The agora in ancient Athens is an example of architectural
design that reflected open place of assembly. Usually located in the center of
town, the agoras were the center of the towns where free-born citizens could
gather to hear civic announcements, muster for military campaigns or discuss
politics. Later the Agora defined the open-air, often tented, marketplace of a
city.
Modern-day society benefits from ideas begun in the agora,
such as trading.
In 1949, the prospect of further Communist expansion prompted the United States and 11 other Western nations to form the North Atlantic Treaty Organization . The Soviet Union and its affiliated Communist nations in Eastern Europe founded a rival alliance, the Warsaw Pact, in 1955.
In 1865 President Andrew Johnson implemented a plan of Reconstruction that gave the white South a free hand in regulating the transition from slavery to freedom and offered no role to blacks in the politics of the South.
France returned to the North American stage in 1778 to support American colonists against Great Britain in the Revolutionary War. For France, the military defeat and the financial burden of the Seven Years' War weakened the monarchy and eventually contributed to the advent of the French Revolution in 1789.
