
History of London: 2,000 years from Roman Londinium (founded c. 47–50 CE, walled c. 200 CE, abandoned by 450) through Saxon Lundenwic, medieval and Tudor growth, industrial expansion, and the Blitz to modern Greater London.
History of Los Angeles
History of Los Angeles: Tongva and Chumash land, Spanish pueblo founded 1781, Mexican era to 1848, then American growth driven by oil, the 1913 Owens Valley Aqueduct, and car-oriented sprawl.
History of Luxembourg
History of Luxembourg: from Siegfried's 963 Bock castle, through the medieval county and duchy, the 1815 Grand Duchy, 1839 borders, 1867 neutrality, two world wars, to founding EU and NATO membership.
History of Macau
History of Macau, Macao (澳門): Portuguese settlement founded 1557 under the Ming, treaty of 1887, de facto Chinese control after the 1966 riots, handover to China 20 December 1999, and the post-2002 casino boom.
History of macroeconomic thought
The history of macroeconomic thought traces how economists came to model the economy as a whole, from pre-1940 monetary and business-cycle theory to today's DSGE models.
History of Madagascar
The history of Madagascar, or Malagasy history, covers the island's contested settlement, its kingdoms, French colonial rule from 1896, the 1947 uprising, and independence in 1960.
History of magazine publishing
The history of magazine publishing covers the form's rise from 17th-century European periodicals and the 1731 Gentleman's Magazine to a US circulation peak of 378.9 million copies in 2000.
History of Maharashtra
History of Maharashtra, the Marathi-speaking western Indian region: Deccan Chalcolithic cultures, Shivaji's Maratha state (1630-1680), British Bombay Presidency, and statehood on 1 May 1960.
History of maize
The history of maize traces its single domestication from wild teosinte in Mexico's Balsas River valley about 9,000 years ago, its spread through the Americas, and its global rise after 1492.
History of malaria
History of malaria: ancient fevers described by Hippocrates and Celsus; cinchona bark and 1820 quinine isolation; Laveran's 1880 parasite and Ross's 1897 mosquito discovery; DDT, the 1955 eradication campaign, and today's 263 million annual cases.
History of Malawi
History of Malawi: from Bantu settlement and the Maravi empire, through British rule as Nyasaland (1891–1964), independence under Hastings Banda on 6 July 1964, one-party rule, and the 1994 multiparty transition to recent elections.
History of Malaysia
History of Malaysia: from the Malacca Sultanate (c. 1400 CE) through British rule, Japanese occupation, Malayan independence (1957), formation of Malaysia (16 September 1963), Konfrontasi, Singapore's 1965 separation, and the New Economic Policy era.
History of Mali
History of Mali: the West African territory of the Ghana, Mali, and Songhai empires, later French Soudan, independent as the Republic of Mali on September 22, 1960, and beset by jihadist conflict and military rule since 2012.
History of Malta
History of Malta: the central Mediterranean archipelago (Malta, Gozo, Comino), settled by Neolithic farmers around 5900 BC and famed for its unique megalithic temples, later ruled by Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Normans, the Knights of St John, the French, and the British until independence on 21 September 1964, Republic in 1974, and EU accession in 2004.
History of marketing
The history of marketing traces how firms identified customers, distributed goods, and communicated with buyers, from early national markets through the first university courses in 1902 to AI-driven practice.
History of marriage
The history of marriage covers a human universal from the first recorded wedding rites in Mesopotamia around 2350 B.C., through church and state control, to same-sex marriage.
History of masturbation
History of masturbation: from classical good-humored disdain through the Onania (c.1712–1716) and Tissot (1760) anti-masturbation panic, the nineteenth-century medical crusade, and the twentieth-century reversal to today's health consensus.
History of mathematics
The history of mathematics is the record of how counting, measurement, calculation, and proof developed, from prehistoric notched bones through Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, India, China, the Islamic world, and Europe to the modern era.
History of matroid theory
The history of matroid theory covers its founding in Hassler Whitney's 1935 paper, its slow early reception, Tutte's 1958 excluded-minor theorems, and its 1960s revival in optimization.
History of Mauritius
History of Mauritius: Indian Ocean island uninhabited until 1638 Dutch settlement, then French Île de France, British rule 1810–1968, independence 12 March 1968, republic 1992.
History of Maxwell's equations
The history of Maxwell's equations traces how James Clerk Maxwell assembled twenty equations of electricity and magnetism between 1855 and 1873, which Oliver Heaviside condensed into the four taught today.
History of McDonald's
History of McDonald's: founded 1940 in San Bernardino by Richard and Maurice McDonald, franchised and expanded by Ray Kroc from 1955, bought out in 1961 for $2.7 million; now over 40,000 restaurants in 120+ countries serving about 70 million meals daily.
History of measurement
The history of measurement traces units of length, mass, volume, and time from ancient body-based standards like the Egyptian cubit through the 1791 metric system to the SI, fully defined by constants of nature in 2019.