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| 4661467499 | Act of Supremacy | Under the Act of Supremacy, King Henry VIII established the Protestant Church of England and named himself the head of that church, effectively nullifying the Catholic pope's authority. He did this partly because he wanted to divorce his wife Catherine of Aragon before he married Anne Boleyn. | 0 | |
| 4661473526 | African Union | Fifty-two of Africa's fifty-three nations belong to the African Union, a political and economic confederation formed in 2001 to replace the Organization of African Unity. Despite this recent organization, the governments of many of these African nations remain unstable. Civil wars, corruption, military coups, and escalating debt all pose threats to these fledgling democracies. | 1 | |
| 4661479137 | Al Qaeda | Al Qaeda is an international terrorist network led by Osama bin Laden. Al Qaeda is critical of the United States for what many believe are at least three reasons: the continued U.S. support of Israel, the stationing of American troops in Saudi Arabia (home of Islam's most holy sites), and the belief that the U.S. customs are supposedly infecting Islamic culture. | 2 | |
| 4661486016 | Ariel Sharon | Ariel Sharon was the Israeli prime minister from 2000 to 2006. He is best known for approving the construction of a wall between the Palestinian West Bank and Israel to protect Israelis from suicide attacks. Some of the international community has criticized Israel for using such a draconian measure to fight terrorist attacks. | 3 | |
| 4661493010 | Camp David Accords | In 1977, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat signed the Camp David Accords, an agreement that led to Israel pulling out of the Sinai and Egypt becoming the only Arab nation yet to recognize Israel's right to exist. This was a huge blow to the Palestinians and other Arab nations. Sadat was assassinated, and the lands gained in the Six Days' War remain contested to this day. | 4 | |
| 4661501616 | Cossacks | Russian czar Ivan IV offered peasants freedom from their feudal lords in exchange for settling in Russia's newly acquired lands to the east and conquering the territories themselves. These peasant-soldiers, called Cossacks, expanded Russian territories in the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries well into Siberia and as far south as the Caspian Sea. | 5 | |
| 4661509530 | David Ben-Gurion | David Ben-Gurion was the first prime minister of Israel. He announced the official creation of the Jewish homeland on May 14, 1948. Unfortunately, this sparked the start of the Arab-Israeli War. | 6 | |
| 4661512812 | Deng Xiaoping | In 1976, Deng Xiaoping gained leadership of China. He quickly changed Mao Zedong's education policy and began to work on restructuring the economic policies of the pre-Mao era. Deng's rule allowed for limited business and property ownership to stimulate hard work and innovation. These reforms have revived the Chinese economy and positioned China to become one of the most successful countries in the world. | 7 | |
| 4661521036 | Dmitry Medvedev | Dmitry Medvedev was elected president of Russia in 2008, following Putin's eight-year presidency. He has championed technological innovation and further development of democracy during his time in office. | 8 | |
| 4661527838 | Hamas and Fatah | Palestine is divided into two political groups: Hamas (in Gaza) and Fatah (in West Bank). Hamas, or "Islamic Resistance Movement," was founded by the | 9 | |
| 4663814515 | Mahmoud Ahmadinejad | In 2005, Tehran's ultra-conservative mayor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was elected president of Iran. An outspoken critic of the United States, Israel, and the United Kingdom, Ahmadinejad refuses to recognize Israel as a legitimate nation and continues to develop Iran's nuclear programs for "peaceful" purposes. | 10 | |
| 4663821676 | Juvenal Habyarimana | The Tutsi and Hutu warred in Rwanda from 1962 until 1972, when a military coup led by Juvenal Habyarimana unseated the government and eventually established a one-party republic in 1981. This government war fairly successful in keeping the peace until 1994, when Habyarimana was killed in a plane crash. Civil war broke out again between the two groups, resulting in millions of deaths due to genocide, war, and disease. | 11 | |
| 4663915535 | Iran-Iraq War | In 1980, Iraq (a Sunni nation) invaded Iran (a Shiite nation) following a series of border disputes between the two countries. Iran's position was complicated by Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's quiet support from the United States, which was still angry about Iran taking hostages during the revolution. Even with U.S. support, the Iran-Iraq war became an eight-year war of attrition with neither side gaining much ground until a cease-fire was signed in 1988. | 12 | |
| 4663925923 | Hugo Chavez | Hugo Chavez became president of Venezuela in 1998, after having failed at a military coup just a few years before. Venezuela recently amended its constitution to allow Chavez to serve a third term. Under the leadership of Chavez, a socialist leader, Venezuela has nationalized several industries, including telephone and steel. | 13 | |
| 4663932236 | Hezbollah | Israel's border with Lebanon and Syria is hotspot for conflict, because Hezbollah, a militant Shia group backed by Syria, operates in the region. In 2006, Israel launched a major offensive against Hezbollah. These hostilities threaten the stability of Lebanon, which had been the scene of intense fighting among Syrian, PLO, and Israeli forces in the 1980s and 1990s. | 14 | |
| 4667739640 | Nelson Mandela | Nelson Mandela (1918-) was the leader of the African National Congress beginning in the 1950s. He advocated abolishing apartheid by peaceful protest at first; however, after protesters were murdered at Sharpeville, he supported guerrilla warfare. Mandela was arrested in 1964 and imprisoned for life; however, international pressures resulted in his release in 1990. The South African government crumbled shortly thereafter (1994), apartheid was abolished, and Mandela was elected president in South Africa's first free and open election. | 15 | |
| 4667749213 | North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) | NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) was established in 1994 by the governments of the United States, Canada, and Mexico; it created a trilateral trade bloc in North America. NAFTA was a huge step towards globalizing industries and bringing diverse cultures closer to each other. | 16 | |
| 4667753648 | Nur Muhammad Taraki | In the early 1980s, the Soviet Union sent thousands of troops to Afghanistan at the request of Marxist military leader Nur Muhammad Taraki, who had engineered a military coup against the previous government. However, many Afghans opposed communism and Soviet intervention and a massive civil war erupted. As the Soviet Union's internal problems escalated, Mikhail Gorbachev agreed to withdraw Soviet troops and a peace accord was signed. | 17 | |
| 4667761462 | Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) | OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) is a partnership among most of the oil-exporting nations of the world. With three-quarters of the world's petroleum reserves, OPEC members collectively cut supply dramatically in the 1970s, sending the price of oil soaring and bringing in profit for the members of OPEC. Since then, OPEC's power had declined due to its inability to keep its members in line. | 18 | |
| 4667766741 | Orville and Wilbur Wright | In 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright (the Wright Brothers) invented the airplane. This was the first mode of transportation that could move faster than a steamship (which was invented just one hundred years prior). | 19 | |
| 4670250690 | Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) | The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) is a group dedicated to reclaiming the land that Palestine lost to Israel (the West Bank, Golan Heights, and Gaza Strip) and re-establishing a Palestinian state. So far, the PLO had been unsuccessful in negotiating a Palestinian homeland. | 20 | |
| 4670254584 | Perestroika | Perestroika, or "restructuring," was a group of political and economic reforms introduced in the Soviet Union in 1987 by leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Perestroika and similar reforms eventually led to the disintegration of the USSR by 1991. | 21 | |
| 4670265003 | Political Action Party (Mexico) | The Political Action Party is a center right, Christian democratic party and one of the three main political parties in Mexico. Since 2000, the first year Mexico had a true multiparty election, the president of Mexico had been a member of this party. | 22 | |
| 4670354766 | Reza Shah Pahlavi | Reza Shah Pahlavi rose to power in Iran in 1925 by ousting the then-ruling shah, who had allowed Persia to fall under European spheres of influence. Reza Shah began a Westernization movement (modernizing the country, instituting land reform, and increasing the rights of women), which continued after the end of Reza Shah's reign until Ayatollah Khomeini took power in 1979. | 23 | |
| 4670368389 | Rwanda's Tutsi and Hutu | Rwanda is plagued by brutal conflicts between two groups: the Tutsi (fifteen percent of the population) and the Hutu (eighty-five). The Tutsi governed the Hutu during German and Belgian colonial occupation. In 1962, after Rwanda gained its independence, the Hutu revolted against the Tutsi leadership, leaving thousands dead. The two groups have fought on and off since then; 800,000 Tutsi died from genocide, and 2 million Hutu refugees have fled to Zaire, where many died. | 24 | |
| 4674434614 | September 11, 2001 | On September 11, 2001, Al Qaeda operatives took control of four American passenger jets and flew two of them into the World Trade Center (WTC) in New York City, one into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and one (unintentionally) into a field in Pennsylvania. The WTC towers collapsed, and almost 3,000 people were killed total. The United States launched a war on terrorism; the Taliban was deposed and United States and United Nations forces occupied Afghanistan. | 25 | |
| 4674442929 | Taliban | The power that finally triumphed after fourteen years of fighting in Afghanistan and over 2 million deaths was called the Taliban, an Islamic fundamentalist regime that captured the capital of Kabul in 1996. This new government imposed strict Islamic law and severe restrictions on women. It also provided a safe haven for Osama bin Laden, the Saudi leader of Al Qaeda. | 26 | |
| 4674590010 | World Trade Organization (WTO) | The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was agreed upon in 1947 to reduce barriers to international trade. GATT become World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1994. The WTO boasts 150 member states, all of which adhere to the WTO's rules and regulations regarding trade relationships. | 27 | |
| 4674605617 | Yassir Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas | Yassir Arafat, Palestinian president and former PLO leader, was consistently blamed by Israel and the United States for blocking progress toward peace between Israel and Palestine. Ma | 28 |
