At the Washington Naval Conference, the United States, Britain, France, Italy, Japan, China, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Belgium signed an agreement recognizing China’s sovereignty and maintaining the Open Door policy.
Aviator Charles Lindbergh completed the first solo nonstop transatlantic flight ever, flying thirty-four hours from New York to Paris.
In Paris, a crowd of 20,000 stormed the Bastille, a hated royal fortress. The crowd freed seven prisoners. The Bastille fell and the French Revolution began.
The French establish Acadia in what is now Eastern Canada’s Maritime Provinces. Samuel de Champlain explored and claimed Huron country for France.
In World War I, the Allied forces were initially composed of Britain, France, Belgium, Serbia, and Russia, with Japan, Italy, the United States, and fifteen other nations joining the alliance before the war’s end.
The Group of Eight (or G-8 Nations) is the organization of leading inudstrialized nations (the US, Canada, China, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, and Japan) that holds periodic meetings to discuss political and economic issues that affect its members and the global community. The G-8 Nation meetings have met with intense scrutiny and protest from anti-globalization protestors as well as environmentalists and human-rights activists.
Known as the “Spider King,” King Louis XI (1423–1483) was ruler of France from 1461 to 1483. Through a “spider web of conspiracies” (hence his nickname), alliances, and plain brute force, Louis reduced the power of local lords, largely eliminating the feudal system in France and replacing it with a united monarchy.
Gouverneur Morris (1752–1816) was a member of the Continental Congress, a signer of the Articles of the Confederation, and a delegate to the Constitutional Convention. As a framer of the Constitution, Morris advocated the creation of an executive branch and an electoral college. After the founding, Morris served as a minister to France and, later, in the Senate.
Born in Brittany, one of the leading provinces engaged in the Grand Banks fishing industry, Cartier (1491–1557) became a sailor of some repute in his home of Saint-Malo. After Brittany was annexed to France in 1534, King Francis I commissioned him to follow up on Verrazano’s efforts to find a passage to the Pacific. On this first voyage, Cartier and his crew came into contact with a number of Native American people; they traded with them and kidnapped two boys to take back to France. On his second voyage, Cartier sailed up the St. Lawrence...