Nineteenth Amendment, amendment (1920) to the Constitution of the United States that officially extended the right to vote to women. Opposition to woman suffrage in the United States predated the Constitutional Convention (1787), which drafted and adopted the Constitution. The prevailing view within society was that women should be precluded from holding office and voting indeed, it was generally accepted (among men) that women should be protected from the evils of politics. Still, there was opposition to such patriarchal views from the beginning, as when Abigail Adams, wife of John Adams, asked her husband in 1776, as he went to the
Mount Tambora, also called Mount Tamboro, Indonesian Gunung Tambora, volcanic mountain on the northern coast of Sumbawa island, Indonesia, that in April 1815 exploded in the largest volcanic eruption in recorded history. It is now 2,851 metres (9,354 feet) high, having lost much of its top in the 1815 eruption. The volcano remains active; smaller eruptions took place in 1880 and 1967, and episodes of increased seismic activity occurred in 2011, 2012, and 2013. Tambora’s catastrophic eruption began on April 5, 1815, with small tremors and pyroclastic flows. A shattering blast blew the mountain apart on the evening of April
Middle Ages, the period in European history from the collapse of Roman civilization in the 5th century ce to the period of the Renaissance (variously interpreted as beginning in the 13th, 14th, or 15th century, depending on the region of Europe and other factors). A brief treatment of the Middle Ages follows. For full treatment, see Europe, history of: The Middle Ages. The term and its conventional meaning were introduced by Italian humanists with invidious intent. The humanists were engaged in a revival of Classical learning and culture, and the notion of a thousand-year period of darkness and ignorance separating
Freedom Rides, political protests against segregation by Blacks and whites who rode buses together through the U.S. South in 1961. Convinced that segregationists would violently protest this action, the Freedom Riders hoped to provoke the federal enforcement of the Supreme Court’s Boynton v. Virginia decision.