the church was divided into two parts ruled by two popes. Each pope excommunicated the other ones members causing a bigger rift within the church. It weakened the church and cause some to loose faith in the pope's power. It ended in 1414 when the Holy Roman Emperor brought both sides together.
It's just Catholic, not Roman Catholic. Roman is an epithet first commonly used in England after the protestant revolt to describe the Catholic Church. It is never used by the official Catholic Church.
The Great Schism, otherwise known as the Western Schism is not to be confused with the Schism of the East. The Schism of the East was when the Eastern Church broke into two factions, half staying with Rome, and half formed what is now called the Orthodox Church. Many contemporary, particularly protestant scholars seem to confuse the two. What is called the Great Schism in the Catholic Church was the Western Schism, which, even more confusing, was not really a schism in the sense that the Schism of the East was, but a time when the Church had more than one claimant to the Papal Throne, finally resulted in three, one pope and two antipopes. The impact of the Great Schism was a weakening of the Papacy, and its authority. It was the beginning of a series of disasters that eventually led to the protestant revolt in the sixteenth century.
In the 1840s the main argument and Congress over the transcontinental railroad concerned the impact it would have on individual towns, since the railroad caused a major disturbance in many of the towns it passed through.
The first Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain after 1750. There were several factors that combined to make Great Britain an ideal place for industrialization. First, the Agricultural Revolution of the 18th century created a favorable climate for industrialization.
