House of Habsburg

In the 18th century, Maria Theresa, the young daughter of Holy Roman Emperor and Habsburg Emperor, Charles VI, inherited the Austrian, Bohemian, and Hungarian thrones, despite being a woman. Maria Theresa was the wife of Francis I, and the mother of 16 children, most notably, Joseph II, and Marie Antoinette, who both grew up to become major rulers. The archduchess of Austria came across many hardships and events that would slow down her reforms, but her power did not crumble. Whether it might be…

evokes a deep fear within us that something so sinister could have happened among us. Edgar Allen Poe, in his work the Fall of the House of Usher, brings the sinister consequences of inbreeding front and center, yet he still manages to do it quite subtly. One of many themes, inbreeding is key to fully understanding the plot and the deeper messages of the Fall of the House of Usher. The hints made throughout the text, add to the creepy undertones of the story. By utilizing the ominous penalties…

“There is no marvel in a woman learning to speak, but there would be in teaching her to hold her tongue” ― Elizabeth I Tudor (goodreads.com). However, Queen Elizabeth I never held her tongue when she could have a say in matters. In many ways, Queen Elizabeth was one of the very first women in the 1500s to dominate her own era. Queen Elizabeth l controlled part of the government and provided suitable leadership for her army when the Spanish Armada tried to challenge England. With her…

Many of the towns and cities in the Netherlands resented Habsburg attempts to centralize the administration of the Netherlands(Ker). By the 1560s, Protestantism and Calvinism had become popular in parts of the Netherlands,the Habsburgs attempting to restore Roman Catholicism was one of the reasons why the Netherlands wanted independence from Spain. Philip II needed the Netherlands for its wealth…

King Philip II was an absolute ruler of Spain and he was a part of the Habsburg family. On January 16, 1556 Phillip II inherited his throne. He was only 29 so his experience was limited, but he grew to be a very confidential and mature ruler. He reigned for 32 years in Spain, Portugal and some parts of the modern Americas. Philip II used many different absolutism techniques to become the best ruler. He used absolutism by taking over the Cortes, he centralized the Spanish government, and he saw…

The Big Move After what felt like a lifetime of planning, our family was finally making the big move from New York to Texas. The house we lived in was my childhood home and my husband and I shared it for fifteen years together. This was not going to be an easy task. Our first hurdle was preparing for this huge adventure. Secondly, we needed to drive both cars down. That meant that we would not have the other person to take over driving when our eyelids became as heavy as weights over our…

always go to relax and get the stress of my mind, and that would be my humble abode, my home. Because I walked to school on a regular basis, I always knew where to go, even during the renovations. I mean, I could never miss the area, a light blue house right across the street from a Kraft factory. The front yard had a very large pine tree in the front yard, the bottom half full of life and the top bared to nothing but twigs and death. The front porch was white…

This selection was written to describe the conditions of tenement houses, overcrowded slums that filled New York City during the late 1900’s. The first sentence of this selection states, “The first tenement New York knew bore the mark of Cain from its birth, though a generation passed before the writing was deciphered.” The author means that tenement houses were “cursed,” or were terrible creations from the very beginning, but this was ignored and not tended to…

So I work for my dad in a family business we deal with pinball machines, slot machines, and restored arcade games such as Pac man. So on a day over the summer, I was hanging out with my friend Tyler fixing our cars and such. We went inside covered in grease when my dad came and talked to us about how he just received a call from a lady in Dayton. And that she had a broken Pac man machine that she wanted to get rid of. She said it had been damaged, but was still intact. This was a good deal for…

feed their families. This forced immigrants of all ethnic backgrounds to live in tenement houses. These houses contained multiple families in one narrow room. Each room had little ventilation, no heat, and no toilets (located outside with one toilet for every twenty residents). The tenements had health risks for every resident and were disease ridden for tuberculosis, among other ailments. The tenement house rent cost approximately four dollars a month, or one week’s pay. This was the harsh…