History World Timelines

While reading the Technology Tidbits blog, I saw this awesome website that I wish I had known about before, especially while writing history papers.

How many times have you been either writing a history paper or studying for a history test and suddenly realized that you are completely confused about the order of events associated with an event in the world's past?  Maybe it's a war, economic crisis, or revolution.  What happened first?  What caused it?  Well, my friends, I have found the solution to this problem: Historyworld Timelines.  With this website, you can search a particular event (don't forget to use parenthesis) and see all of the events associated with that timeline.  For instance, if you type "world war I" the very first "cause" of World War I is a planned attack by Germany in 1895 against France and Russia and it goes on from there.  The end of the war is on June 21, 1919.  You can look at everything in between without missing any of the all to often missed facts.  You can also search by year.  And, if you want to, you can search from the "Big Bang" to now.  Although, I think that that might be a little too much reading for one person.

The only flaw that I have with this tool is that you cannot jump ahead in a timeline.  Using the World War I example I used earlier, I can not go to the year 1918 of World War I.  I just have to keep clicking next until I get to where I want to go.  There is a timeline on the left that lets you pick a decade, but nothing that let's you pick a specific point.  Other than that.  I have no issues with this website and I think it is awesome.  Here it is again: Historyworld Timelines.

Historic Map Works

I am an avid history fan.  I love things that are old, especially when they relate to me somehow.  I especially like to show people how historic sorts of things relate to them. (whether they want to hear me say it or not) Something that is always fun for me to look at is old maps.  Luckily for me, Technology Tidbits posted an awesome tool for me and for my students to use.  It is called Historic Map Works.  It has maps from all spans of history available to look at.  There are so many uses for this type of website that I feel it almost unnecessary to talk about them all, but I shall anyways.  I have nothing better to do anyway!

The first option is obvious, as a teacher.  You now have a resource to get high quality historic maps to tie into your lessons.  When I was younger, a map was always interesting to look at.  Especially if it was of an area that I knew already.  It was interesting to see how things changed and what things stayed the same.

If you are a student, it is very valuable.  You now have an almost inexhaustible supply of maps to use in projects and other school work.  You will be able to find interesting information that you would not have been able to find other ways, and your work will stand out for it.

A lot of the maps are extremely old, and some of them are illustrations of what the town looked like in, say, the year 1850.  Student get a kick out of seeing how things change.

I highly recommend checking out this website Historic Map Works.