History of sugarThe history of sugar has five main phases: The extraction of sugar cane juice from the sugarcane plant, and the subsequent domestication of the plant in tropical India and Southeast Asia sometime around 4,000 BC. The invention of manufacture of cane sugar granules from sugarcane juice in India a little over two thousand years ago, followed by improvements in refining the crystal granules in India in the early centuries AD. The spread of cultivation and manufacture of cane sugar to the medieval Islamic world together with some improvements in production methods.
Alaska PurchaseThe Alaska Purchase (Prodazha Alyaski) was the United States' acquisition of Alaska from the Russian Empire. Alaska was formally transferred to the United States on October 18, 1867, through a treaty ratified by the United States Senate. Russia had established a presence in North America during the first half of the 18th century, but few Russians ever settled in Alaska. In the aftermath of the Crimean War, Russian Tsar Alexander II began exploring the possibility of selling Alaska, which, in any future war, would be difficult to defend from being conquered by Russia's archrival, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
MarklandMarkland (ˈmɑrkˌlɑnd) is the name given to one of three lands on North America's Atlantic shore discovered by Leif Eriksson around 1000 AD. It was located south of Helluland and north of Vinland. Although it was never recorded to be settled by Norsemen, there were probably a number of later expeditions from Greenland to gather timber. A 1347 Icelandic document records that a ship went off course and ended up in Iceland in the process of returning from Markland, without further specifying where Markland was.
Decolonization of the AmericasThe decolonization of the Americas occurred over several centuries as most of the countries in the Americas gained their independence from European rule. The American Revolution was the first in the Americas, and the British defeat in the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783) was a victory against a great power, aided by France and Spain, Britain's enemies. The French Revolution in Europe followed, and collectively these events had profound effects on the Spanish, Portuguese, and French colonies in the Americas.
Inter caeteraInter caetera ('Among other [works]') was a papal bull issued by Pope Alexander VI on the 4 May 1493, which granted to the Catholic Monarchs King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile all lands to the "west and south" of a pole-to-pole line 100 leagues west and south of any of the islands of the Azores or the Cape Verde islands. It remains unclear whether the pope intended a "donation" of sovereignty or an infeudation or investiture.
CastaCasta (ˈkasta) is a term which means "lineage" in Spanish and Portuguese and has historically been used as a racial and social identifier. In the context of the Spanish Empire in the Americas, the term also refers to a 20th-century theoretical framework which postulated that colonial society operated under a hierarchical race-based "caste system". From the outset, colonial Spanish America resulted in widespread intermarriage: unions of Spaniards (españoles), Amerindians (indios), and Africans (negros).
SkrælingSkræling (Old Norse and Icelandic: skrælingi, plural skrælingjar) is the name the Norse Greenlanders used for the peoples they encountered in North America (Canada and Greenland). In surviving sources, it is first applied to the Thule people, the proto-Inuit group with whom the Norse coexisted in Greenland after about the 13th century. In the sagas, it is also used for the peoples of the region known as Vinland whom the Norse encountered and fought during their expeditions there in the early 11th century.