During World War II, Japanese soldiers stationed in Singapore glimpsed a strange version of Bigfoot there. Many reported seeing a primate-like creature covered in gray hair and standing up to 2 meters (6’6″) tall in the Bukit Timah rain forest.

Sightings peaked during the war, but there are also a few present-day sightings reported every now and then. The Bukit Timah area is now a biodiverse nature reserve that housed several creatures, including tigers, not too long ago.

Although it is still a mystery as to what the soldiers and others were actually seeing in this area, some people believe they might have confused macaques for primates. However, according to most experts, this would be unlikely as the macaques in Singapore resemble the ones in Japan and the soldiers at least would know what they were looking at. The last sightings took place in 2007 when visitors told stories of seeing an ape-creature being run over by a taxi and another scratching around in trash cans.

Any shopper walking down the aisles of a modern grocery is spoiled for choice when it comes to food options. As of 2008, the number of products carried by the average supermarket stood around 47,000, according to Consumer Reports.

There is one particular item, however, that shouldn't ever appear in anyone's shopping cart, despite its place as a historical foodstuff, particularly during desperate times: human meat.

Cannibalism strikes the human conscience like few other taboo acts, eliciting a mix of dread, disdain and plain old nausea. But as seen in this slideshow, humans eating other humans has been an inseparable part of our history.

I grew up in a Kodak family. My grandfather worked in the photography dark rooms of a Kodak production facility in Rochester, New York for better than 30 years.  My father was a supervisor at Kodak headquarters in downtown Rochester, and later became a liaison between Kodak and Disney in Orlando, for 25 years. Other members of my family worked for the company in various roles, some until retirement.

As a kid, the Eastman Kodak brand was the undisputed king in a city known for its industry giants, including Bausch and Lomb, Xerox, Gannett, and Western Union. If you lived in Rochester and worked for Kodak, the expectation was that you would stay there until retirement, and receive a handsome pension thereafter. Every Kodak employee looked forward to a generous bonus–an annual event that juiced the local economy unlike any other.

By the mid1980s—just about 100 years after George Eastman invented paper-based film—my father was already voicing concerns about Kodak’s future. The digital revolution was sparking, and he wasn’t seeing signs that Kodak knew exactly what to do about it. Instead of focusing its strategic attention on the emerging digital technologies, Kodak was making odd maneuvers, like acquiring pharmaceutical giant Sterling Drugs for $5.1 billion and trying to establish a brand in the battery business.

The connection with Sterling—really the only linkage that made sense for Kodak—was Sterling’s diagnostic imaging business that Kodak rightly forecasted would become gigantic in the years ahead. But acquiring the entirety of Sterling proved a disastrous decision, resulting in massive losses and the eventual selling off of all Sterling’s divisions within six years. Likewise, Kodak took a costly black eye in the battery business from industry leaders Duracell and Eveready, and divested from its battery spin-off, Ultra Technologies, with another painful loss.

While embroiled in the Sterling and battery debacles, the digital revolution was already passing Kodak by, and the corporation’s infrastructure was steadily cracking. My father, along with tens of thousands of others, was among the first to receive an offer of early retirement. Each year after brought more forced retirements, more layoffs, and more downsizing.

Even in the film business, which Kodak comfortably owned for nearly a century, the losses were  mounting. Fujifilm had strategized around its titanic American opponent and was outselling Kodak in key markets. Brand partnerships that Kodak had invested in, nurtured and grown—like that with Disney—were no longer secure.  It seemed to me at the time that Kodak was fighting a war on multiple fronts and losing across the board. When Kodak finally shutdown its largest research and production facility in Rochester, known as Kodak Park, it appeared certain that the Kodak brand I grew up with was gone.

Popular perception is that Kodak didn’t even enter the consumer digital tech business until the mid 1990s (with the release of the Kodak DC-25 compact digital), but that’s incorrect. In 1990, the company pushed out the “Photo CD” as the industry defining digital image medium. That was a bold move and the company invested millions to make it work, but it turned out to be a myopic decision. Kodak was trying to benchmark the quintessential photo storage medium, evidently not realizing that the digital revolution was obliterating artificial boundaries between “photo storage” and other sorts of data storage. Kodak, by sticking to its old school philosophy that the photo is king, failed to see that there would never be a sustainable market for what it wanted to sell.

The company also courted the professional photojournalism market with a $13,000 digital retrofit camera that used a Nikon film body–the Kodak DCS-100–but it was slow to transition into the consumer market and fell behind competitors (including Nikon) that were closer to making the technology affordable to nonprofessionals.

Kodak did eventually make more aggressive moves into the digital tech business. By this time, most of the old guard of the corporation was gone and Kodak was recruiting from companies like Lexmark to re-create its brand image as a digital leader. Kodak sought to become the master of digital printing and was forging headlong into the self-service digital printing kiosk business, among others.

The problem Kodak would face in all of these new ventures is that it was too late to own any facet of the market. Whether fighting for territory in the printer or digital camera markets, it was always perilously behind well established players. The investment required to ramp up in those markets generated a debt load that outpaced the company’s ability to generate revenue, and that cycle can continue for only so long.

Which brings us to the present, with fears of impending bankruptcy sending Kodak stock plummeting from $2.38 a share to 78 cents within a week. For me, it’s sad to see one of the country’s greatest homegrown brands fall, especially since Kodak was such a dominant force for much of my life.  It has also been sad to watch the decline of Kodak’s (and my) hometown, Rochester, which has taken the brunt of the company’s decline.

The fall of the company that George Eastman built is perhaps the most salient commentary on the new economy in recent memory, and tells an unfortunate story about much of America’s industrial base. Monolithic, inflexible and unable to keep up with the shifts and turns of disruptive technology, once great companies like Kodak can’t survive without exhaustive restructuring. Hopefully, other U.S. companies have been watching and learning.

ancient cultural region occupying southeastern Mesopotamia between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers (modern southern Iraq from around Baghdad to the Persian Gulf). Because the city of Babylon was the capital of this area for so many centuries, the term Babylonia has come to refer to the entire culture that developed in the area from the time it was first settled, about 4000 bce. Before Babylon’s rise to political prominence (c. 1850 bce), however, the area was divided into two countries: Sumer in the southeast and Akkad in the northwest.

A brief treatment of Babylonia follows. For full treatment, seeMesopotamia, history of.

The history of Sumer and Akkad is one of constant warfare. The Sumerian city-states fought one another for the control of the region and rendered it vulnerable to invasion from Akkad and from its neighbour to the east, Elam. Despite the series of political crises that marked their history, however, Sumer and Akkad developed rich cultures. The Sumerians were responsible for the first system of writing, cuneiform; the earliest known codes of law; the development of the city-state; the invention of the potter’s wheel, the sailboat, and the seed plow; and the creation of literary, musical, and architectural forms that influenced all of Western civilization.

This cultural heritage was adopted by the Sumerians’ and Akkadians’ successors, the Amorites, a western Semitic tribe that had conquered all of Mesopotamia by about 1900 bce. Under the rule of the Amorites, which lasted until about 1600 bce, Babylon became the political and commercial centre of the Tigris-Euphrates area, and Babylonia became a great empire, encompassing all of southern Mesopotamia and part ofAssyria to the north. The ruler largely responsible for this rise to power was Hammurabi (c. 1792–1750 bce), the sixth king of the 1st dynasty of Babylon, who forged coalitions between the separate city-states, promoted science and scholarship, and promulgated his famous code of law.

After Hammurabi’s death, the Babylonian empire declined until 1595 bce, when the Hittite invaderMursil I unseated the Babylonian king Samsuditana, allowing the Kassites from the mountains east of Babylonia to assume power and establish a dynasty that lasted 400 years.

During the last few centuries of Kassite rule, religion and literature flourished in Babylonia, the most important literary work of the period being the Enuma Elish, the Babylonian epic of creation. During this same time, however, Assyria broke away from Babylonian control and developed as an independent empire, threatening the Kassite dynasty in Babylonia and on a few occasions temporarily gaining control. Elam, too, grew powerful and ultimately conquered most of Babylonia, felling the Kassite dynasty (c. 1157 bce).

In a series of wars, a new line of Babylonian kings, the 2nd dynasty of the city of Isin, was established. Its most outstanding member, Nebuchadrezzar I (reigned c. 1124–1103 bce), defeated Elam and successfully fought off Assyrian advances for some years.

For several centuries following Nebuchadrezzar I’s rule, a three-way struggle developed among the Assyrians and Aramean and Chaldean tribesmen for control of Babylonia. From the 9th century to the fall of the Assyrian empire in the late 7th century bce, Assyrian kings most frequently ruled over Babylonia, often appointing sub-kings to administer the government. The last ruling Assyrian king wasAshurbanipal, who fought a civil war against his brother, the sub-king in Babylon, devastating the city and its population.

Upon Ashurbanipal’s death, a Chaldean leader, Nabopolassar, made Babylon his capital and instituted the last and greatest period of Babylonian supremacy. His son Nebuchadrezzar II (reigned 605–562 bce) conquered Syria and Palestine; he is best remembered for the destruction of Judah and Jerusalem in 587 bce and for the ensuing Babylonian captivity of the Jews. He also revitalized Babylon, constructing the wondrous hanging gardens and rebuilding the Temple of Marduk and its accompanying ziggurat.

The Persians, under Cyrus the Great, captured Babylonia from Nebuchadrezzar’s last successorNabonidus in 539 bce. Thereafter, Babylonia ceased to be independent, passing eventually in 331 bce toAlexander the Great, who planned to make Babylon the capital of his empire and who died in Nebuchadrezzar’s palace. After Alexander’s death, however, the Seleucids eventually abandoned Babylon, bringing an end to one of the greatest empires in history.

Among the world's most famous curses is the "Curse of the Pharaoh," also known as King Tut's Curse. Ever since King Tutankhamun's tomb was discovered in Egypt's Valley of the Kings, stories circulated that those who dared violate the boy king's final resting place faced a terrible curse. Though not as dramatic as a murderous mummy, it is widely claimed that many people associated with opening the tomb fell soon victim to the curse, dying under mysterious circumstances. The legend gained traction because a few of the people who were involved in finding the tomb did, in fact, die not long after it was opened. Did financier pay with his life? The highest profile death associated with the curse is probably that of George Edward Stanhope Molyneux Herbert, the fifth Earl of Carnarvon, a British aristocrat and amateur Egyptologist who helped finance the search. His death on March 25, 1923 — a year after the tomb was opened — is widely regarded as mysterious, but, in fact, he suffered from poor health before he arrived in Cairo, and in any event died from a decidedly mundane mosquito-carried disease. The idea of a curse was promoted by no less a prominent person than Sherlock Holmes creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (who also wrote a book explaining that fairieswere real). There were many dozens of people connected in some way to opening Tutankhamun's tomb (ranging from security guards to archaeologists), and out of that many people some unexpected deaths would be expected by random chance. In his book "An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural," investigator James Randi notes that "the average duration of life for ... those who should have suffered the ancient curse was more than twenty-three years after the 'curse' was supposed to become effective. Carnarvon's daughter died in 1980, a full fifty-seven years later. Howard Carter, who not only discovered the tomb and physically opened it, but also removed the mummy of Tutankhamun from the sarcophagus, lived until 1939, sixteen years after that event." Not only did Carter live to a fairly ripe age of 64 before succumbing to cancer, but Sgt. Richard Adamson, a member of Carter's team who guarded the burial chamber round the clock for seven years and was the European closest to Tutankhamun's remains, lived for another 60 years until his death in 1982. And he is not alone; Randi notes, "This group died at an average age of seventy-three plus years, beating the actuarial tables for persons of that period and social class by about a year. The Curse of the Pharaoh is a beneficial curse, it seems." [Photos: The Life and Death of King Tut] Why a curse? So where did the curse come from? According to Randi, "When Tut's tomb was discovered and opened in 1922, it was a major archaeological event. In order to keep the press at bay and yet allow them a sensational aspect with which to deal, the head of the excavation team, Howard Carter, put out a story that a curse had been placed upon anyone who violated the rest of the boy-king." Carter did not invent the idea of a cursed tomb, but he did exploit it to keep intruders away from his history-making discovery. In fact, the tombs of all royalty — not just Tutankhamun's — were said to have exactly the same "curse" and had been opened with no resulting evil effects. Howard Carter was far from alone in making an effort to scare away potential grave robbers with the threat of supernatural wrath. Indeed, a famous writer offered a very similar curse: Good frend, for Iesus sake forebeare To digge the dust encloased heare. Bleste be ye man [that] spares these stones, And curste be he [that] moves my bones." "Blessed be the man that spares these stones, and cursed be he that moves my bones": This is William Shakespeare's epitaph, dating back to 1616. Though the world's best-known dramatist, Shakespeare was not being dramatic when he wrote these words. Instead, he was trying to prevent something unsavory that neither his fame nor fortune could deter: his corpse being dug up by grave robbers. These "anatomists" did not covet the Bard's body out of spite or malice but instead wanted it for the sake of science, to sell to doctors for medical use in schools. Shakespeare was only one of many at the time concerned about post-mortem theft; grave robbing was quite common during Shakespeare's time and long before. Whether Howard Carter, King Tut, or William Shakespeare truly believed in curses is irrelevant; the important thing is that those who might disturb their graves believe in them. And it worked: nearly a century after Tut's tomb was opened, many people still believe in it

Athens , Greece

The user submitted story below is similar to one version of the Medusa myth. The more common version is by the Roman poet Ovid. You can find out more about this. Many years ago there was a beautiful women called Medusa. She lived in a place called Athens in Greece. She was a very kind and she obeyed her Greek gods and goddesses. There were many pretty girls there, Medusa was one of them. Every single day Medusa always boasted about her self. She says to other people she is the most prettiest out of everyone in the whole wide world. On Sunday, Medusa told the miller that her skin is more beautiful then fresh white snow. On Monday, she babbled the cobbler that her hair is brighter than the sun. On Tuesday, she commented the blacksmith's son that her eyes are greener than Aegean sea. On Wednesday, she boasted to the public that her lips are redder than the reddest rose in the world. When Medusa wasn't busy she would boast about her self while looking in a mirror. She thought she was the prettiest woman in the whole wide world. She admired her self. On and on Medusa went about her beauty to anyone and everyone who stopped long enough to hear her. Until one day Medusa and her friends went to the Parthenon. It was Medusa's first time going to the Parthenon. The Parthenon was the biggest temple in Greece. In the Parthenon was the goddess of wisdom and that was Athena. There was statues of most of the gods and goddesses in the Greek culture. All the people who went there obeyed Athena, all except Medusa. Medusa saw all the statues and she whispered "Who ever did this statue did do a good job but it would look better if I was the statues." Every picture she saw she said that the person did a good job but she would look better in the picture and she is so delicate. When Medusa reached the altar she sighed happily and said, "My this is a beautiful temple. It is a shame it is wasted on Athena for I am much prettier than she is, perhaps one day people will build an even grander temple to my beauty." Then Medusa's friend grew pale. The priestesses heard what Medusa said and they gasped. The roomer went really quickly through the whole temple and everyone started to leave. Everyone knew Athena will get angry if anyone compared her to someone else. Before long the temple was empty of everyone except Medusa, who was so busy gazing proudly at her reflection in the large bronze doors that she hadn't noticed the fast departure of everyone else. While Medusa was gazing the figure changes. The figure changed into goddess Athena. "Vain and foolish girl," Athena shouted angrily, "You think your a prettier girl than me. While other people are working, playing or learning you just boast about your self. Medusa there is more to life than beauty alone you see." Medusa tried to point out that her beauty was an inspiration to those around her and that she made their lives better by simply looking so lovely, but Athena silenced her with an angry wave. "Nonsense," screamed Athena "One day beauty will fade away. But I will make it fade away now and all your loveliness will be gone forever." When Athena uttered those words Medusa turned into a terrible monster. Her hair thickened into hissing snakes and body turned into a snake. "Are you happy for what I have done? Now anyone who looks in your eyes will now turn into stone and no one will be able to save them," snapped Athena,"Even you, Medusa, should you seek your reflection, will turn to rock the moment you see your face." Athena then sent Medusa with her hair of snakes to live with the blind monsters, the gorgon sisters, at the end of the earth, so that no innocent people would be turned to stone at the sight of her by accident.

According to historical records, the first ancient Olympic Games can be traced back to 776 BC. They were dedicated to the Olympian gods and were staged on the ancient plains of Olympia. They continued for nearly 12 centuries, until Emperor Theodosius decreed in 393 A.D. that all such "pagan cults" be banned.

Olympia

Olympia, the site of the ancient Olympic Games, is in the western part of the Peloponnese which, according to Greek mythology, is the island of "Pelops", the founder of the Olympic Games. Imposing temples, votive buildings, elaborate shrines and ancient sporting facilities were combined in a site of unique natural and mystical beauty. Olympia functioned as a meeting place for worship and other religious and political practices as early as the 10th century B.C. The central part of Olympia was dominated by the majestic temple of Zeus, with the temple of Hera parallel to it.  

The Games and religion

The Olympic Games were closely linked to the religious festivals of the cult of Zeus, but were not an integral part of a rite. Indeed, they had a secular character and aimed to show the physical qualities and evolution of the performances accomplished by young people, as well as encouraging good relations between the cities of Greece. According to specialists, the Olympic Games owed their purity and importance to religion.

Victory Ceremonies

The Olympic victor received his first awards immediately after the competition. Following the announcement of the winner's name by the herald, a Hellanodikis (Greek judge) would place a palm branch in his hands, while the spectators cheered and threw flowers to him. Red ribbons were tied on his head and hands as a mark of victory.

The official award ceremony would take place on the last day of the Games, at the elevated vestibule of the temple of Zeus. In a loud voice, the herald would announce the name of the Olympic winner, his father's name, and his homeland. Then, the Hellanodikis placed the sacred olive tree wreath, or kotinos, on the winner's head.

Slavery in America began when the first African slaves were brought to the North American colony of Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619, to aid in the production of such lucrative crops as tobacco. Slavery was practiced throughout the American colonies in the 17th and 18th centuries, and African-American slaves helped build the economic foundations of the new nation. The invention of the cotton gin in 1793 solidified the central importance of slavery to the South’s economy. By the mid-19th century, America’s westward expansion, along with a growing abolition movement in the North, would provoke a great debate over slavery that would tear the nation apart in the bloody American Civil War (1861-65). Though the Union victory freed the nation’s 4 million slaves, the legacy of slavery continued to influence American history, from the tumultuous years of Reconstruction (1865-77) to the civil rights movement that emerged in the 1960s, a century after emancipation.

FOUNDATIONS OF SLAVERY IN AMERICA

In the early 17th century, European settlers in North America turned to African slaves as a cheaper, more plentiful labor source than indentured servants (who were mostly poorer Europeans). After 1619, when a Dutch ship brought 20 Africans ashore at the British colony of Jamestown, Virginia, slavery spread throughout the American colonies. Though it is impossible to give accurate figures, some historians have estimated that 6 to 7 million slaves were imported to the New World during the 18th century alone, depriving the African continent of some of its healthiest and ablest men and women.

Did You Know?

One of the first martyrs to the cause of American patriotism was Crispus Attucks, a former slave who was killed by British soldiers during the Boston Massacre of 1770. Some 5,000 black soldiers and sailors fought on the American side during the Revolutionary War.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, black slaves worked mainly on the tobacco, rice and indigo plantations of the southern coast. After the American Revolution(1775-83), many colonists (particularly in the North, where slavery was relatively unimportant to the economy) began to link the oppression of black slaves to their own oppression by the British, and to call for slavery’s abolition. After the war’s end, however, the new U.S. Constitution tacitly acknowledged the institution, counting each slave as three-fifths of a person for the purposes of taxation and representation in Congress and guaranteeing the right to repossess any “person held to service or labor” (an obvious euphemism for slavery).

IMPORTANCE OF THE COTTON GIN

In the late 18th century, with the land used to grow tobacco nearly exhausted, the South faced an economic crisis, and the continued growth of slavery in America seemed in doubt. Around the same time, the mechanization of the textile industry in England led to a huge demand for American cotton, a southern crop whose production was unfortunately limited by the difficulty of removing the seeds from raw cotton fibers by hand. In 1793, a young Yankee schoolteacher named Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, a simple mechanized device that efficiently removed the seeds. His device was widely copied, and within a few years the South would transition from the large-scale production of tobacco to that of cotton, a switch that reinforced the region’s dependence on slave labor.

Slavery itself was never widespread in the North, though many of the region’s businessmen grew rich on the slave trade and investments in southern plantations. Between 1774 and 1804, all of the northern states abolished slavery, but the so-called “peculiar institution” remained absolutely vital to the South. Though the U.S. Congress outlawed the African slave trade in 1808, the domestic trade flourished, and the slave population in the U.S. nearly tripled over the next 50 years. By 1860 it had reached nearly 4 million, with more than half living in the cotton-producing states of the South.

SLAVES AND SLAVEHOLDERS

Slaves in the antebellum South constituted about one-third of the southern population. Most slaves lived on large farms or small plantations; many masters owned less than 50 slaves. Slave owners sought to make their slaves completely dependent on them, and a system of restrictive codes governed life among slaves. They were prohibited from learning to read and write, and their behavior and movement was restricted. Many masters took sexual liberties with slave women, and rewarded obedient slave behavior with favors, while rebellious slaves were brutally punished. A strict hierarchy among slaves (from privileged house slaves and skilled artisans down to lowly field hands) helped keep them divided and less likely to organize against their masters. Slave marriages had no legal basis, but slaves did marry and raise large families; most slave owners encouraged this practice, but nonetheless did not hesitate to divide slave families by sale or removal.

Slave revolts did occur within the system (notably ones led by Gabriel Prosser in Richmond in 1800 and by Denmark Vesey in Charleston in 1822), but few were successful. The slave revolt that most terrified white slaveholders was that led byNat Turner in Southampton County, Virginia, in August 1831. Turner’s group, which eventually numbered around 75 blacks, murdered some 60 whites in two days before armed resistance from local whites and the arrival of state militia forces overwhelmed them. Supporters of slavery pointed to Turner’s rebellion as evidence that blacks were inherently inferior barbarians requiring an institution such as slavery to discipline them, and fears of similar insurrections led many southern states to further strengthen their slave codes in order to limit the education, movement and assembly of slaves. In the North, the increased repression of southern blacks would only fan the flames of the growing abolition movement.

RISE OF THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT

From the 1830s to the 1860s, a movement to abolish slavery in America gained strength in the northern United States, led by free blacks such as Frederick Douglass and white supporters such as William Lloyd Garrison, founder of the radical newspaper The Liberator, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, who published the bestselling antislavery novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” (1852). While many abolitionists based their activism on the belief that slaveholding was a sin, others were more inclined to the non-religious “free-labor” argument, which held that slaveholding was regressive, inefficient and made little economic sense.

Free blacks and other antislavery northerners had begun helping fugitive slaves escape from southern plantations to the North via a loose network of safe houses as early as the 1780s. This practice, known as the Underground Railroad, gained real momentum in the 1830s and although estimates vary widely, it may have helped anywhere from 40,000 to 100,000 slaves reach freedom. The success of the Underground Railroad helped spread abolitionist feelings in the North; it also undoubtedly increased sectional tensions, convincing pro-slavery southerners of their northern countrymen’s determination to defeat the institution that sustained them.

WESTERN EXPANSION AND DEBATE OVER SLAVERY IN AMERICA

America’s explosive growth–and its expansion westward in the first half of the 19th century–would provide a larger stage for the growing conflict over slavery in America and its future limitation or expansion. In 1820, a bitter debate over the federal government’s right to restrict slavery over Missouri’s application for statehood ended in a compromise: Missouri was admitted to the Union as a slave state, Maine as a free state and all western territories north of Missouri’s southern border were to be free soil. Although the Missouri Compromise was designed to maintain an even balance between slave and free states, it was able to help quell the forces of sectionalism only temporarily.

In 1850, another tenuous compromise was negotiated to resolve the question of territory won during the Mexican War. Four years later, however, the Kansas-Nebraska Act opened all new territories to slavery by asserting the rule of popular sovereignty over congressional edict, leading pro- and anti-slavery forces to battle it out (with much bloodshed) in the new state of Kansas. Outrage in the North over the Kansas-Nebraska Act spelled the downfall of the old Whig Party and the birth of a new, all-northern Republican Party. In 1857, the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Dred Scott case (involving a slave who sued for his freedom on the grounds that his master had taken him into free territory) effectively repealed the Missouri Compromise by ruling that all territories were open to slavery. The abolitionist John Brown’s raid at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, in 1859 aroused sectional tensions even further: Executed for his crimes, Brown was hailed as a martyred hero by northern abolitionists and a vile murderer in the South.

CIVIL WAR AND EMANCIPATION

The South would reach the breaking point the following year, when Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln was elected as president. Within three months, seven southern states had seceded to form the Confederate States of America; four more would follow after the Civil War (1861-65) began. Though Lincoln’s antislavery views were well established, the central Union war aim at first was not to abolish slavery, but to preserve the United States as a nation. Abolition became a war aim only later, due to military necessity, growing anti-slavery sentiment in the North and the self-emancipation of many African Americans who fled enslavement as Union troops swept through the South. Five days after the bloody Union victory at Antietam in September 1862, Lincoln issued a preliminary emancipation proclamation, and on January 1, 1863, he made it official that “slaves within any State, or designated part of a State…in rebellion,…shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.”

By freeing some 3 million black slaves in the rebel states, the Emancipation Proclamation deprived the Confederacy of the bulk of its labor forces and put international public opinion strongly on the Union side. Some 186,000 black soldiers would join the Union Army by the time the war ended in 1865, and 38,000 lost their lives. The total number of dead at war’s end was 620,000 (out of a population of some 35 million), making it the costliest conflict in American history.

THE LEGACY OF SLAVERY

The 13th Amendment, adopted late in 1865, officially abolished slavery, but freed blacks’ status in the post-war South remained precarious, and significant challenges awaited during the Reconstruction period (1865-77). Former slaves received the rights of citizenship and the “equal protection” of the Constitution in the 14th Amendment (1868) and the right to vote in the 15th (1870), but the provisions of Constitution were often ignored or violated, and it was difficult for former slaves to gain a foothold in the post-war economy thanks to restrictive black codes and regressive contractual arrangements such as sharecropping.

Despite seeing an unprecedented degree of black participation in American political life, Reconstruction was ultimately frustrating for African Americans, and the rebirth of white supremacy–including the rise of racist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan–had triumphed in the South by 1877. Almost a century later, resistance to the lingering racism and discrimination in America that began during the slavery era would lead to the civil rights movement of the 1960s, which would achieve the greatest political and social gains for blacks since Reconstruction.