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General Topic List


  • The Story of Gilgamesh: First Written Story in History
  • Hammurabi’s Code and Its Effect on the Individual
  • Pharaohs: The Egyptian God-Kings and their Legacy
  • Herodotus: The Father of History
  • Aesop and His Fables
  • Athenian Democracy and Its Effect on the Individual
  • Homer and the Legacy of the Iliad
  • Emperor Augustus and the Pax Romana
  • Spartacus and the Roman Slave Revolt
  • Josephus and the Legacy of his First Century A.D. Histories of the Jewish People
  • Paul and the Legacy of his Missions
  • Constantine and the Advance of the Christian Church
  • Augustine and The City of God
  • Monasteries and their Legacy
  • Pope Urban II and the Legacy of the Crusades
  • King John and the Magna Carta
  • Joan of Arc and the Battle for Orleans
  • Machiavelli and The Prince
  • William Wallace: Rebel Against English Oppression
  • William the Conqueror and the Battle of Hastings
  • King Henry VIII and England’s Split from the Roman Catholic Church
  • Galileo and His Discoveries
  • Thomas More and the Legacy of Utopia
  • Issac Newton and His Discoveries
  • Copernicus and His Theories
  • Leonardo Da Vinci, Legacy of a Man Ahead of his Time
  • Columbus Finds the New World
  • John Cabot and his Legacy to England’s Claim to North America
  • Ferdinand and Isabella Unify Spain
  • Prince Henry and His School
  • Cortez and the Defeat of the Aztecs
  • The Magellan Expedition and Its Legacy
  • Philip II of Spain and the Spanish Armada
  • John Hus and the First Protestants
  • Shakespeare and His Legacy to the English Language
  • Elizabeth I and the Preparation for Empire
  • Francis Drake, Privateer
  • Cabeza de Vaca and His Wanderings in North America
  • Johannes Gutenberg and the Printing Press
  • Martin Luther and the Beginnings of the Protestant Reformation
  • Roger Williams and the Separation of Church and State
  • Europeans in America and the Introduction of European Diseases
  • Hernando De Soto and The Exploration of the American Southeast
  • Jesuit Missionaries to New France
  • Bartholomew de la Casas and the Rights of Natives in Colonial Latin America
  • The Joint-Stock Company and the Settlement of Jamestown
  • Anne Hutchinson and Religious Toleration
  • Lord Baltimore and the Legacy of Religious Toleration
  • Oliver Cromwell and the English Civil War
  • Leeuwenhoek and the Discovery of Microscopic Life
  • Andreas Vesalius and his Book, On the Fabric of the Human Body
  • Edward Jenner and the First Vaccination
  • Jean Jacques Rousseau and the Philosophy of Individual Freedom
  • Baron de Montesquieu and the idea of the Separation of Powers
  • Peter the Great and the Westernization of Russia
  • John Peter Zenger and the Freedom of the Press
  • John Locke and His Effect on the Thinking of America’s Founding Fathers
  • The Regulators in Colonial Carolina
  • Pope’ and the Pueblo Revolt of 1680
  • Coureurs-de-bois: Individual Frenchmen Explorer the New World on Their Own
  • Olaudah Equiano and His Writings on the Slave Trade
  • Poor Richard:  Benjamin Franklin and his Legacy
  • General James Wolfe and the Battle for Quebec
  • Adam Smith and the Wealth of Nations
  • Mary Wollstonecraft and the Early Women’s Rights Movement
  • John Adams and the Boston Massacre
  • Phillis Wheatley, From Africa to Slavery to Literary Legacy
  • Abigail Adams, Woman Behind the Man
  • The Boston Tea Party
  • Mercy Otis Warren, the Conscience of the American Revolution (First female playwright in America)
  • Thomas Jefferson and the Signers of the Declaration of Independence
  • Thomas Paine and Common Sense
  • Benedict Arnold and the Battle of Valcour Island
  • Judith Sargent Murray, Advocate of Women’s Equality
  • The American Soldier at Valley Forge
  • The Citizen-Soldier at Lexington and Concord
  • George Washington and the Battles of Trenton and Princeton
  • Robespierre and the Reign of Terror
  • George Washington and the Whiskey Rebellion
  • Gabriel Prosser and the Virginia Slave Revolt of 1800
  • John Adams and the Alien and Sedition Acts
  • Horatio Nelson and the Battle of Trafalgar
  • Sacajawea and the Lewis and Clark Voyage to the Pacific
  • Napoleon and the Legacy of his Tactics
  • Napoleon and the Invasion of Russia
  • Toussaint L’Ouverture and the Haitian Revolution
  • Father Hildalgo and the Cry of Dolores
  • Benjamin Banneker, Legacy of an 18th Century Scientist
  • James Madison and the Federalist Papers
  • Jeremy Bentham and Utilitarianism
  • Alexander Hamilton and His Plan to Pay the National Debt
  • Dolly Madison and the British Attack on Washington
  • General Andrew Jackson and the Battle of New Orleans
  • James Monroe and the Monroe Doctrine
  • James Watt and the Steam Engine
  • Eli Whitney and the Cotton Gin
  • Eli Whitney and the Interchangeable Part
  • Thomas Jefferson and the Louisiana Purchase
  • William Wilberforce and the Ending of the International Slave Trade
  • Andrew Jackson and the Trail of Tears
  • Andrew Jackson and the National Bank
  • Nat Turner and the Slave Revolt of 1831
  • John C. Calhoun and the State’s Rights Legacy
  • John Quincy Adams and the Amistad Trial
  • Frances Wright, Lecturer, Writer, Freethinkier, Feminist, Abolitionist, and Social Reformer
  • William Holmes McGuffey and the McGuffey Readers
  • Migration on the Oregon Trail
  • Mary Lyon, Opening Opportunities for Women
  • Dorothea Dix and Mental Health Reform
  • Karl Marx and the Communist Manifesto
  • Brigham Young and the Mormon Migration
  • Prudence Crandall and the First School for African American Ladies
  • Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa: Native Americans Attempt to Unify
  • Henry David Thoreau and The Resistance to the Mexican War
  • James K. Polk and 54-40 or Fight
  • Edgar Allan Poe and the Popularizing of the Short Story
  • Horace Mann: The Father of American Education
  • William Lloyd Garrison and The Liberator
  • Charles Dickens; the Documenter of an Industrializing England
  • Stephen Douglas and the Kansas-Nebraska Act
  • Frederick Douglas, Abolitionist
  • Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott: The Seneca Falls Declaration
  • Richard Allen and the Founding of the A.M.E. Church
  • Dred Scott and the Dred Scott Case
  • John Brown and the Raid on Harper’s Ferry
  • Harriett Beecher Stowe and Uncle Tom’s Cabin
  • Commodore Perry and the Opening of Japan
  • Frederich Froebel, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody and the First Kindergartens
  • African American Soldiers in the Civil War
  • Mathew Brady and the Photography of the Civil War
  • Robert E. Lee and Three Days at Gettysburg
  • Clement Vallandigham and the Anti-War Movement in the North
  • The New York City Draft Riots of 1863: The Legacy of an Unpopular War
  • Sherman’s March: Soldiers on the Loose!
  • Colonel Shaw and the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment
  • Prisoners of War and the Legacy of Suffering
  • Yankee School Teachers Go South After the Civil War
  • Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation
  • John Wilkes Booth and the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
  • Colonel Chamberlain and the Stand of the 20th Maine at Little Round Top
  • Clara Barton and the Founding of the American Red Cross
  • Florence Nightingale; the Lady of the Lamp
  • Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce’s Run for Canada
  • The Buffalo Soldiers: African American Soldiers in the American West
  • General Custer and the Legacy of the Cavalier in Buckskin
  • Wovoka and the Ghost Dance
  • William Hulbert and the Founding of Baseball’s National League
  • John Wesley Powell and His Recommendations on Western Settlement
  • Buffalo Bill and His Wild West Show
  • Bismarck’s Reforms in Germany
  • Vincent Van Gogh: Artist Persona
  • Louis Pasteur and the Germ Theory of Disease
  • Jules Verne, the Father of Science Fiction
  • Henry Flipper, African American Officer in a White Army
  • Belva Lockwood:  First Woman Presidential Candidate
  • Susan B. Anthony and the Women’s Movement
  • Alexander Graham Bell and Legacy of the Telephone
  • Thomas Edison and the Making of Modern America
  • Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Revolution of the Domestic Woman
  • William Jennings Bryan and the Populist Movement
  • Nikola Tesla and the Legacy of Alternating Current
  • Ida B. Wells and the Fight Against Lynching
  • Theodore Roosevelt and the Roosevelt Corollary
  • W.E.B. Dubois and the Niagara Movement
  • Horatio Alger and the Formula for Success
  • Sigmund Freud and the Beginnings of Pyschoanalysis
  • Marcus Garvey and Black Nationalism
  • John Montgomery Ward and the Baseball Players’ Strike of 1890
  • Samuel Gompers and the Founding of the American Federation of Labor
  • Walter Reed and the Conquest of Yellow Fever
  • Theodor Herzl and the Founding of Zionism
  • Homer Plessy and Plessy v. Ferguson
  • Scott Joplin and the Legacy of Ragtime
  • John Muir and the Beginnings of American Conservationism
  • President Theodore Roosevelt and his Threat to End the Game of Football
  • Booker T. Washington and African American Education
  • George Washington Carver and the Legacy of Agricultural Innovation
  • The Quarantine of Typhoid Mary
  • Henry Ford and the Assembly Line
  • Nicholas II and his Actions to Preserve Czarist Russia
  • Mother Jones and the United Mine Workers
  • Woodrow Wilson and the America’s Entrance into World War I
  • The First Airmail Pilots and Their Legacy
  • Upton Sinclair and The Jungle
  • Langston Hughes and the Harlem Renaissance
  • Jeannette Rankin and the Legacy of Anti-War, First Female Member of Congress
  • Woodrow Wilson and the Versailles Peace Conference
  • The Black Sox Scandal and the Legacy of Kennesaw Mountain Landis
  • D.W. Griffith and the Effects of his Early Full-Length Movies (The Birth of a Nation in particular)
  • Sister Elizabeth Kenny and the Treatment of Polio
  • Gavrilo Princip, The Assassin of the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria
  • Bertol Brecht and Kurt Weil: German Operas of the 1920s
  • Alice Paul and the 19th Amendment
  • Lewis P. Hine and the Fight Against Child Labor
  • Eugene V. Debs and the Socialist Movement in America
  • Conscientious Objectors in World War I
  • Albert Einstein and his Theories of Relativity
  • Mary Church Terrell: Advocate for Women and African Americans
  • Franz Boaz and the Beginnings of Anthropology
  • Adolf Hitler and the Writing of Mein Kampf
  • Hubert Hoover and the Legacy of Rugged Individualism
  • Congressman DePriest’s Wife and the First Lady (DePriest was the first African American Congressman after Reconstruction in 1929)
  • Charles Lindbergh and the Legacy of his Transatlantic Flight
  • The Bonus Army
  • FDR and the New Deal
  • Woody Guthrie, This Land is Your Land
  • John and Ruby Lomax and The Recording of Southern Folk Music
  • Joe Louis and the Schmeling Fight
  • Jesse Owens and the 1936 Olympics
  • Amelia Earhart, Female Pilot
  • Dorothea Lange, Photographing the Dust Bowl
  • Francis Perkins and the Social Security Act
  • The Abraham Lincoln Brigade and the Spanish Civil War
  • Haile Selassie at the United Nations (Refusal to act led to more aggression by fascists)
  • Neville Chamberlain and the Munich Agreement
  • Kindertransport
  • Margaret Bourke-White, Photographing World War II and More
  • Ben Kuroki: World War II Japanese-American Pilot
  • Isoroku Yamamto and the Bombing of Pearl Harbor
  • Admiral Chester Nimitz and the Battle of Midway
  • Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid on Japan
  • Josef Mengele; The Angel of Death
  • Elie Wiesel and Night
  • Eisenhower and D-Day
  • Eisenhower and the Liberation of the Concentration Camps
  • Harry Truman and the Dropping of the Atomic Bomb
  • George Marshall and the Rebuilding of Post-WW II Europe
  • Dietrich Bonhoffer and His Stand Against the Nazi Church
  • Winston Churchill and the Battle of Britain
  • Superman Goes to War – Comics and the Homefront
  • Navajo Code Talkers
  • Tuskegee Airmen
  • Nisei Soldiers: Japanese American Soldiers in World War II
  • Goebbels and Nazi Propaganda
  • The Women’s Army Auxiliary Corp
  • Conscientious Objectors in World War II
  • The Nuremburg Trials: Nazis Tried for War Crimes (There are many cases in the Nuremburg Trials – students could focus on a particular one or just research the main International Tribunal)
  • The G.I. Bill and its Legacy
  • Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project
  • Frank Lloyd Wright and the Changes in Architecture
  • Marian Anderson Sings for Freedom
  • The Berlin Airlift
  • Grace Hopper and the Development of the Computer
  • Werner Von Braun, From Nazi Rocket Scientist to Putting a Man on the Moon
  • Jackie Robinson, Branch Rickey, Bill Veeck, Larry Doby and the Integration of Baseball
  • Edwin Hubble and the Expanding Universe
  • Norman Rockwell, The Painter of the America Dream
  • Gandhi and Passive Resistance
  • John Peters Humphrey and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
  • David Ben-Gurion and the Founding of Israel
  • Muhammed Mossaddeq and the Seizure and nationalizing of Iranian  Oil in 1953
  • George F. Kennan and the Containment of Communism
  • Emmett Till: Murder of a Fourteen-Year Old
  • Eisenhower and the Interstate Highway System
  • Eisenhower and the Integration of Central High School
  • A. Philip Randolph: Labor and Civil Rights Activist
  • Imre Nagy and the Hungarian Revolt of 1956
  • Barry Gordy and the Founding of Motown
  • The Legacy of Ray Kroc and McDonalds
  • Linda Brown and School Integration
  • Ruby Bridges: A Class of One
  • Jonas Salk and the Polio Vaccine
  • Kwame Nkrumah and Ghana Independence from Great Britain
  • Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott
  • Fidel Castro and the Takeover of Cuba
  • Francis Gary Powers and the U-2 Incident
  • The Actions and Legacies of Ralph Bunche
  • Chuck Berry and the Founding of Rock Music
  • JFK and the Cuban Missile Crisis
  • JFK and the Bay of Pigs Disaster
  • Freedom Riders
  • The Greensboro Sit-In
  • Cesar Chavez and Migrant Labor Reform
  • President Johnson Speaks Out in Support of Civil Rights
  • Joe McCarthy and McCarthyism
  • Thurgood Marshall and the Brown v. Board Cases
  • LBJ and the Great Society
  • Nelson Mandela and the End of Apartheid
  • Martin Luther King and the Letter from the Birmingham Jail
  • Kent State Massacre
  • Bob Hope and his Legacy of Support of U.S. Troops Abroad
  • The Beatles and the Legacy of Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band
  • Alexander Dubcek and the Hungarian Reforms of 1968
  • Lawrence G. Roberts and the Birth of the Internet
  • Rachel Carson and Silent Spring
  • Dr. Seuss and his Legacy
  • Ralph Nader and Unsafe at Any Speed
  • Jonathan Kozol and Death at an Early Age
  • Project Head Start and its Legacy
  • Curt Flood and the Baseball’s Reserve Clause
  • Engel v. Vitale and School Prayer
  • Archbishop Oscar Romero and Liberation Theology
  • War Protesters and the 1968 Democratic Convention
  • Gloria Steinhem and the Women’s Movement
  • Richard Nixon and the Opening of China
  • Richard Nixon and the Watergate Cover-Up
  • Jerry Lewis and the Legacy of the Muscular Dystrophy Telethon
  • Mr. Rogers and/or Sesame Street and the Effects of Children’s Television
  • George Harrison and the Legacy of the Concert for Bangladesh
  • Bill Cosby and the Image of Integration (I Spy, The Cosby Kids, The Cosby Show, etc.)
  • Jimmy Carter and the Iranian Hostage Crisis
  • The Legacy of Sam Walton and Walmart
  • Lech Walesa and the Gdansk Shipyard Strike