Historical Hack: Understanding Historical Significance

What you’ll learn to do: identify and describe the historical significance of an event

In this hack, you will learn how to gauge the historical significance of an event or movement. Before we begin, it is important to know: historical significance is not a fact you have to memorize. It is, instead an argument (not just a thesis but at times a serious disagreement among historians!) for why an event matters and why we should care about it. Accordingly, there are often competing interpretations of a historical event and multiple valid answers for what its historical significance might be.