* Alternate history, a subgenre of speculative fiction dealing with divergences from the world's actual history

Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, with its recorded history spanning around 3, 400 years.

These include Hindu astrology ( also known as " Indian astrology " and in modern times referred to as " Vedic astrology ") and Chinese astrology, both of which have influenced the world's cultural history.

Cambridge is also the birthplace of Thai king Bhumibol Adulyadej ( Rama IX ), who is the world's longest reigning monarch at age 82 ( 2010 ), as well as the longest reigning monarch in Thai history.

With thousands of years of continuous history, China is one of the world's oldest civilizations.

The Exposition drew 27. 5 million visitors, and is considered the most influential world's fair in history.

Some effects of alcohol intoxication are central to alcohol's desirability as a beverage and its history as the world's most widespread recreational drug.

More abstractly, Campbell's idea that myths are how we shape our lives deeply informs the picture of life in Glorantha throughout the game world's publication history.

Apart from historical collections in general museums, modern works of art in glass can be seen in a variety of museums, including the Chrysler Museum, the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Toledo Museum of Art, and Corning Museum of Glass, in Corning, NY, which houses the world's largest collection of glass art and history, with more than 45, 000 objects in its collection.

With Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel ( 1770 – 1831 ) in philosophy, Friedrich Schleiermacher ( 1768 – 1834 ) in theology and Leopold von Ranke ( 1795 – 1886 ) in history, the University of Berlin, founded in 1810, became the world's leading university.

On poverty, Hoover said that " Given the chance to go forward with the policies of the last eight years, we shall soon with the help of God, be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this nation ", and promised, " We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land ," but within months, the Stock Market Crash of 1929 occurred, and the world's economy spiraled downward into the Great Depression.

This is known as the classical period of Indian history, during which time India has sometimes been estimated to have had the largest economy of the ancient and medieval world, with its huge population generating between one fourth and one third of the world's income up to the 18th century.

Between 1980 and 1990, the world's population grew by more than 800 million, the largest increase in one decade in all of history.

* 1943 – World War II: Beginning of the Battle of Kursk, the largest full-scale battle in history and the world's largest tank battle at Prokhorovka village.

The game was historic as not only the first time in chess history a female player beat the world's No. 1 player in competitive play, it was the first time in any sport that the No. 1 ranked male player has lost to the No. 1 ranked female player.

l ' Hermet Variation ( C67 ) · 1 – 0 Polgár makes history when, for the first time ever, a woman defeats the world's No. 1 chess player in a game.

Baldwin Locomotive Works became the world's largest by the early 1900s and built the most powerful steam locos in history.

In 1998, Lars von Trier also made history by having his company Zentropa be the world's first mainstream film company to produce hardcore pornographic films.

* 2008 – " Bloody Friday " saw many of the world's stock exchanges experience the worst declines in their history, with drops of around 10 % in most indices.

It enabled the construction of the world's largest facility dedicated exclusively to stem cell research, an entirely new campus for the business school, added dramatically to the law school, a brand-new engineering quad, created a new art and art history building, an on-campus concert hall, a new art museum, and a planned expansion of the medical school, among others.

The Port of Singapore, run by the port operators PSA International ( formerly the Port of Singapore Authority ) and Jurong Port, is the world's busiest in terms of shipping tonnage handled 1. 04 billion gross tons were handled in the year 2004, crossing the one billion mark for the first time in Singapore's maritime history.

Since 1848, the Swiss Confederation has been a federal state of relatively autonomous cantons, some of which have a history of confederacy that goes back more than 700 years, arguably putting them among the world's oldest surviving republics.

In summer 2010, the world's first permanent airport library opened alongside the museum, providing passengers access to a collection of 1, 200 books ( translated into 29 languages ) by Dutch authors or on subjects relating to the country ’ s history and culture.

The history of thermodynamics as a scientific discipline generally begins with Otto von Guericke who, in 1650, built and designed the world's first vacuum pump and demonstrated a vacuum using his Magdeburg hemispheres.

Campbell, a professor of comparative literature who later became one of the world's foremost authorities on mythology was her tutorial advisor.

This ancient culture had remarkably advanced bronze casting technology which was acquired by adding lead to the usual combination of copper and tin creating a stronger substance that could create substantially larger and heavier objects ; for instance, the world's oldest life-size standing human statue ( 260 cm high, 180 kg ), and a bronze tree with birds, flowers, and ornaments ( 396 cm ), which some have identified as renderings of the fusang tree of Chinese mythology.

In Australian Aboriginal mythology, the rainbow snake is the Creator ( Kurreah, Andrenjinyi, Yingarna, Ngalyod and others ) in the Dreaming, which is the infinite period of time that " began with the world's creation and that has no end.

In Anishinaabe mythology, particularly among the Ojibwa, Nanabozho is a spirit, and figures prominently in their storytelling, including the story of the world's creation.

In February 2011 Humble presented a 3 part series of programmes, The Spice Trail, on the trail of 6 of the world's most valuable spices revealing their history, trade, mythology and usage.

Both abolition of war and new techniques of production, particularly robot factories, greatly increase the world's wealth, a situation described in the following passage, which has the true utopian ring: `` Everything was so cheap that the necessities of life were free, provided as a public service by the community, as roads, water, street lighting and drainage had once been.

They were constantly assuring you that you were one of the world's great guys.

We were there at a moment when the situation in Laos threatened to ignite another war among the world's giants.

The light tanks that were the last descendants of the light cavalry during the Second World War have almost completely disappeared from the world's militaries due to increased lethality of the weapons available to the vehicle-mounted infantry.

Many participants were among those 11 million or more protesters that on the weekend of February 15, 2003, participated in global protests against the imminent Iraq war and were dubbed the " world's second superpower " by an editorial in the New York Times.

In 2000 KPMG reported in its survey of offshore jurisdictions for the United Kingdom government that over 41 % of the world's offshore companies were formed in the British Virgin Islands.

Until the mid-19th century the Banda Islands were the world's only source of the spices nutmeg and mace, produced from the nutmeg tree.

Banda was the world's only source of nutmeg and mace, spices used as flavourings, medicines, preserving agents, that were at the time highly valued in European markets ; sold by Arab traders to the Venetians for exorbitant prices.

The nuclear reactors were decommissioned at the end of the Cold War, and the Hanford site is now the focus of the world's largest environmental cleanup, managed by the Department of Energy under the oversight of the Washington Department of Ecology and the Environmental Protection Agency.

In the early Church, the first canons were decreed by bishops united in " Ecumenical " councils ( the Emperor summoning all of the known world's bishops to attend with at least the acknowledgement of the Bishop of Rome ) or " local " councils ( bishops of a region or territory ).

The top three producers were China with 1, 800, India with 220, and USA with 63. 5 million tonnes for a combined total of over half the world total by the world's three most populated states.

Major construction projects, including the Sears Tower ( now known as the Willis Tower, which in 1974 became the world's tallest building ), University of Illinois at Chicago, McCormick Place, and O ' Hare International Airport, were undertaken during Richard J. Daley's tenure.

These are the world's biggest censuses and over 6 million enumerators were engaged in the 2000 and 2010 censuses.

By 1960, the vast majority of country-states were nominally democracies, although most of the world's populations lived in nations that experienced sham elections, and other forms of subterfuge ( particularly in Communist nations and the former colonies.

The docks were formerly part of the Port of London, at one time the world's largest port.

However, there were plans at the beginning of the 20th century to establish Neutral Moresnet as the world's first Esperanto state.

Unemployment was very low, and the Faroese were enjoying one of the world's highest standards of living.

In addition to that, the world's two largest floorball leagues, Finland's Salibandyliiga and Sweden's Svenska Superligan were formed, in 1986 and 1995 respectively.

High-speed vehicular traffic has a long tradition in Germany given that the first freeway ( Autobahn ) in the world, the AVUS, and the world's first automobile were developed and built in Germany.

Ivigtut was formerly the world's premier source of natural cryolite, an important mineral in aluminum extraction, but the commercially viable reserves were depleted in the 1980s.

In 2007 one third of the world's total production of refrigerators were based on Greenfreeze technology, with over 200 million units in use.

With the sharp growth of economies in the 20th century, and increasing foreign exchange, the world's gold reserves and their trading market have become a small fraction of all markets and fixed exchange rates of currencies to gold were no longer sustained.

The Kiffians were responsible for a life-size rock engraving of two giraffes that has been called the " world's largest rock art petroglyph ".