A look at history, taken primarily from primary sources.

Plague in Athens, 430 BC / Thucydides -- The Greeks march to the sea, 401 BC / Xenophon -- The death of Socrates, 399 BC / Plato -- Caesar invades Britain, 55 BC / Julius Caesar -- Rome burns, AD 64 / Tacitus -- The siege of Jerusalem, AD 70 / Josephus -- The eruption of Vesuvius, 24 August, AD 79 / Pliny the Younger -- The deification of the Emperor Septimius Severus, AD 211 / Herodian -- Dinner with Attila the Hun, c. AD 450 / Priscus -- A Viking funeral, AD 922 / Ibn Fadlan -- The green children, c. 1150 / William of Newburgh -- The murder of Thomas Becket, 29 December 1170 / Edward Grim -- Richard I massacres prisoners after taking Acre, 2-10 August 1191 / Behâ-ed-Din -- Kublai Khan's park, c. 1275 / Marco Polo -- Mishaps in childhood, 1301-37 / Calendar of coroner's rolls -- The battle of Crécy, 26 September 1346 / Sir John Froissart -- The Black Death, 1348 / Henry Knighton -- Women ape men, 1348 / Henry Knighton -- The capture of Guines, January 1352 / Geoffrey le Baker of Swinbrook -- False mutes, October 1380 / City of London letter-books -- The Peasants' Revolt, May-June 1381 / Sir John Froissart -- The battle of Agincourt, 25 October 1415 / Jehan de Wavrin -- Norwegian fisherfolk, 1432 / Cristoforo Fioravanti -- The New World, January-February 1502 / Amerigo Vespucci -- A salamander, 1505 / Benvenuto Cellini -- Spanish atrocities in the West Indies, c. 1513-20 / Bartolomé de Las Casas -- The performing ass, Cairo, 1516 / John Leo -- Human sacrifice among the Aztecs, c. 1520 / José de Acosta -- The Inca's golden garden, c. 1530 / Garcilaso de la Vega -- The progress of the English Reformation, 1537-38 / John London ... [et al.] -- With the Spaniards in Paraguay, 1537-40 / Hulderike Schnirdel -- The execution of Archbishop Cranmer, 21 March 1556 / Anon. -- Prisoners of the Inquisition, 1568-75 / Miles Phillips -- The sack of Antwerp by a Spanish Army, 4 November 1576 / George Gascoigne -- The arrest of the Catholic priest Edmund Campion and his associates, 17 july 1581 / Anon. -- Some London criminals, 1581 / William Fleetwood -- Babylon in 1583 / John Eldred -- Natural childbirth in India, 1583 / John Huyghen van Linschoten -- Shipwreck off Mozambique, August 1585 / John Huyghen van Linschoten -- A London merchant in Cairo, 1586 / John Sanderson -- The execution of Mary Queen of Scots, 8 February 1586 / Robert Wynkfielde -- The seasons of Russia, 1589 / Giles Fletcher -- The last fight of the Revenge, 13 September 1591 / John Huyghen van Linschoten -- Trapped in the Arctic ice, 1596 / Gerrit de Veer -- A Jesuit is tortured in the Tower, 14-15 April 1597 / John Gerard -- A private audience with Elizabeth I, 8 December 1597 / André Hurault -- English merchants in Java, c. 1602 / Edmund Scot -- The effects of Elizabethan policy in Ireland, 1602 / Fynes Moryson -- Newfoundland mermaid, 1610 / Richard Whitbourne -- Whirling Dervishes, 1613 / Thomas Coryate -- The magnificence of the Great Mogul, 1616-17 / Sir Thomas Roe -- The Great Mogul : his cruelty, 1618 / Edward Terry -- The murder of the Duke of Buckingham, 23 August 1628 / Sir Dudley Carleton -- Landing in New England, November 1620 / William Bradford -- Oliver Cromwell writes to his brother-in-law after the battle of Marston Moor, 2 July 1644 / Oliver Cromwell -- Circumcision : Rome, 16 January 1645 / John Evelyn -- Suttee, c. 1650 / Jean-Baptiste Tavernier -- George Fox visits Litchfield, 1651 / George Fox -- Religious observances in Dunkirk, 1662 / John Greenhalgh -- The fire of London, 2 September 1666 / Samuel Pepys -- The Great Frost, January 1684 / John Evelyn -- The English love of fighting, 1695 / Mission de Valbourg -- Conditions of life aboard the French galleys, 1703-4 / John Bion -- The battle of Schallenberg, 2 July 1704 / M. de la Colonie -- Robinson Crusoe found, 2 February 1709 / Woodes Rogers -- Bull-baiting : London, 1710 / Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach -- Turkish bath : Adrainople, 1 April 1717 / Lady Mary Wortley Montagu -- Albatross shot, 1 October 1719 / George Shelvocke -- Solar eclipse, 10 May 1724 / William Stukeley -- Pantomimes and gladiators, February 1728 / César de Saussure -- The Princess of Wales is delivered of a daughter, 31 July 1737 / Lord Hervey -- Crossing the Alps, November 1739 / Thomas Gray -- Scurvy, 1741 / Richard Walker -- John Wesley preaches in Hull, 24 April 1752 / John Wesley -- Kitten overboard, 11 July 1754 / Henry Fielding -- The Black Hole of Calcutta, 21 June 1756 / J.Z. Holwell -- The burial of George II, 13 November 1760 / Horace Walpole -- The King of Ethiopia expresses displeasure, 13 December 1770 / James Bruce -- Dr. Johnson's playfulness, 10 May 1773 / James Boswell -- Christmas Day at New College, Oxford, 1773 / James Woodforde -- Garrick plays Hamlet, September 1775 / Georg Christoph Lichtenberg -- The Gordon riots, 8 June 1780 / George Crabbe -- Ranelagh, 12 June 1782 / Carl Philipp Moritz -- Midshipman Gardner (aged 12) in action against the French, 20 October 1781 / James Anthony Gardner -- The first manned flight in England, 15 September 1784 / Vincent Lunardi -- Louis XVI and tyhe French Royal Family, prisoners at the Tuileries, 4 January 1790 / Arthur Young -- Chateaubriand lands in the New World; Chesapeake Bay, 1791 / François-René de Chateaubriand -- Marie-Antoinette at the opera, July 1792 / Grace Elliott -- A trip to Paris, July-August 1792 / Richard Twiss -- The execution of Louis XVI / Henry Essex Edgeworth de Firmont -- The Revolutional Tribunal, Paris, October 1793 / J.G. Millingen -- Nelson loses an arm, Santa Cruz, tenerife, 25 June 1797 / William Hoste -- The battle of the Nile, 1 August 1798 / John Nichol -- Beggars, a leech gatherer, and daffodils : the Wordsworths at Grasmere, 1800-1802 / Dorothy Wordsworth -- Nelson turns a blind eye, Copenhagen, 2 APril 1801 / William Stewart -- Childsplay in the Lake District, 27 September 1802 / Samuel Taylor Coleridge -- The morning of Trafalgar, 10 a.m. / Midshipman Badcock -- Trafalgar : Nelson sends the signal "England expects that every man this day will do his duty" : noon, 21 Octoner 1805 / George Brown -- Trafalgar : reception of the signal, 21 October 1805 / Lieutenant Ellis -- The death of Lord Nelson, 21 October 1805 / William Beatty -- Seeing the Elgin Marbles for the first time, Summer 1808 / B.R. Haydon -- After the battle of Roliça, 17 August 1808 / Rifleman Harris -- The British retreat to Corunna, 1-4 January 1809 / Robert Blakeney -- Taken prisoner at Corunna, 16 January 1809 / Sir Charles Napier -- A mastectomy, 30 September 1811 / Fany Burney -- Napoleon enters Moscow, 14 September 1812 / Baron Claude-François de Méneval -- Death of a climbing boy, 29 March 1813 / Anon. -- Wounded at Nivelle, 10 November 1813 / Robert Blakeney -- Execution by impalement : Latakia, 1813 / Charles Lewis Meryon -- The retreat before Waterloo, 17 June 1815 / W.B. Ingilby -- Waterloo, 18 June 1815 : dawn with the 7th Hussars / Edward Cotton -- Waterloo, 18 June 1815 : charge of the Scots Greys and 92nd Highlanders, 2-3 p.m. / R. Winchester -- Waterloo, 18 June 1815 : the Royal Horse Artillery repulse enemy cavalry, late afternoon / A.C. Mercer -- Waterloo, 18 June 1815 : Napoleon's last throw--charge of the Imperial Guard, 7 p.m. / H.W. Powell -- Waterloo, 18 June 1815 : the finale / J. Kincaid -- Embalming a patriarch, November 1815 / Charles Lewis Meryon -- Factory conditions, c. 1815 / Elizabeth Bentley -- Prison visiting, 4 March 1817 / Elizabeth Fry -- Peterloo, 4 March 1817 / Samuel Bamford -- Cremation of the poet Shelley, near leghorn, 15 August 1822 / Edward John Trelawny -- Exit George IV, 1830 / Mrs. Arbuthnot -- The opening of the Liverpool to Manchester railway, 15 September 1830 / Frances Ann Kemble -- Cholera in Manchester, 1832 / Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth -- Birds in the Galapagos Archipelago, September 1835 / Charles Darwin -- The coronation of Queen Victoria, 29 June 1838 / Charles Greville -- London prostitutes, 1839 / Flora Tristan -- Death by guillotine : Rome, 8 March 1845 / Charles Dickens -- American slavery : sale of slaves, Virginia, December 1846 / Elwood Harvey -- American slavery : punishment of a female slave, New Orleans, c. 1846 / Samuel Gridley Howe -- The Irish potato famine : victims of the Great Hunger, Castlehaven, 22 February 1847 / Elihu Burritt -- Flaubert and the dancing girls : Esna, Egypt, 6 March 1850 / Gustave Flaubert -- Inside the Crystal Palace : the great exhibition, 1851 / Charlotte Brontë -- The Farringdon watercress market, 1851 / Henry Mayhew -- Louis Napoleon's troops subdue Paris, 4 December 1851 / Victor Hugo -- Victoria and Albert in the Highlands, 11 October 1852 / Queen Victoria --The Japanese are introduced to Western technology, March 1854 / Matthew C. Perry -- The battle of Balaclava and the charge of the Light Brigade, 25 October 1854 / William Howard Russell -- The Indian Mutiny : scene of the massacre of British women and children at Cawnpore, 21 July 1857 / Anon. -- The Indian Mutiny : retribution for the massacre, July 1857 / General Havelock -- The Indian Mutiny : household arrangements in besieged Lucknow, 1857 / Adelaide Case -- Single combat in the Caucasus, 1858 / Alexandre Dumas -- Explosion on board Brunel's Great Eastern steamship, 12 September 1859 / George Augustus Sala -- The Times correspondent helps Garibaldi liberate Palermo, 27-31 May 1860 / Nandor Eber -- Derby Day, 28 May 1861 / Hippolyte Taine -- The American Civil War : General Grant besieges Vicksburg, May 1863 / Cleveland herald -- Gettysburg : the Confederate bombardment, 3 July 1863 / Samuel Wilkeson -- The Great March : General Sherman lays waste the South, October 1864-February 1865 / George Nichols -- The Great March : Genral Sherman's "Bummers," March 1865 / Elias Smith -- The murder of President Lincoln, 14 Aoril 1865 / Walt Whitman -- Americans abroad, 1867 / Mark Twain -- The suppression of the Paris Commune, 23-24 May 1871 / Archibald Forbes -- The Paris Commune : the finale, 29 May 1871 / Archibald Forbes -- Stanley finds Livingstone, 10 November 1871 / H.M. Stanley -- The Turkish atrocities in Bulgaria, 2 August 1876 / J.A. MacGahan -- An immigrant crosses America, 23 August 1879 / Robert Louis Stevenson -- Paul Gauguin marries : Tahiti, 1892 / Paul Gauguin -- The Graeco-Turkish War : the siege of Prevesa, 18 April 1897 / Richard Harding Davis -- A seaside holiday, Norfolk Coast, August 1897 / W.H. Hudson -- The attack on Atbara, 10 April 1898 / George W. Steevens -- The battle of Omdurman, 2 September 1898 / Winston Churchill -- The Spanish-American War : the battle of El Caney, Cuba, 1 July 1898 / James Creelman -- The battle of El Caney : the aftermath, 2 July 1898 / Stephen Crane -- Jumping a train, 20 March 1899 -- The Boer War : the suffering of the civilian population, Mafeking, April-May 1900 / J.E. Neilly -- Queen Victoria's last journey, 1 Februaru 1901 / Cissy, Countess of Denbigh -- The first radio signal across the Atlantic, 12 December 1901 / Guglielmo Marconi -- A roundabout in Maontmartre, 4 November 1903 / Arnold Bennett -- Bloody Sunday : St. Petersburg, 22 January 1905 / Father Gapon -- The San Francisco earthquake, 17 April 1906 / Jack London -- The first Channel flight, 25 July 1909 / Louis Blériot -- Suffragette Lady Constance Lytton, disguised as a lower-class woman, Jane Warton, is forcibly fed in Walton Gaol, Liverpool, 18 January 1910 / Constance Lytton -- The arrest of Dr. Crippen, 31 July 1910 / H.G. Kendall -- The siege of Sidney Street, 3 January 1911 / Philip Gibbs -- South Polar expedition : Captain Scott's diary, March 1912 / Captain Scott -- The Titanic : a fireman's story, 15 April 1912 / Harry Senior -- The Titanic : the wireless operator's story, 15 April 1912 / Harold Bride -- The Titanic : from a lifeboat, 15 April 1912 / Mrs. D.H. Bishop -- The lemon gardens under cover of winter : Gargnano, Lago di Garda, February 1913 / D.H. Lawrence -- Colombo curry, 11 November 1913 / Anna Buchan -- GBS at his mother's funeral, 22 February 1914 / George Bernard Shaw -- The muder of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo, 28 June 1914 / Borijove Jevtic -- The vulture, July 1914 / Osbert Sitwell -- The German Army marches through Brussels, 21 August 1914 / Richard Harding Davis -- War frenzy in St. Petersburg, August 1914 / Sergyei N. Kurnakov -- Improving morale, 12 September 1914 / E.L. Spears -- A Suffolk farmhand at Gallipoli, june 1915 / Leonard Thompson -- Mobile hospital unit with the Russian Army, Galicia, 2 June 1915 / Hugh Walpole -- With Austrian cavalry on the Eastern Front, August 1915 / Oskar Kokoschka -- Lance-Corporal Baxter wins the DCM, Western Front, September 1915 / Robert Graves -- Gallipoli : the Allied evacuation, 19 December 1915 / Norman King-Wilson -- U-boat 202 attacks, April 1916 / Adolf K.G.E. von Spiegel -- The battle of Jutland : "X" turret, Battlecruiser Queen Mary, 31 May 1916 / Ernest Francis -- The Somme : 21 Casualty Clearing Station, 1-3 July 1916 / John M.S. Walker -- The death of a brother, 15 July 1918 [sic] / Vera Brittain -- The first tanks in action, 15 September 1916 / Bert Chaney -- The end of Zeppelin L31, 1 October 1916 / Michael MacDonagh -- Birds on the Western front, 1916 / H.H. Munro ("Saki") -- Gassed : Messines Ridge, 7 June 1917 / William Pressey -- The battle of Langemarck, 27 August 1917 / Edward Campion Vaughan -- The execution of Mata Hari, 18 October 1917 / Henry G. Wales -- An American journalist at the storming of the Winter Palace, St. Petersburg, 7 November 1917 / John Reed -- Breslau Prison, December 1917 / Rosa Luxemburg -- French cavalry charge, near Amiens, 26 March 1918 / William Pressey -- Tsar Nicholas II and the Russian Imperial Family shot at Ekaterinburg, 16 July 1918 / Pavel Medvedev -- Incident on the advance to Damascus : Lawrence of Arabia destroys a Turkish column, 24 September 1918 / T.E. Lawrence -- Signing the Treaty of Versailles, 28 June 1919 / Harold Nicolson -- Famine in Russia, October 1921 / Philip Gibbs -- The execution of Henri D. ("Bluebeard") Landru, murderer of ten women, 25 February 1922 / Webb Miller -- German inflation, 19 September 1922 / Ernest Hemingway -- British India : civil disobedience, 21 MAy 1930 / Webb Miller -- Hunger marchers, 27 Octiber 1932 / Wal Hannington -- Bodyline bowling, 13-19 January 1933 / W.H. Ferguson -- The Reichstag fire, 27 February 1933 / D. Sefton Delmer -- The burning Ghats, Benares, India, December 1933 / Patrick Balfour -- The arrest of Osip Mandelstam, 13 May 1934 / Nadezhda Mandelstam -- The rattenbury case, May-June 1935 / James Agate -- The Italian campaign in Abyssinia : retreat of the Emperor's army to Korem, 4-5 April 1936 / Colonel Konavaloff -- Abyssinia : an American journalist with the Fascist armoured column approaching Addis Ababa, 18 April 1936 / Herbert Matthews -- The Spanish Civil War : Carlist forces drive back the Basque Frente Popular near Irun, 26 August 1936 / G.L. Steer -- The Spanish Civil War : Guernica destroyed by German planes, 26 April 1937 / Noel Monks -- The Spanish Civil War : wounded by a Fascist sniper, near Huesca, 20 May 1937 / George Orwell -- The Louis Schmeling fifght, 22 June 1938 / Bob Considine -- The Spanish Civil War : Nationlist planes bomb Barcelona, September 1938 / Marcel Junod -- The Second World War : the evacuation of children from London, 1 September 1939 / Hilde Marchant -- Blitzkrieg : German breakthrough on the Meuse, 15 May 1940 / Erwin Rommel -- Dunkirk : the beaches, 1 June 1940 / John Charles Austin -- Dogfight over the Channel, 3 September 1940 / Richard Hillary -- London Docks bombed, 7 September 1940 / Desmonf Flower -- The Blitaz : Chelsea, 14 September 1940 / Frances Faviell -- Spoil in North Africa : Italian defeat at Nibeiwa, 12 December 1940 / Alan Moorehead -- Bomb disposal : Llandaff, January 1941 / John Miller -- German airborne invasion of Crete, 20 May 1941 / Baron van der Heydte -- Syria : British forces meet resistance from Vichy French, June 1941 / Alan Moorehead -- Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941 / John Garcia -- The Japanese bomb Manila, 8 December 1941 / Carlos P. Romulo -- Japanese air and submarine attack sinks HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse, Singapore, 10 December 1941 / Cecil Brown -- Auschwitz : the gas chambers, 25 December 1941 / Sophia Litwinska -- Dacahu : the medical experiments, 1941-5 / Franz Blaha -- The fall of Kuala Lumpur : the city awaits the japanese, 11 January 1942 / Ian Morrison -- The sinking of the Tanjong penang, 19 February 1942 / Anon. -- Leningrad : during the blockade, April-July 1942 / A. Fadeyev -- Five fatal minutes : Japanese carriers cripples, battle of Midway, 4 June 1942 / Mitsuo Fuchida -- Dieppe Raid, 19 August, 1942 / Ross Munro -- Nazi extermination of the Jews in the Ukraine, October 1942 / Hermann Graebe -- El Alamein : the end of the Africa Corps [sic] [Afrika Korps], 4 November 1942 / General Bayerlein -- An English poet in the Western Desert, December 1942 / Keith Douglas -- Stalingrad : December 1942 / Benno Zieser -- Stalingrad : a war correspondent goes in after the German capitulation, 4 February 1943 / Alexander Werth -- German route in the Korsun Salient, central Ukraine, 17 February 1943 / Major Kampov -- The execution of an Allied intelligence officer by the Japanese, New Guinea, 29 March 1943 / Anon. -- Luftwaffe pilot : Tunisia, 7 April 1943 / Alan Moorehead -- Hamburg, 27 July 1943 / Else Wendel -- US Marines land on tarawa, 20 November 1943 /. Robert Sherrod -- A birthday : Japanese Prison Camp, Kuching, Borneo, 5 April 1944 / Agnes Newton Keith -- Cassino : the final attack; 2nd Battalion Lancashire Fusaliers advance, 16 may 1944 / Fred Majdalany -- D-Day minus one : US paratroopers leave fro France, June 5, 1944 / Matthew B. Ridgeway -- D-Day, June 6, 1944 / Anon. -- The Germans meet a new foe, 7 June 1944 / Anon. -- D-Day plus one : a British paratroop seeks directions, 7 June 1944 / James G. Bramwell -- Buzz bombs : an eight-year-old's recollections, June 1944 / Lionel King -- The Russian summer offensive, July 1944 / Alexander Werth -- The bombing of Caen, 7 July 1944 / Desmond Flower -- The Nazi extermination camp, Maidanek, 23 July 1944 / Alexander Werth -- American break-out in Normandy, 24-25 July 1944 / General Bayerlein -- Birkenau Camp, August 1944 / Charles Sigismund Bendel -- The fall of Aachen, 17 October 1944 / George Mucha -- The bomboing of Dresden, 14 February 1945 / Margaret Freyer -- US troops advance into Germany, March 1945 / Lester Atwell -- Italian partisans assist the Allied advance, near Trieste, 13 April 1945 / Geoffrey Cox -- The end of the war for a British POW : Stalag IIID, Berlin, 14-29 April 1945 / Norman Norris -- Lüneburg, 20 April 1945 / Desmond Flower -- Belsen, 24 April 1945 / Patrick Gordon-Walker -- The fall of Berlin, 1 May 1945 / Claus Fuhrmann -- Kamikaze attack, 9 May 1945 / Michael Moynihan -- Nagasaki, 9 August 1945 / William T. Laurence -- Visiting Hiroshima, 9 September 1945 / Marcel Junod -- The execution of Nazi war criminals, 16 October 1946 / Kingsbury Smith -- Revenge killing, Arabia, November 1946 / Wilfred Thesiger -- Grand National, 29 March 1947 / John Hislop -- Stalingrad, 1949 / John Steinbeck -- Trafalgar Square incident, 23 September 1950 / Kingsley Martin -- The Koreab War : civilian casualty near Namchanjan, 17 October 1950 / Reginald Thompson -- The Korean War : the American retreat from the Chongchon River, 27-28 November 1950 / Reginal Thompson -- The Korean War : Padre Blaisdell and the refugee children, Seoul, December 1950 / René Cutforth -- Rabitting, 3 November 1952 / J.R. Ackerly -- The conquest of Everest, 29 May 1953 / James (Jan) Morris -- The intelligent bull, Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Spain, Spring 1957 / Norman Lewis -- Stoning to death, Jeddah, February 1958 / R.M. Macoll -- The Vietnam War : South Vietnamese casualty, 1965 / Gavin Young -- The Vietnam War : a reporter with the Vietcong, near Hanoi, 10 December 1965 / James Cameron -- The Vietnam War : winning hearts and minds, Tuyon, South Vietnam, 23 August 1967 / John Pilger -- The Vietnam War : C Company, US 11th Infantry Brigade pacify My Lai, 16 March 1968 / Time correspondent -- The first men on the moon, 21 July 1969 / Neil Armstrong and Edwin E. Aldrin -- Veteran's march, Washington DC, 25 April 1971 / John Pilger -- "It was the Christians" : the massacre at Chatila, 16-17 September 1982 -- The fall of President Marcos, Manila, Philippines, 24-25 February 1986 / James Fenton.