19th Century

Spencer Perceval, Tory prime minister since 1809 amid the Napoleonic wars, was walking through the members lobby when Bellingham, ...

Days after the Confederate surrender at Appomattox, the celebrated actor and Confederate sympathizer Booth entered the presidentia...

Alexander II had emancipated the serfs in 1861 and reformed courts and local government, but the pace of change bred both revoluti...

Garfield, a Civil War general and compromise presidential choice, had barely taken office when Guiteau, a failed lawyer and religi...

Marie Francois Sadi Carnot, grandson of the organizer of revolutionary armies, was elected president in 1887 and restored prestige...

Elisabeth, called Sisi, wife of Emperor Franz Joseph, was a celebrated beauty and restless traveler who spent long years away from...

Umberto had reigned since 1878 through colonial defeat at Adwa and years of social unrest. After his general Bava Beccaris cannona...

Empress Myeongseong, called Queen Min, was the dominant political figure at the Korean court, steering policy toward Russia to che...

Kim Ok-gyun had led the three day Gapsin coup of December 1884, a Japanese-influenced attempt to modernize Korean government that ...

Canovas, the dominant conservative statesman of Restoration Spain, alternated in power with Sagasta under the constitution he wrot...

McKinley, victor of the war with Spain and architect of American overseas expansion, was greeting the public in the Temple of Musi...

Carlos I had accepted the rotativist parliamentary decay of the monarchy and, after the 1906 crisis, allowed the dictator Joao Fra...

Paul I, son of Catherine the Great, reversed many policies of his mother and alienated the nobility and officer corps with erratic...